Not commiting

I hate to do another gym-related post, but every time I'm there, I see it as a microcosm of life.

I see so many people who go to the gym and "play" at being there.  This isn't their intent, of course, but it's exactly the overall effect.

They go there with no real goals.  They say, "I want to be in shape" without defining what that means.   This means that it's much easier to quit later.  They don't know what success looks like, so they never get there, never make any real steps to get there, and quit because they aren't seeing any results for their hard work.  Or, they move the goalposts, redefine success, and declare a false victory and move on.

They go there and never push themselves.   I watch so many people pick up 5 pound weights or work out on the machines with the lowest weight setting.  They walk instead of running.  They do three exercises and walk out.   There's a time and place for this kind of thing and it's when you're horribly out of shape and have just started working out -- but if you've been in the gym five days, you're no longer at that point.

They bitch about how hard it is.  Of course it's hard.  That's why there's all those pithy sayings.  My gym used to have one from Lance Armstrong that said, "Everybody wants to know what I am on. What am I on? I am on my bike busting my ass six hours a day; what are you on?"  While he got busted for doping, the quote still holds true.   Even though he used performance enhancing drugs, he was still on his bike, busting his ass, six hours a day, every day.

What I'm saying here is that if you're going to swing for the fences, you've got to commit.  No more half-assing your way though things and trying to make something work without actually working.   You need a game plan.  What does success look like to you?  A million dollars?   A Ferrari in your garage and a vacation house on some tropical island?  The girl you've been pining for the past 10 years?  What is it?  When can you say "Mission Accomplished" and have it mean something?

How are you going to get there?  It's nice to say "I want to be rich" and even define that as "rich means $10 million in my bank account and no debt", but you can wish for that all day long and never get there.  You need to break it down into steps.   Stop thinking about the whole and think about the smallest manageable step.   For instance, I once had to report to a job in San Diego -- where I'd never been, knew no one, and only had the address of the business and the name of my boss.  My mother wondered how I could ever do such a thing, there was so much that could go wrong and so much I didn't know and I had to be there literally tomorrow.

I knew I had to be in San Diego.  Too far to drive, so that's a plane ticket.  Luckily, there's an airport in Austin.  A few minutes online and I had one.  That only got me to the airport.  I'd need to be in Mira Mesa.  Luckily, airports have car rentals, so I'll do that.  How do I get there?  I have an address, I'll use Google Maps to plot a course.   And so on, right down to finding a hotel until I could find an apartment (I need a place to stay) and taking a few days off to come back and pack my stuff and terminate my lease (need my stuff, don't need the apartment in Austin).

You can apply this to anything.  If you want to run a mile, you can start by running two minutes.  Once you can do that, run two, walk two, then run two more.   The next day, try running for three minutes.  Keep building on that plan and you'll eventually get there.  Want to start a business?  Break it down.  There are always steps you can take each day that get you closer to your goal without being impossible.

Once you've started, keep pushing yourself to do more.   If it's easy, you're not working hard enough.  If it's hard, remember that nothing good was ever built without some serious hard work.

Get out there and swing.