This is going to be a let down…
Are you ready for the secret?
…
…
DON’T QUIT!
I know, I know. Obvious, right?
Whatever it is you want to get better at, you need to work on it everyday. Even if the feeling of working on it sucks and feels like it’s not providing any benefit whatsoever.
How do I know this is true?
Because I’ve quit things before that I had set out to become better at and guess what the end result was?
I sucked just as bad after quitting as I did when I started out.
And other stuff I’ve done where I’ve stuck to it, I saw results with and got better at.
Like, for the first time in my life I stuck with a weight lifting routine for more than 2 weeks. (I’ve since quit and also since restarted but hear me out).
A couple years back I bought a weight rack, weights and a bench press bar for my office. I figured that if I had the equipment just a step away, what excuse would I have not to do it?
I had tried it all before…
I tried snap fitness for a while.
It sucked.
Why? It sucked because there was ONE bathroom per gender (this may have changed now. It’s been a few years. Maybe now it’s just two bathrooms).
This really sucks if you happen to need to take a dump while you’re at the gym. Is there anything worse than staring at the shadow beneath the crack in the door at the poor innocent person who about to be nostril murdered because of you?
Or vice versa?
No, there isn’t. It’s horrible.
And, obviously, with only one bathroom, comes only one shower.
So, inevitably, if you decide to use the shower, there’s probably going to be a line of people waiting to change while you take a shower.
It all annoyed me bad.
Next was planet fitness.
This place was waaaaaaaay nicer than snap. Way nicer.
But, it was so freaking cheap that there were literally homeless dudes sleeping on the benches in the locker room.
And although they seemed to constantly be cleaning, it always wreaked!
Why? I haven’t the slightest. But I grew to really loathe the smell of the men’s locker room.
Next was the above mentioned attempt of working out here in my office at work.
This gig I actually stuck with. I did it 3-4 days per week for like 7 months straight.
Longest stretch of my life.
And my arms and chest got noticeably bigger. Not muscle man shows big by any means but they grew, no doubt.
Ain’t that interesting? No matter how often you commit and quit, you never see a result. But the very first time you commit and DON’T quit, you do see a result. And, sometimes, sooner than you’d even anticipated.
So, not that I expect to become a noted philosopher because of this post but this is pretty deep, ain’t it?
Whatever it is you’ve set out to become better at, if you haven’t yet started getting reps, START. And if you have started, DON’T QUIT.
Pretty soon, you’ll be noticeably better.
C-ya
