The pregnant woman walked onto the subway looking for a seat.
It was during a Friday morning summertime commute. Which, in NYC, means that there were certainly people on the train, it wasn’t packed. But, nonetheless, all the seats were taken.
As I saw her scanning the car and, ultimately, grab the pole in resignation, knowing that she’d be standing until the next stop, I asked if she needed help.
“Would you like me to see if I can get a seat for you?” I asked.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve learned not to ask after I got yelled at last time.”
She went on to tell me that last time she asked someone if she could sit down they told her that she asked to aggressively.
This was wild to me. First off, nothing about this woman read as aggressive in any way. Secondly, who the fuck is so fragile that when a pregnant woman asks for your seat that your thought is “well, I would, but I didn’t like the way you asked.”
Now I just wanted to rip the first person I saw out of their seat for vindication (what can I say, I have a giant hero complex) but decided to play it cool.
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but if you want my help I’d be more than happy,” I said as I quietly eyeballed the two guys sitting in the priority seating section who were hiding behind their sunglasses.
This isn’t the first time I’ve played subway vigilante. Several months ago a Dad with a screaming infant and a cumbersome stroller was trying everything he could to calm the baby down. As he juggled the baby while trying to reach under the stroller for a bottle I didn’t wait or ask for approval.
I just went up to the two guys across from them and not so calmly said, “Come on, guys. Let’s get up and give Dad a place to sit down and set up shop.”
And while, unlike the aforementioned pregnant woman above, I could easily have been accused as having a tone that is “too aggressive” it worked as the two startled gentlemen got up right away.
None of this, by the way, has anything to do with the topic of this post - something I refer to as “tolerance for repetition” which I will get to shortly - nor is it to self-aggrandize as some modern day Bernard Goetz for new and expecting parents.
It is more to just implore you, my friends, neighbors and fellow mass transit riders, to be better. I promise, standing up for roughly 14 minutes of your day isn’t going to kill you.
OK, now that my PSA is complete, let me, in the words of Snoop Dogg, get back to the lecture at hand.
Tolerance of repetition is a not-so-fancy term that I have come up with that is a nuanced first cousin of consistency.
Here are the subtle differences: consistency is simply the capability and willingness to do something for a long time. Going to the gym three times per week. Eating for your goals. Showing up to work everyday for forty years so you can retire with a small pension and a gold watch.
Tolerance of repetition is often more effective and typically more terrible. Rather than just going to the gym three times per week, can you work on the same eight big-bang-for-your-buck movements every week for months or years without fail? Can you, rather than sneak in some sweets that technically keep you at your macros, eat the same six things each week for months? While you are building your business, can you stick with the slow, repeatable actions that will ultimately get you where you want to go rather than chasing the shiny, exciting new thing?
With consistency you can still, for the most part, achieve some level of balance. Tolerance for repetition shrinks the possibilities way down. It will test your grit, your sanity and your actual dedication to your goals.
And, while most of us will hate this truth, it is the most direct and foolproof path to success. Certainly you need to first find the things that are worth repeating. But, honestly, that’s the easy part. Once that becomes clear, can you be patient, diligent and, perhaps, psychotic enough to follow those parameters for a lot longer than you would expect.
Because, in my humble experience and opinion, everything worthwhile that you want to achieve will take much longer than you’ve hoped and planned for.
Much longer.
Those 8 week transformations that you see on Instagram? Sure, they may have dialed in their diet for the past 8 weeks to get peeled, but all that muscle underneath took more like 8 years to build.
That bakery down the block that became an “overnight success” with lines around the corner? The head chef went to pastry school, interned in a restaurant night after night, worked on her creme brulee recipe for months before “instantly” hitting it big.
The talented kid who is about 3 standard deviations above everyone else in the high school jazz band spent endless evenings practicing a challenging five-note run on the trumpet to the point where the neighbors called the cops.
Outside of winning the lottery, it is hard to name anything valuable that doesn’t come with a reasonably high tolerance to repetition.
In the micro, you can see this in an individual workout. When things get challenging within a set most people shift into a pain face and do everything they can - speed up the reps, contort their bodies, quit early - to survive to the end.
But someone who has built up a real tolerance of (literal) repetition will know that the challenging part of the set is also the most effective for growth. They recognize that they’ve been there before and, rather than try to squirm away, they lock in, focus on technique and get the most out of those important reps.
Maybe that subway story wasn't as unrelated as I made it out to be.
Because at its core, this isn't really a post about exercise. It's a post about our relationship with discomfort.
On that train, the discomfort was standing for fourteen minutes so someone else who needed it more could sit. In the gym, it's doing one more technically sound rep when every fiber of your body wants to stop. In business, it's making another sales call, writing another newsletter, coaching another session when the exciting shortcut is calling your name.
Most people spend an incredible amount of energy trying to escape discomfort.
The people who accomplish extraordinary things simply get better at staying in it.
They develop a tolerance for repetition.
And maybe that's the real superpower.
Not talent. Not motivation. Not genetics.
Just the willingness to keep standing when everyone else is looking for a seat.