You ever known a “that guy”.
Let’s call him Eduardo.
You’ve known Eduardo for a while. You guys both work on the same floor. You occasionally play Fortnite together. You aren’t exactly best friends but you figured if he ever got married he’d invite you to his wedding.
You may not know his life story but you also figure he’s not holding any secrets. But then one day, during a business trip, he just casually sits down at the piano in the hotel lobby and without warning breaks out a beautiful version of Billy Joel’s “Vienna”.
“Jesus Christ, Eduardo. Where the hell did that come from?!?!” you ask.
But what Eduardo hasn’t told you is that he’s been quietly practicing for 40 minutes per day for years before he even touched one key in front of another person.
Same thing with Jenny. That seemingly fast rising junior exec at your firm.
How the hell is she getting put on all the best projects while you still basically have one foot in the mailroom?
You don’t see the countless hours of research and classes and extra work she has done to “come out of nowhere” and become the youngest vice president at the firm.
The truth is, anything worthwhile takes longer and requires more effort than you think it will.
Want to get the physique you truly want? It’s going to take a lot more than cutting down from two sleeves to only one sleeve of Oreos while rewatching Lord Of The Rings for the 23rd time.
Want to grow an epic beard? It’s going to take you more than three weeks.
(Actually that one isn’t true. Some of us can grow epic beards in days or even hours!).
The point I’m making here is that the good stuff takes longer to get than you think and requires way, way more effort than you’d hope.
And there are two reasons for this.
The first is that we are impatient.
So many of us spend so much time in the contemplative phase of making a decision that by the time we take action we are already fatigued. I will use, conveniently enough, choosing a new gym as an example.
Very few people just wake up and decide they want to get in shape. It usually gnaws at them for a bit. Or they have a health scare. Or they see a photo of themselves at an unfortunate angle. And then they think “huh, I should probably do something about this,” but they don’t. Instead they think and contemplate and put it in the back of their mind until they bolt up in the middle of the night realizing they need to make a change.
But make a change, they do not. Instead they move from contemplation to exploration because 1) it feels like they are taking action even though they are not and 2) it makes them feel like they won’t make a mistake.
So instead of jumping in, we ask ChatGPT, do a Google search, look through various websites, check the corresponding Instagram pages, ask our one jacked friend what he thinks, call the gym, set up a tour of the gym, sleep on it, figure out our finances, head on vacation for a week, forget about it for another two as we catch back up with work, call again because you forgot the details and all of a sudden you are months into the process without having actually done anything.
When you do finally start you think “oh, I’ve been pursuing this for so long, why hasn’t anything happened yet?” when, really, you’ve just begun to take actual action.
The second is that the results you want are elite. Most people never achieve them. And that’s for good reason. They are really, really hard.
Getting results is actually quite easy. Going from squatting 40lbs to 41lbs or weighing 300lbs to 299lbs is certainly a result and probably achievable for most people rather quickly.
But those results don’t leave you satisfied. And satisfaction is the key to any endeavor. Results are meaningless if they don’t help you achieve a level of satisfaction.
And for most people the weight they would actually want to see on the scale or on the bar or the reflection they want to see in the mirror or on their blood work is far from easy to attain.
Add to this that results tend to slow down as you get closer to that level of satisfaction. Lifting or losing the last 5lbs is much harder than the first five.
So where does this leave you?
Great question and I think I have an answer. Or at least an answer that has worked for me. Actually, it’s technically a question.
“What’s the alternative?”
Thinking about quitting the gym because you haven’t chiseled out your dream body in 8 weeks? Ok, what’s the alternative? Are you going to stop training? Go back to a sedentary life? Backslide on all the progress you’ve already made?
You suck at playing the piano even though you’ve been at it for a year and you wonder why you still spend your evenings practicing? Well, what’s the alternative? Stop playing? Spend your time watching Hulu instead or making music, regardless of how bad it might be?
Things not going well at work or with your business and you are thinking about throwing in the towel? Ok, what’s the alternative? Quit and give up what you’ve built? Have no ability to pay your bills? Go back to that corporate job that made you miserable?
I realize that I am jumping to the extremes here. And, truthfully, there is a good answer to “what’s the alternative”. Maybe you need to change up your gym or create a new practice routine or start searching for a new job.
But just because things aren’t going the way you want as quickly as you’d like them to doesn’t mean you just get to quit. Because, while you might not be satisfied with the results you’ve gotten thus far, you’ll never be satisfied if you just give up on the things you want.
That is a guarantee.
One last thing and I’ll leave you to get on with your week. Satisfactory results are a moving target.
If you would have told my sloppy, unmotivated, overweight 26 year old self that I’d marry a woman that was out of my league, have a beautiful boy, own 5 gyms and have the strength and physique that I have right now at 53 years old I would have asked you what type of deal with the devil I made.
But while I have gratitude for all that (and I really do) it doesn’t mean that I’m satisfied.
Human nature dictates that we are constantly hungry for more. That what we want is always two steps away from where we actually are.