#2 - Are you running off the cliff?

I’ve talked to a lot of athletes who are fired up about a specific goal but struggle to see the steps which will be necessary to achieve it. I love to see the passion behind their actions but it’s bound to get them in trouble. From the number of times I’ve heard this from people, I realized that this is a common delusion in our society about learning and growth.

Suppose you were 5 years old and stumbled across a copy of “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson. After seeing the Muppets Treasure Island film, you want desperately to read this book. But there’s one problem: you don’t know how to read. There’s several ways you could go about this. You could start on page one and copy the first word’s letters into google and then click listen. Now you know what the first word is (assuming you recognize the word audibly). Now all that needs to be done is repeat 66,950 times (number of words in Treasure Island) and you’ve read the book! Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Alternatively, you could recognize the obstacle as reading, start with phonics, practice on easier books, and ultimately read Treasure Island (and anything else you want as well). Clearly the second approach is better. This sounds like a silly example but let’s try some others.

You want to quit a bad habit. Should you do everything you can think of to stop this specific habit or would it be better to invest some effort in learning about how habits work and what strategies have been proven successful for ending bad habits?

Imagine you recently competed in a race. Unfortunately, you came up short and were disappointed with the loss. As a result, you’ve decided to train harder. For the next month you run twice as many miles per day as your competitors. Sadly, there’s a lot more to being fast than training the most—because you ignored nutrition, recovery, strategy, and mental preparation you end up with shin splints or a stress fracture and can’t compete for the rest of the season.

I’ve been this athlete before and it sucks! I was so focused on the big blue goal that I ran right off the cliff and spent months waiting for my body to heal. Is it better to keep my eyes on the prize and start running (off the cliff), or recognize there’s a cliff in between and stop to pick up some rappelling equipment? Clearly it’s better to learn to rappel!

That’s what Advancing Daily is. You want to become a better athlete—your coach teaches the physical part and we are here to make sure you don’t fall off any cliffs. Lebron James didn’t wake up one day and excel at basketball—he used rappelling equipment to improve his game.

What “rappelling equipment” do you want to get out of Advancing Daily? Hopefully, the challenges you thought of yesterday come to mind. Next time you face a challenge, think of where you could get rappelling equipment to make it easier.