My journey with physical fitness has mirrored my entrepreneurial experience in many ways. Sometimes you just have to do things that you do not like. I had always found pushups, situps, and squats particularly grueling. In fact, these were the exercises that I hated the most. One day, I decided to challenge myself with a simple but daunting concept. I would do one pushup, one situp, and one squat, and then add one more of each exercise every single day for a year. On day one, doing a single repetition of each was a struggle, but I persisted. The structure is simple, but the ratchet is built in.
Day after day, I added one more to the count. It was not easy. There were days I wanted to give up and days when the mere thought of doing the exercises was exhausting. I had to remind myself constantly to embrace the suck. After ninety days, I was doing ninety pushups, situps, and squats. They sucked, but I could do it without melting down, and I started to feel better and dream big. I realized that embracing what sucks is often a prerequisite to achieving any significant goal.
Over the course of this journey, I discovered the power of threes when creating new habits. Setting out to do a pushup, situp, and squat plus one every day until I could do 365 of them in a row was a massive accomplishment. It taught me about persistence and the consequences of letting go of good habits. The power of incremental improvement is easily leveraged here, just by simply adding one repetition with each outing. If you incrementally add the numbers of pushups you do with correct form, the results compile over time.
By the end of the year, I did 365 pushups, situps, and squats in a single day. The exercises that once seemed insurmountable had become a part of my routine, and I was in the best shape of my life. I remember going to the gym that morning at a sales conference and peeling off 365 of each, realizing how much had miraculously changed in one year. The tired, overweight, discouraged person was gone. So the recommended phrase to cement in your brain is to embrace the suck. Make a commitment and do it anyway, every single day.
