A student of mine returned to martial arts class yesterday after having suffered from a rough few days of food poisoning.
Having been there, I know that coming back from this is no joke.
After the class concluded, he pulled me to the side and made a comment that I thought was worth sharing.
He said, “When I came to the school, I was at a 2 [out of 10]. I was texting my wife telling her how rough I felt and how I didn’t think I’d make it to class. After an hour or two I felt more like a 3. By the time class came around, I felt like a 4. Once I was in class I was a 5. And when it was over, I was a solid 6 or 7.”
I’ve written about this before and this is no small insight.
The byproduct of doing hard things is feeling better—a bump up on the feeling scale closer to “10.” Avoiding the hard things (or succumbing to excuses like, “I’ll do it when I’m a 10”), leaves you feeling worse or, best case, keeps you sulking at the number you started at.
Don’t get it twisted: we don’t do hard things when we’re at a 10—we do hard things to get to a 10 (or at least closer to it).