Nothing teaches you the truth of ‘one step at a time’ like a really heavy weight.
You hear that all the time, don’t you? Just take one step at a time. The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, the journey of a thousand steps begins with the first one.
Yeah, we GET it. One step at a time.
But I had a great experience where I actually felt how important “one step at a time” is.
Have you ever done a front squat? It’s where the bar is laid across your upper chest- it’s really hard and easy to curve into a human question mark shape.
ANYWAY…
I was doing one of those and had increased the weight from what I had done last week. I knew that I had to get to 12 reps.
Not 11
CERTAINLY not 7.
12!
So I began- and I started thinking about the 12th rep right there at the beginning when I was only doing the first one.
Sure, they say picture your goal, shoot for the moon and all that…
But thinking about the last rep felt like an AGE away while I was just on the first, holding something very heavy and trying not to fold in half like an envelope.
So I forced myself to just think about the first one. Then the second… then the third and on and on and on.
This was the embodiment of one step at a time. And it worked. Hooray!
It’s easy for these adages to remain as sayings: one step at a time.
But when we find little ways of making them real for ourselves, we get to take away the learning and benefit from that wisdom in a very real way.
