Overcoming the Paradox of Serious Training

Here's a trick to feel amazingly capable and confident: periodically look back at stuff you originally found challenging months ago.

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One of the hallmarks of serious training is that past you would consider present you a lofty or even unattainable goal.

That’s the feeling of transformation over a long timescale.

But the funny part is that over a short timescale, the feeling is entirely different.

Day by day, you may not see it, you may doubt it’s happening.

That’s the paradox of serious training: the way you get stronger is by continually lifting weights heavy enough to make you feel weak.

You never stop feeling humbled by your training, and the primary feeling you experience day to day is weakness, not strength.

That’s why it’s so important to periodically compare the capabilities of your present self to your past self.

Periodically look back at stuff you originally found challenging a couple months ago, a year ago, a couple years ago, etc. That should make the growth obvious.

There should be things you used to be really confused about (or maybe even confidently wrong about) that are way more clear now.

Or things that used to take a lot of effort to accomplish, that would be way easier now. (That coding project took me a full week back then? I could do that in an hour now.)

After you add a bunch of weight to your lift over several months of training, if you pick up the original weight again, it feels light as a feather.

Also – maybe this is less wholesome – but once you reach a high enough level of skill you can periodically compare yourself to other people who are clearly less skilled. Not saying things to make them feel bad, or even thinking poorly of them, just noticing evidence that your percentile has changed on the bell curve.

But of course you can’t spend too long in this state, you just dip in to get your confidence up again and then snap out of it and get back to lifting those metaphorical weights that are heavy enough to make you feel weak again.

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