50x Over Is Your New Fucking Motto

Lifting weights in the gym is generally viewed as a positive thing.

You do a rep, and then do it again, because you fundamentally understand that the only way to grow a muscle is through creating tension. You don’t get mad at yourself for the fact that you can’t lift 100 pounds weights on your first try; you just start with what you can, and accept that you will get better as you go.

Contrast that with everything else you’ve ever tried, EVER.

You try to write that piece and it sucks—and you hate yourself for it. You try to work out the budget and it’s confusing—and you blast yourself for it. You try a new strategy on social media and it flops—and you take it personally.

We get mad at ourselves when we’re not lifting 100 pounds on the first try—even if we’ve never done a single rep before. But success falls on a continuum: the more repetitions you do, the better you get. If you aren’t happy with your performance, it isn't because you aren’t any good: it’s simply because you haven’t done it fifty times over yet.

Fifty times over is your new fucking motto.

Forget success, forget awesome, forget doing it well, and focus on doing it fifty times wrong. And then the next time you fail, you'll realize that it wasn't a failure at all.

It was simply another rep.