Secret To Life Found on Facebook!
This morning before getting ready for Susan’s Make Life Happen Seminar, I started to read a link titled Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood (there have been over 500 posts in less that 24 hours so I didn’t get all the way through) that my friend Leo posted on Facebook. There was a line in it that contained an interesting statement and later, after thinking about it… this is the secret to life! Are you ready for it? Here it is…
Lower your standards.
Yep, lower your standards. That’s it, very simple, yes? Here’s the context and see if this makes some sense to you and if it helps you create or maybe change some of your goals or intentions for this year or even how you approach your next training session. The context of the above post is this (paraphrased) exchange.
A director said this: “Primary problem with producing movie/TV shows is money. It costs A LOT of money. Even shows you think can be done with a lower budget, it can’t… currently.”
Then another guy said this: “Sure it can. Read this.
Maybe it’s impossible to make TV to your current standards with a small budget. Keep your mind open – it may be your standards that need to change.”
Here’s my point, if you can’t squat correctly for 3 reps at 80% of your 1 rep max (1 RM), back straight, knees out, full depth, etc., then maybe what you thought was your 1 RM isn’t really your 1 RM. You need to lower your standards for what you think you can squat. How many of your friends think they can do 30 push-ups (or whatever number they think is A LOT), and then, when they “show you,” you’re thinking “OK where do I start?!?!?” Then you say nicely, “how many can you do if your chest touches the ground… yes, every time.” Not so many…
The lowering your standards is really less of an answer than a question to keep asking. Which standards do I lower and which do I keep? Do I really want to uphold the standard that “I need to get back into shape before I go back to the gym” (I know I get a lot of mileage out of that one but it is just so easy). Or do I want to uphold the standard of “I workout 3 times a week, I really need to get my fat s$$ back into the gym?” Do you need to uphold the standard of going hard at every workout? No, maybe you need to uphold the standard of “I show up 3 times a week, even if it only means just doing the warm-up and mobilizing the achy back.” Lower your standards, lower your comfort zone, lower the barriers to actually doing what makes you happy and healthy.
Hm, I get the gist of what you are saying, Saul, but I think it’s more accurately characterized by changing it to:
“Raise your standards. Therefore, if necessary, lower your target.”
The standard itself is the quality you are trying to achieve, the “ideal” measurement of the goal. If you can’t get quality results at the target you’ve set out for yourself, either the target is unrealistic or you still have some work to get there.
The article, to me, is more about shifting the way you look at things and removing complexity as a solution to intractable problems. If we talk about TV/movie production instead in terms of high or low standards, art being subjective and all, you can make very expensive bad art as easily as very cheap good art. You still want to aim for good art at the lower budget (a high standard), but your criteria need to shift – from “how can I make this big action show on my small budget!” to, “what kind of entertaining action show can I make with my small budget?”
Seems to me in our personal lives, especially in the gym, things are a little more objective. Therefore the standard shouldn’t change – you shouldn’t just decide that because you have trouble getting your hip crease below parallel that a 90 degree squat is “good enough,” or that you want to claim that PR badly enough that even though your back looked like a pretzel you got that deadlift most of the way up, so it counts.
I see a lot of that at my current gym – there’s a lot of competitive fire among some very good athletes, and it seems to come largely from the second-tier guys, who maybe want to be part of the big dog club a little too soon. They’re just strong enough to be dumb, I’d say.
/ramble… Where am I going with this? Hmm…
I guess my takeaways would be:
1. Like everyone has always told you, make sure your goals are challenging, but realistic and attainable
2. Be honest with yourself. Know the standard, know why it’s the standard, and don’t cheat yourself by pretending you’re there when you’re not.
3. Don’t be afraid to reassess whether you’re targeting the right goals, or whether your goals are expressed the right way to drive success.
Kris, thanks for reading the blog and your thoughtful response. While we may disagree on the title, you got the point which is “Don’t be afraid to reassess whether you’re targeting the right goals, or whether your goals are expressed the right way to drive success.” Many times athletes want to be “the big dog” and that’s what drives their weight selection and/or their exercise selection (e.g. muscles rather than dips), rather than try to be the best athlete they can be. making the wrong choice is sure way to injury and suffering.