learn to row

I am grateful for the crazy days.  The days when I look up, and the power is out, the important meeting is happening, the car is ready and the skies have opened up and the city is flooding.

Those days are amazing.

When you look back, and say to yourself, 11 years ago, we flooded when something like this happened.  I was overwhelmed.  Didn’t know what to do, and was just about swept away by circumstances.

Now, because of all the hard work, we’re OK.  We learned.  We took action.

Now, with the heavens opening up, we look outside and say wow, that sure is a lot of rain.  I look up and say, wow, that sure was a great meeting.  What really gets us through in those difficult times, when you’re in the middle of it, is your training.

What does your training do?  It makes you deliver despite your circumstances.

You become what you want to become by training yourself to do that thing, over and over again.  Then, when the world is falling apart around you, you can do it anyways because you’ve done so many reps it’s second nature to you.

I’ve realized the old saying is true: You don’t rise to the occasion, you fall back to the level of your training.  What you can do in your sleep, you can do in a firestorm.  What you can do without thinking, you will do when the pressure is on.

But the only way to get there is to train.  To do the reps.  To put in the work.

That is the amazing thing about whatever you do.  It really doesn’t matter, because the end result is the same.  In business, that end result is working with amazing people, who are making your vision come to life in the best way they know how.

So you have the vision, and they will follow you and make it happen.  And how good you are, is how far you can go.  But, how good your team is, is how far you can all go.

That makes me think of rowing, or skulling.  You have one person in a boat, it can only go so fast.  You have 8, it goes faster, and farther.  You slap an engine on it, and you can go as fast and far as you like.

But you have to understand how to navigate, how to row, and how to get to where you want to go.