Take Yourself Higher

I say this a lot but it bears repeating. ⁣ ⁣ You need to push yourself. You need to prep for something hard. Something that makes you feel uncertain. Something that forces you to rise.⁣ ⁣ That is why I always encourage people to compete. Prep for a fight. Sign up for a meet. Go run that marathon. Do something that scares you a little. Because here is what happens.⁣ ⁣ The competition itself might only last one or two days. But the training for it? That is months of hard effort. ⁣ ⁣ That is where the magic happens. That is where you level up.⁣ ⁣ Imagine you have been cruising along at a 5 out of 15. Nothing wrong with that. But then you start prepping for competition and suddenly you find yourself living at a 14.5 or maybe even a 14.75. You are immersed in it. You are redlining. Or at least it feels like it. And then the competition comes and you go even harder.⁣ ⁣ Now after the event, you dial back your training volume. You return to your regular pace. ⁣ ⁣ But here is the thing. You do not go back to a 5. You might settle at an 8 or even a 10. But you will never drop all the way back down again. You have raised your baseline.⁣ ⁣ It is like driving on the interstate at 85 or 90 miles per hour, then getting off the ramp and cruising the city streets at 35. That 35 can still get you where you are going, but it feels slow after what you just did.⁣ ⁣ Now picture that you were on a race track. That is what training for a competition feels like. The pace, the volume, the intensity. It all gets turned way up. And once you know what that feels like, your internal standard changes forever.⁣ ⁣ Prep teaches you who you are. It shows you what you can do. And when it is over, the world around you looks different. You operate differently. Because you are different.⁣ ⁣ If you want to raise your bar, if you want to discover what you are really capable of, compete. Set a date. Pick a goal. Train for something you are not sure you can do.⁣ ⁣ And after that, everything else will feel easier.⁣ ⁣ — Paul