If you’re like me, you follow an assortment of people on social media: friends, family, fitness professionals, outdoor adventurers and other people who intrigue you. The images that pop up on your feed each day often reflect the best moments of these people’s days. In the course of a minute, you might see a climber smiling on a mountaintop, a man holding a perfect yoga pose, a team celebrating a game victory, and a woman demonstrating a complicated exercise routine. Each of these images capture a single instant of joy, success and achievement for the person behind the scenes. Depending on what kind of mood you’re in as you’re scrolling through these images, you might feel happy for them or frustrated for you (or something in the middle).
What you don’t often see on these feeds is the entire process that led up to those moments. You missed the decades of training and skill practice that climber put in before reaching that impossible summit. You missed that man struggle for months to learn that yoga pose. You missed the hours of grueling practice that team went through before they captured that big victory. And you didn’t see that woman’s failure after failure of practicing each movement before she could perform them together in a flawless routine.
There are a few things I’d like to recommend to you:
- Celebrate each person’s victories (including your own) and remember that it took work and dedication to get there, even if that was all behind the scenes.
- Watch for the people on social media who post their blooper reels, failed attempts, and progress updates as they go. It is important to see these things to remind you about #1.
- Pay attention to what you’re choosing to share on social media, too. Are you documenting the process or just showing the highlights? Even if you’re not ready to share your process with the world, capture it on photo or video for your own review. This is incredibly helpful to remind you of your own progress, especially on those days you’re feeling like you’re not going anywhere.
I am happy to share my successes, failures and work-in-progress on social media. Lately I’ve been working on handstands, and there is a wide range of success and failure, even within the same training session:
Whatever you’re working on now, and whatever stage that you’re in, remember that consistent practice is your key to progress. And please remember that all those amazing feats you see online are products of someone else’s consistent practice.
So, what are you working on? And what are you willing to share with the rest of us? It’s rewarding to go from not being able to do a thing and then being able to do a thing (like Skin the Cats!). Make your practice public and inspire us all to do our best and practice every day. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish.