Monday, March 20, 2023

The Rule of Thirds

You know those weeks that feel insufferably long, but each day speeds by too quickly to fully accomplishing anything? It was not a fun week in my house. Because of the snow, my plans for the beginning of the week were put on hold. By Thursday, we got the stomach flu and the other half of my plans went out the window.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself while driving home last night. You know those funks we all get into. Everything stinks, when it rains it pours, am I even good at this, blah blah blah.

I was listening to the book Olympian Alexi Pappas wrote, and in it she talks about advice from her coach. Right before Rio in 2016, Alexi went through a rough patch in her training. Her coach said,

“When you’re chasing a big goal, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time…and if the ratio is roughly in that range, you’re doing fine.”

That shut me up pretty quickly. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s actually pretty entitled to think you’ll have it easy all the time. There are days where everything stinks, when it rains it pours, and you are not doing a good job at this. Past those days, though, are the good days and the okay days, and each third of the equation is equally important. We have to learn to live with them all.