What If It’s an Advantage?
A heavy rainstorm almost canceled one of my last high school track meets.
This sucked. I had been warming up for the 400-meter hurdles with the hopes of winning sectionals. But I had to take cover under an umbrella for over 30 minutes. When the rain stopped, we were given 5 minutes to warm back up and get to the starting line.
By this point, I figured it was going to be a shit race. So when I found myself in the lead in the last 50 meters, I slowed down to get the win and conserve energy for my next events.
I missed the school record by 0.2 seconds.
It was a personal best by over a second.
Whoops.
Conventional wisdom would have suggested that a long delay followed by a short warm-up would have been an advantage.
And yet on that day for me it was… an advantage?
27 Years Later, Re-learning the Lesson
Last night I almost forgot to get a workout in, but I was determined to get it in before bed.
I’ve been doing Hindu squats twice a week for almost two decades (approximately 2,000 workouts).
In college, I could do 100 in 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Over the years, I’ve perfected my form and maintained my strength. In ideal conditions, I can do 100 in 2:00. My previous best was 1:56.
Last night was anything but ideal conditions.
My garage was 95 degrees (and I hate working out in the heat).
I just came back from the pool (having a beer with a neighbor).
I was still sore as hell from boxing on Friday and Pilates on Saturday.
And yet, a thought popped into my head. What if this is an advantage?
So I went for it.
And I broke my personal best by 2 seconds.
I’ll remind you, this is a workout I’ve done 2,000 times over 2 decades. There is no rational reason that this 2,000th attempt was the one where I’d break my PR, and yet here I am writing this article to tell you about it.
Flipping the Script
Maybe these two stories are insane outliers or anecdotes. I don’t intend for this to give you false hope that you can magically think one phrase to break PRs. However, we do know that sports and life are largely mental games. How you show up to the starting lines of life can indeed impact how you arrive at the finish lines.
So my advice for you is to consider… what if this disadvantage is really an advantage in disguise? What if?
The Farmer Parable
This is one of my favorite all-time passages in literature. It’s from Dan Millman’s Peaceful Warrior.
An old man and his son worked a small farm, with only one horse to pull the plow. One day, the horse ran away.
“How terrible,” sympathized the neighbors. “What bad luck.”
“Who knows whether it is bad luck or good luck,” the farmer replied.
A week later, the horse returned from the mountains, leading five wild mares into the barn.
“What wonderful luck!” said the neighbors.
“Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” answered the old man.
The next day, the son, trying to tame one of the horses, fell and broke his leg.
“How terrible. What bad luck!”
“Bad luck? Good luck?”
The army came to all the farms to take the young men for war, but the farmer’s son was of no use to them, so he was spared.
“Good? Bad?”
And it’s a good reminder that favorable conditions can lead to unfavorable outcomes, and vice versa. A lot of it boils down to perspective and hindsight.