You know those students you see on college campuses these days, the ones who are always out for a run for health and fitness (and one can imagine, fun)? I was never one of those students. Quite the contrary, my motto in college was, “Why exercise, when you can sit?” or something like that. I was fortunate in that I was blessed with pretty good genes that allowed me to do this for a time, but bad habits catch up with all of us, eventually. So, sometime in my thirties (I said, eventually), I decided it was no longer acceptable to sit around eating French fries and ice cream like it was my job, and with some encouragement from a friend, I joined a gym. Over time, I became a runner, again with some encouragement, and now pretty regularly run half-marathons, for health and fitness, and even sometimes, fun. In fact, I just started training for another one this week.
The thing about running, when you’re doing it on your own, is you don’t necessarily have to push yourself. I could go faster, but I don’t. I could work harder, but I don’t. I keep up a pretty leisurely pace, and happily accept my medal and my t-shirt when I cross that finish line. “I’m not going to win the thing,” I’ve said to friends, “So I’m not going to hurt myself.”
Fair enough, but I realized a couple of years ago that I was no longer seeing the effects of my “fitness regime,” for lack of a better term, and I let yet another friend convince me to sign up for a HIIT class. If you’re not familiar, these are short, interval-based classes that raise your heart rate and build your fitness level through bursts of speed, strength, and constantly shifting moves, interspersed with short periods of rest. The classes are led by coaches, who not only direct the class, they also provide individual corrections on form and effort as well as ongoing encouragement.
Allowing myself to be coached in this way has completely taken my fitness to another level. There are things that I can do today that I couldn’t imagine doing two years ago. I know so much more about my own abilities, limits, and the limits that I can push past, than I did two years ago. I’m not perfect; I never will be. I still struggle with push-ups and jumps over a bench. But I’m better than I was. And two years from now, if I keep working on these things, I’ll be better than I am now. And, as I reflect on this physical journey, I realize an important factor that has allowed me to get here: I had to be ready to be coached. And I had to be coach-able.
In the gym, it’s pretty standard to say, “I need a trainer to help me to meet my goals.” We seek out people with more knowledge, experience, and expertise than we have, to guide us, motivate us, give us feedback, correct our form, and occasionally kick our butts. We PAY for this service. We brag about it to our friends. We post photos with our trainer on social media, and thank them for getting us to where we are.
But in our personal and professional lives, we tend to operate from a solo practitioner mindset, thinking that asking for help conveys weakness, inexperience, and a lack of ability to perform. We “fake it ‘til we make it” and actively work to hide any indication that we don’t know what we’re doing. Instead of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, seeking out feedback, working on the things that we need to work on, celebrating our successes, and sharing that journey with others, we pretend to be something that we’re not: perfect. Or, like me and my solo running days, we get comfortable with “good enough.”
In order to truly grow and develop, in order to set goals and pursue them with intention, in order to become a better version of yourself than you are right now, you have to privilege learning over knowing. You have to be willing to set aside your ego, recognize that someone exists out there who either knows something that you do not or is better at something than you are, seek that person out, and ask for their guidance. You have to be willing to be coached, and that means that you have to be coach-able.
I’m never going to win a half-marathon, nor will that ever be my goal. I’m probably always going to struggle with those push-ups. But that doesn’t mean that I’m just going to give up trying to get faster and stronger. And, neither should you. What personal or professional challenges are you facing? Who do you know who could provide some guidance and coaching in those areas? How ready are you to show up, be vulnerable, and be coached?
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