I know you said you were doing GREAT — but were you really?

It probably doesn’t really matter about the circumstances that find me training for a big gravel bike race in a month, but suffice to say, I have been on the trails training.

As I was riding the other day I came across two riders — one was almost at a dead stop waiting for the second rider who was out of the saddle pushing his bike. As I approached, I offered some words of encouragement, “You can do it”

As I rode by the response was, “I’m doing great”.

The thing about being in the saddle for a while is you have lots of time to reflect — and reflect I did because my first reaction was no you aren’t.

Maybe he was in fact doing great because his goal was simply to get the bike out of the garage or he had the unusual goal of pushing his bike instead of riding it. For me success was defined by riding the bike but in this situation, the measurement for success could be different. There is an academic discussion to be made about alignment of goals and objectives to ensure measurement of success is properly reflected. In this case, with the context being on a bike trail where people ride bikes, I think to say you are doing great when you are pushing your bike is inaccurate.

Does any of this matter in the scheme of things? Not really, but again I rode for quite a while and had time to think.

Maybe it was an issue with language and how we interpret what is said — language has meaning and like all things, it evolves. It’s possible I missed the memo that says doing great on the trail now means pushing your bike. Like aligning goals and objectives, I think it’s important to align language so everyone’s understanding is the same.

It may also just be the result of being human; we are an overly optimistic bunch after all. We are always overestimating our abilities and how we stack up against each other, as well as the world at large. Sadly, we overestimate our abilities relative to reality, and if we don’t like the results, we adopt the illusion of changing reality with words or artificial action. The hard reality is no matter how much you want to change the standard deviation curve you simply can’t have the whole class in the 95th percentile — not unless you want to pretend.

It probably was simply a misinterpretation of the situation because we all get off the bike once in a while and have to push — although anytime it’s happened to me, it’s never because I’m doing great.

iamgpe

"The Hardest Worker in the Room"

For those not familiar with a “Word Cloud” it’s the result of a metadata exercise which visualizes text data and is used by marketing for value proposition exercises, messaging exercises, and customer persona exercises (all involving a bunch of important people in a room and sticky notes) — marketing people love Word Clouds because they’re very colourful and kick off a slide deck very nicely. I only bring this up because, as the saying goes, I needed to “set the table”.

At my gym the walls are covered with sizeable words I assume are meant to motivate. They were most likely the result of some sort of word cloud exercise and I can almost see the bowl of candy in the middle of the table used to keep everyone’s energy up.

Excellence. Power. Motivate. Inspire. Performance. Intensity. Powerful. Achievement. Innovate. Elevate. Challenging. Motivation. Competitor. Perfection. Excel.

Coincidently, as I was counting words and scribbling them into my workout journal, I saw a club member walking around with a T-Shirt that bolding stated, “The Hardest Worker in the Room”.

There is a lot to “unpack” here with five or six bunny holes available, so to save us all some time I decided to focus my efforts on this.

Words are important and they drive action; the right words drive the right action and words without action offer little.*

In fairness, I have no idea what the objective of the word cloud exercise was but most of the words on the wall reflect the results that come with the actual training, so I assume they are meant to motivate. As motivators I suppose they work but none of them help me get to my goal; there is much work to be done between the idea of getting into good shape and having cocktails on the beach looking buffed. Words drive action so it is important to have the right words.

Discipline, perseverance, knowledge, resolve, and ownership better frame what is needed to be successful in the gym. And this brings me to my friend in the T-Shirt.

He didn’t look like he spent much time in the gym — he wandered around looking at his phone and I don’t think I saw him do anything (n fairness though, I was spend much of my time working out and scribbling words in my journal). He may have been having a good time being “ironic” but I can only react to what is presented to me, which in this case, was a juxtaposition to what was on his T-Shirt. And in the context of the gym, this represented a complete lack of any credibility or serious competency. A reminder that words and action represent who you are; aligning words and action are crucial.

Sure this is just a fun example of a moment in a local gym but it really isn’t hard to transfer to something more important.

iamgpe

*I suppose I could have just said, “Talk is cheap so get to work” but then I wouldn’t have had any opportunity to talk about Word Clouds or being ironic.

"How are you doing?"

Decades of sitting behind desks, in airplanes or in a car has blessed me with very tight hips which, when not tended to, can be a crippling and painful proposition until the anti-inflammatories kick in. One of my preventative strategies is to walk each and every day which not only helps me deal with the bane of my existence but also gives me an opportunity to enjoy the neighbourhood, and its cast of characters (myself included).

The bows in his legs reminded me of cowboy caricature, like a cartoon character you would find each Saturday morning shooting his way through the wild wild, west; the six-shooter in each hand however had been replaced with canes. It was obvious as I approached each step was a painful venture and as I passed him I nodded and habitually asked, “How are you doing?”

I heard him quietly reply, “I’m not doing as well as you are”.

I will admit this was a number of weeks ago and I’m still trying to unpack and understand the response — was I surprised with his boldness for not offering up the obligatory response to a stranger, was it the realization that my sporadic mobility issues pale in comparison to real challenges, was it a reminder that perspective is everything, or maybe simply that life is sometimes an unfair proposition. In the end, the interaction has reminded me that success and happiness need to be aligned with personal benchmarks.

I can only speculate what his answer would have been if we had met as I hobbled along piloted by an anti-inflammatory haze; probably something different would be my guess. None of this is meant to discount the challenges we all face as we make our way but I think this is a nice example of the importance for measuring to internal milestone because as we all know, at any given time, you can always find someone who is richer, smarter, prettier, faster, healthier or stronger… just check out your social media feeds. “How are you doing?” (or in a slightly wordier form“How is the progress to your goals going?”) can only be measured against the milestones you set for yourself, and these become the reference points when you are looking for the answer. Remember the operative word in this question is “you” and it is “your” progress.

Looking for outside references simply surrenders ownership, and as you probably know, there can only be one owner. It’s best that it’s you.

iamgpe

PS: I hope everyone is doing well and everything is going according to plan!