“I have a theory that I’m just growing, and I haven’t really put a roof on it, but I’ll throw it out there, which is that everything that is interesting is 90 percent boring.” That’s Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, in an interview she did for the On Being Podcast. In the interview, Gilbert talks about how the things she finds fascinating in life are also very often tedious. Projects, from creative works to marriage take effort, repeated effort in fact, and the days, weeks, months, and years of it can be a slog. If you stick with it though, she says, “very interesting things will start to happen within very boring frameworks.” It is an exceptionally valuable insight and nowhere is it more true than in fitness.
In her interview, Gilbert notes that as a culture obsessed with the fun, glamorous, and exciting parts of life, i.e. the rewards, we fail to recognize and cherish the grind. In fact, we devalue it. In fitness, you can see the claim in action by looking at the cover of a magazine, where bodies that took years to produce advertise tips, tricks, and hacks for fast results. The impression they create—that a fit body can be achieved quickly and easily—not only sets us up for failure, but also robs us of the benefits that come from being dedicated to the process.
And fitness is a process. Standing between your current self and your future, improved self, is that pesky 90 percent that Gilbert is talking about. Our bodies are amazing systems with a tremendous capacity to adapt physically, mentally, and spiritually (however you choose to define that term). But what creates that adaptation is repetition. Every time you complete a workout your body learns that this is an activity it needs to be good at. Every time you go to the gym on the schedule you committed to, your brain learns that this is part of the routine. Every time you reach a goal, your spirit learns that yes, you can do this.
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Those little victories that you repeat day in and day out are the real story of where you’ve been and where you are going. It feels great to lose five pounds, to add weight to the bar, to add a mile to your run, but that’s only a moment in time. Between those milestones when you are grinding out another set, or passing on another dessert, or getting yourself to bed on time is what really counts. It can be tough, it can be tedious, but it is 90 percent of the battle.
Don’t fear it. Embrace it.