Happy Sunday Everyone:
There will be no more talk about our push-up challenge after this Sunday thought although I promise this message is totally different than the last one. We’re nearing the end, 7 of us, currently on day 355, so ten days left for the year. For those who didn’t read the last one, we started on 8/14/2024 with 1 push-up and raised it one more each day. So today we each did 355, and YTD we’ve each done 63,140. Pretty cool. What’s not cool is I haven’t had a single person, including Kim and the boys say “wow, you look different”. Perhaps the next challenge should be diet related!
Aside from the intentional brag of being able to do this many push-ups, what’s my point? I have a couple:
First point is what’s next? As much as I’ve found others annoying for always needing to pursue something next, it does seem silly to get yourself in a position where you can do this, and then just stop. Why have I found others annoying for always wanting to take on a challenge? Perhaps because I wasn’t committed, maybe it appeared too hard. Not sure, either way, I’ve shifted that mindset to be thinking of what is next. Time will tell but I am actively looking to answer the question of “what’s next” on the challenge list!
Second point, and the bigger point, is understanding my baseline, and appreciating it. Fact is on 8/14/2024 I could do more than 1 push-up, but how many could I’ve done? no clue really. If you’re reading this and you don’t do push-ups, you might ask yourself how many do you think you could do? 20? 40? 60? 80? 100? At what point are you thinking “no chance”. Fact of the matter is, I don’t want to do 365 push-ups every day but doing 200 push-ups a day is easy at this point, like I’m taking a break. What’s amazing is if you start the year at 1 and end at 365, you end up doing 66,795 push-ups. If I do 200 a day starting 8/15/2025, which would seem easy right now, I end up doing 73,000 push-ups in a year. Choosing a baseline of 200 seems easy, yet it gets me further than what I did this year. As important-1 year ago on 8/14, if you asked me what my baseline was going to be starting the following year, I wasn’t saying 200. The mindset shift on what would have seemed impossible, to now what is completely do-able, and will happen, is something I’ve taken serious consideration of.
The bigger point has less to do with push-ups and more to do with baselines that are important to you. Baselines could be personal or professional. Baselines could be calls made in a sales role, meetings set, cards written, opportunities closed, whatever. Personal baselines could be dinner with the family, talks with your kids, time with your spouse, whatever. Reality is just about everything in life has a baseline, the question is are you good with the current baselines of your life? If you can increase your baselines so that your bare minimums are at a place where you can’t fail, that’s a great place to be. It’s easy to use push-ups as an example because we can relate to doing them and they’re easy to count. My thought is what seemed impossible 1 year ago, seems easy today, because I was intentional, focused, and accountable to others, and myself. So now I’m sitting here questioning what are the most important things in my life that I need to measure, what are the current baselines, and do I need to change those baselines to be reflective of my life’s priorities? The answer is “yes”! If I was as intentional as I was with these push-ups, with my true priorities, where am I this time next year? Where would you be? I think its worth our consideration!