TRANSCRIPT: The Power of Practice: Lessons From 10 Years of Pushups – Emily Saul

I love how intentionally balanced both my body and my mind feel through physical activity.

So you can imagine the challenge I felt anticipating a month of travel for work back in 2012, the first full week of which being in Haiti, where I would be delivering trauma education to child care professionals. I knew there were going to be lots of limitations to my time. There would be limitations to the necessary equipment, even to safe access to my usual practices of running and lifting weights.

Of course, I focused on the challenges of all the things I couldn’t do. And I tried to focus on the opportunities. I thought about what I could do. I really tried to dial in to what was going to be available.

So I considered that I could run back and forth in the very small space that was available, barely bigger than this stage. I also thought about how many squats and push-ups I might need to do in order to get a great workout. And then it dawned on me, I hate push-ups. And that was my aha opportunity moment. Why not do something difficult that I knew I could get better at?

Even if I did like a hundred push-ups a day and that was the only thing I did, I would still feel rewarded by that and satisfied. And so that became my goal, a hundred push-ups a day. I couldn’t do a hundred push-ups. I knew that, but I knew I could do five. And I believed I could do that 20 times in a day and get it done.

And so for the entire month of May in 2012, that was my goal. I had a purpose. It felt meaningful. I could measure and define success. I told all my coworkers. I told my friends. I got weirdly excited. And then I did exactly what I set out to do. And that month of push-ups turned into the whole year. And somehow that year became ten.

And what was a hundred push-ups turned into more than 400,000 push-ups since I started. I’ve been practicing a lot. And I’ve learned from my practice. One of my favorite exercises to do with my sport psychology clients is help them to harvest the lessons that they learn from their physical experiences as athletes and help it to become more meaningful in their movement practice going forward.

So today I’ve decided to harvest my own lessons from my practice of push-ups to give you the top five list of lessons learned from ten years of push-ups. And rather than a drum roll, we’re going to count them out like this. Number five, this is three, four, five.

Lesson number five: Let obstacles become opportunities. As I just explained, I’m so grateful that I let that challenge of that month of travel, as well as my resistance to push-ups, become opportunities. I wouldn’t be where I am without them. So resistance and challenges, they’re not bad. They are opportunities to learn. Ready?

Lesson number four: Just because I’m not doing something perfectly successful does not mean that I’m failing. So let me ask you, has anyone in this audience ever set an expectation for yourself to do something perfectly? It took a minute, but yes, okay? And has anyone ever felt like a failure when you did not meet that expectation?

Okay, there’s more of you somehow in that second question. But yeah, it’s true. And it is tough being human. So I realized I started to get discouraged somewhere in my second year of push-ups because I noticed this discrepancy between the days when I did 100 push-ups exactly, I felt like a success.

And the days when naturally, understandably, because life, I did some, even most, like 80 or 90 push-ups, I felt like I was failing. I didn’t want to be disappointed and feel bad about doing push-ups just because I wasn’t doing enough. That was way too all or nothing.

So I reorganized how I thought about success, and I expanded my goal. I continued working at 100 push-ups a day, but I thought about what’s a year’s worth of days added up together? That’s 36,500 push-ups, and that’s what I aimed for. And like that, 80 push-ups in a day, instead of getting thrown away and labeled a failure, now it was added to this much bigger goal. It fundamentally changed the significance that I placed on what I was doing compared to what I wasn’t doing. It made it so much easier to want to keep at it day after day.

Lesson number three: Motivation is directly related to meaning. So people ask me all the time, how do you stay motivated to keep doing this after all these years? And the answer actually is very simple. I continue to make it meaningful for myself. I keep framing my challenge around something that has purpose for me.

So think about it. At the very beginning, I already explained to you, it’s very important to me to have a movement practice, so I was motivated to get it done. And then it was meaningful to feel like my effort, all of my effort matters. And so I changed my goal to be able to work toward that.

And after a couple of years, I started to build some confidence. Physically, I felt like I was getting better at push-ups, and I thought that was a good thing. And so what started to matter, became meaningful, was to challenge myself. Could I do a little bit more?

So I rounded that big number up to 40,000 for the year. It’s so nice and round, and it feels really good to work toward it. And I did. I did it. And I looked back at the end of the year, December 31st, I flipped through the calendar where I kept track of my push-ups that year, and I just looked out of curiosity. I had hit 40,000, and there were 29 days in the year where I did zero push-ups. And that was fine.

I wasn’t disappointed in that at all. I hit the goal. But what came to matter next was, I wanted to explore consistency. How do I challenge myself in that way? So the next year, my goal was to have zero days of zero push-ups and still hit 40,000. I did that. And I’ve continued to find new ways to find meaning, but motivation has everything to do with what matters. Are you keeping track?

Here we go. Lesson two: If you want to keep doing something, make it regular and give it structure. And if you want to keep enjoying something, make it unusual and give it variety. So long-term practice thrives with this marriage of structure and spontaneity. And it’s kind of obvious. This is the obvious part.

But I’ve learned that I thrive with structure, and there are a few things that have really helped to develop that. So I pick my sets and reps, and I just stick to that every day. I find the routine and keep doing what works. I do a set first thing in the morning. It’s a great psychological advantage to know that I’ve already gotten the ball rolling. That helps keep it regular.

I also pair things. I pair push-ups with regular things I do. For example, every time I put something in the microwave, I do a set of push-ups. It just works. Keeps my kitchen floor clean, too. Okay, so that’s the obvious part.

But the second part of this is that just because doing something is not the same as really enjoying it, right? And I’ve found great value in being able to find new fun and joy and delight in keeping this practice interesting.

So I emphasize this point because so many people work so hard to just be normal and fit in, and even though we crave to feel seen, we don’t want to feel looked at. But I’ve come to value the unusual.

I have done push-ups in the aisle of the coach section of an airplane with a drink cart coming toward me in one direction and passengers returning from the bathroom in the other direction. I have raced myself to do push-ups in an elevator between when the doors close on one floor and open on another floor. I’ve done push-ups in ski boots and full snow gear before dropping in to an epic run down a mountain in Utah.

I have done push-ups completely naked. I’ve done push-ups balanced on two rocks at a beautiful beach where my husband and I took our wedding photos wearing my wedding dress. So just keep in mind, right, the balance between structure and spontaneity.

Lesson number one: There is a version of impressive things that works for you. I meet a lot of people, and a lot of conversations start with me doing push-ups and someone coming up and saying, “What are you doing?” And I always answer. I explain, I do 125 push-ups a day, it’s a practice, whatever. And this is the interesting part.

Almost universally, people respond by saying, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I can’t even do push-ups.” And I think that there is something in this that inspires you. Even if they admire the consistency, even if they like the idea of the physical practice, they’re so quick to determine that they can’t, that it’s not for them. And I think there is a version of whatever this thing is that’s impressive to you that does work for you.

So when someone says, “Oh, you know, I couldn’t do that, I can’t do push-ups,” I say, “Well, we just don’t know which version of push-ups works for you.” When they say, “Well, I can’t do 100,” I say, “Neither can I. 100 push-ups is impressive because most people can’t do 100 in a row. I’m no good at 100 push-ups, but I’m good at 5.”

We’re all striving for something, and if this practice has taught me anything, it’s that if there is something that inspires you or has meaning for you and you think you want to be connected to it, find the version of it that works for you and then practice being good at it day after day.

I’ll say it one more time, this isn’t about push-ups. This is about a practice of learning through something like I have through push-ups. You don’t have to be an athlete. You can build a practice out of meditation or juggling, movement of any kind. I don’t care what it is, but I really do care that you find your practice and practice the heck out of it.

For Further Reading:

7 Things To Do Before You Graduate College: Liz Wessel (Transcript)

The Three Secrets of Resilient People: Lucy Hone (Full Transcript)

10 Things I Learned After Losing a Lot of Money: Dorothée Loorbach (Transcript)

How to Declutter Your Mind – Keep a Journal: Ryder Carroll (Transcript)

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