When you are chasing a dream, or doing anything hard, you are meant to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time.
I am a runner. It still feels weird when I say it. You see, I used to be the kind of person that would only run to save their life, or maybe catch the metro if I’m in a real rush. But when I started traveling a lot attending any kind of workout classes became impossible. I needed some kind of cardio that I could do no matter where I was and with as little equipment as possible. Enter running.
I started training in September 2019 with one of those couch-potato-to-5K apps. The first time that I had to run for one minute straight I thought I would die. But I persisted. And I didn’t die. I managed to run my first official 5K race in a little under one hour. I was proud of myself, I really did not believe I had it in me.
After that race, not unlike the mothers who allegedly forget the childbirth pains shortly after, I wanted more. So I trained for a 10K and after that for a half marathon. Four years later, having completed many trainings and many races, I can say I am a runner (according to a friend of mine, you are a runner, when you see someone running and you feel jealous).
One of my favorite things to do during long runs is listen to audiobooks about running. One of the best books I listened to was Bravey by Alexis Pappas, and one of the many gems I found in this book is the rule of thirds.
Alexis talks about a difficult period, when she was preparing for the Rio Olympics and training felt too difficult. Her coach told her not to worry and that what she was experiencing was the Rule of Thirds. According to this rule, when you chase a dream or doing something very hard, you should be feeling good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and bad a third of the time. If the ratio is off then you need to address your goal or the effort you are putting in. If you feel good most of the time you are not stretching yourself enough. If you feel bad most of the time you are pushing yourself too hard. But if you find yourself in that sweet spot where the ratio is roughly in that range, then you’re golden, keep doing what you are doing.
I have found this advice very helpful during training. Some runs just suck. They leave me exhausted and feeling like I’m making no progress or even moving backwards. This can really demotivate someone if you expect progress to be linear. What I try to do instead is remember this rule. There will be bad days. There will be runs that are extremely hard. When this happens you need to brash it off and keep going. And if you feel like you’re killing it all the time, then you should probably set some harder goals so you can struggle a bit. What does not challenge you, does not change you.
This applies to every single endeavor. Work, learning projects, relationships. Progress is never linear and anything worth doing will bring good days and bad days. What we must do is try to find that sweet spot and keep persisting.