I heard this quote tonight and it took me back to another concept that I learned years ago. Essentially, when we don’t know what to do, we do what we know. Knowledge creates a path that allows us to travel. We should never fall in love with the information that we have to the point that we aren’t open to gaining more knowledge. Our expectations cause us to believe that we know enough. We fall into a trap which tells us that what we don’t know is more important than what someone else actually knows. Certainly, I admit my guilt in this area. I’ve learned to give way to those who know and have been trained on topics when I don’t know the first thing about the topic.
Falling to the level of our training means that what we train ourselves to do consistently will be the level at which we operate. Recently, after a long break, I began working out again. One of the hardest exercises for me was the . The video I linked makes it look pretty easy. But, when you’re 30 minutes into a workout, it’s not the easiest thing to do. What I found interesting was that when the distance was set by the trainer to do this crawl, I’d do enough to get my body to work toward the finish line. Gradually, he began making me do the crawl backward after the forward crawl. Then my body got adjusted to the assignment. Consistently, he would call for me to crawl forward and then backward. These moves and other body movements used in the workout sessions were not normal for me in my day-to-day life. Now they are becoming very normal. The distance between my back and forth “Bear Crawl” is about 40 feet. At this point, that is my level of training. My expectation is to be more fit. But I know that my one crawl back and forth is what I can do without a break. But in order to get to that point of great fitness, my training has to increase before I can meet that expectation.
That is one small, simple example of our expectations versus our level of expectations. However, it is clear. Whatever you expect out of life, you must commit to being trained for it in order to get there. Training doesn’t mean doing it once. It means that you must do it over and over….and over. Don’t practice until you get something right; practice until you can’t get it wrong.