100 Push-Ups/Day

It was November 1st and I was at the gym with my friend Jordan.

We finished our workout for the evening and went over to an open turf area.

He explained how we were now going to do some push-ups, since it was the beginning of the month.

And for this month in particular he was going to be doing a daily push-up challenge.

Apparently so was I.

I had never done any sort of daily challenge like this before, and was not fond of push-ups.

Is anyone??

Eventually though I got up to a count of 50 push-ups.

Taking small breaks on the way there, when my body could no longer hold me up.

(Trying my best not to think of all the sweaty, grimy, and stinky bodies that have been on that same dirty turf.)

He then told me to do 50 more before I went to bed that evening, sending me with a shared Note to document my progress.

And that’s how I got roped in to doing 100 push-ups a day, for the 30 days of November.

My grand total ended up being 3,100 push-ups for the whole month.

An insane amount.

But just wait.

Jordan hit his goal of 10,000 push-ups.

So why share this though?

Besides the fact that I’m super proud of getting to this number and accomplishing the goal…

There’s so much we can all learn and takeaway from such a challenge, when it comes to our own businesses and even our daily lives.

Here are some of them:

• Being consistent and intentional each day about what you’re working on creates immense progress over time.

• Documenting your progress not only keeps you on track, but gives you encouragement to look back on. Look how far you’ve come!

• Pushing yourself to do hard things will not only help your physical strength, but also your mental strength. (Most of working out is you in your mind.)

• You’re never going to feel like doing hard things. But you need to do them anyways. Even when you’re sick, even when you’re tired.

• Getting yourself there, showing up, is over half the battle.

• Break down big challenges into smaller chunks in order to make success more easily assured.

• Stop thinking, stop making excuses, just do it.

• Having friends and a community to push you and participate in life with you is so important and vital towards hitting success.

In your own business and life you’re going to come across many difficult times.

Where you don’t know if you have the strength to move forward.

Where you think you should probably just give up and call it quits.

However! The person who knows and diligently lives out these points will be able to persevere.

It doesn’t mean it will become easy, or even fun to experience.

But at the end of the trial, season, storm, month you’ll see how much stronger you’ve become.

And, see how much you’ve accomplished.

For myself though?

We’ve moved on to a new challenge for December: Pull-ups.

Which, by the way, are so.much.harder than push-ups.

My goal is to do 50/day and hit 1,550 for the month.

What’s your goal for this month? For your business? For your life?

Michael

PS. By the way, in these sorts of challenges you do as many as you can until failure. Take a few minutes break and begin again. Repeating until you hit your goal.

Makes it less daunting and more attainable.