It’s always hard for me to imagine the best really ever struggling.
But, despite my continued certainty on this point, biography after biography after memoir after tell a very different story.
Bruce Springsteen doubted himself as a singer, not even suggesting himself as the lead in his high school band. Sarah Blakey was scared she’d never amount to anything, wandering for years through sales jobs before starting Spanx. And John Grisham, would purposely oversleep his writing hour to avoid facing what he was certain would be a failing manuscript—what later became, A Time To Kill.
Alexi Pappas—an Olympian, filmmaker, actor, and author— shared this same shaky disposition.
There were times, as a Pappas says in her book, Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Good Ideas, she’d have bad days, and questioned whether she was good enough. It was then that her coach, Ian Dobson, came to the rescue. Coach D, also an Olympian taught her the “Rule of Thirds,” and it changed her perspective.
It’s what she now calls, “the best advice I’ve every received.”
And it’s the subject of today’s Think.
The Rule of Thirds
Pappas was training for the Rio Olympics, struggling to hit her time.
Dejected, she was about to give up for the day—maybe even the entire qualifier—and that’s when her coach hit her with the Rule of Thirds.
He told her:
“Whenever you’re chasing a big dream, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time…
If you feel too good all of the time, you’re not pushing yourself enough, and if you feel too fatigued, you might need to reevaluate.
As long as the proportions stay relatively consistent, he told her—meaning you’re not always feeling too good or too bad—each Third is actually helping. As Pappas explains:
On the good days, you grow your confidence. On the crappy days you grow your patience, courage, and resilience to stay on.
Relating this to creativity years later on Rich Roll’s podcast, she added:
So on those days where creativity doesn’t come, and it doesn’t feel great, you still show up. Because maybe that’s your crappy day. It doesn’t mean you quit the goal, it doesn’t mean you freak out. It means you live through that dip, because you’re chasing a dream.
You’re doing something hard.
The OGT: The bad days are part of it
To me, here’s the key message: the bad days are part of it.
Expect them. Accept them. As long as there are also some good days, you’re making progress. The key is to show up on the bad days, remind yourself that these are supposed to be here, and then keep going anyway.
Fall seven, the old saying goes, rise eight.
It reminds me of venture investor and entrepreneur, Ben Horowitz’s cult classic book for start up founders called, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. The entire book says, look, things are going to be really hard, and you’re not going to know the answer, and—and this is the key part—that’s OK. That’s normal. It happened to me, too. Pick yourself up. Keep going. Or as Horowitz puts it, “If you are going to eat shit, don’t nibble.”
I did some research, and apparently the Rule of Thirds has its origin in the writings of an old English poet, Robert Browning.
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,” wrote Browning, “Or what's a heaven for?”
Or what’s a heaven for indeed, Mr B.
P.S. - shout out to my girl, Isabelle for the book rec. Keep ‘em comin.’
I loved this book - and love this advice!
Good Think!
Puts the process into perspective.
Appreciate the distillation.