Effort=Results

I’ve made it no secret that I struggle with my weight. It’s part DNA, part my lifestyle- I literally need a 12 step program for pasta addiction.  Yet, I continue to exercise and continue to try to eat better. And with a hope and a prayer maybe, just maybe, one day, I’ll be the size and health I want to be.  Because I go to the gym before the chickens wake up, I am pretty much on my own at the gym. My gym has a large selection of cardio machines. Each morning, I spend ½ hour either walk/running or on the elliptical and then spend another bit of time in a weight circuit. This weight circuit is designed by the gym to be done in ½ hour with work on legs, arms, and abs.  I was a little frustrated with the fact that I do this circuit at least 3 times (if not 4) a week and see little results. I was lamenting this to my husband the other morning, when he asked me about the weights that I use. I started explaining to him what I use and he seemed impressed with the heaviness of the weights. He then asked me how long I had been using the same weight on the machines and I told him that I was using the same weight since I started the ½ hour circuit about a year ago.  He then laughed and explained that my lack of increasing my weights was my problem. I was using the same old weight every day and didn’t challenge my body by going further every couple of weeks by increasing the weights.  He then made me really mad by stating, “Mediocre efforts produces mediocre results.” Uggg…..Know it all!   

When he gave me this great advice, I started thinking about a conversation I had just had with one of our teachers. She came to see me last week. She was a little downtrodden. She was discussing a situation with a student that honestly seemed minor-but I listened anyway. Call it mother’s intuition or maybe that I’ve been doing this too long, but I finally asked, “So what’s really bothering you?”  That’s when she started to share some real failures in her classroom that day. We’ve all had those days. Heck, sometimes I have those weeks.

As I do with many of these types of meetings, I started asking questions. You see, I may be “principal” but that doesn’t mean that I know more than our teachers-it just means I get more emails. Many times teachers know the answers to their own questions. Teachers are experts.  I asked one question that she answered with some delay. I asked her how it had gone last year when she had done her groups in the way that had failed on this day. After not answering the question, she answered by stating that she was trying something new and it hadn’t gone well. I asked her why she had changed the way she did it last year. She then started discussing her data from last year, what she had learned from a new teacher last year, and about a book she had read this summer. All of those things made her realize that she needed to try things a little bit differently. We talked some more and discussed some things that could make it better the next day. I checked up on her at the end of the next day and just as I thought, she had a much better day-actually a great day!

Unlike the teacher I just mentioned, I was playing it safe. At the gym, I wasn’t pushing myself. I wasn’t working harder every day. I started and continued the same thing day after day after day after day. And eventually the results stopped. So for the last week, I started upping the weights. The first day was a complete failure. I upped them too much, couldn’t do what I needed to do, ran out of time and didn’t finish. I really left feeling worse than I had in a long time. Sunday morning, I could hardly walk from the car to the church. I was so sore.  But then this morning came, and I felt great. I kept working through the pain and almost skipped to my car because I felt so accomplished.

You see, if you haven’t failed in your class lately, you probably aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. You are probably playing it safe and doing what you’ve always done-maybe it seems easy. Maybe it seems safe. Maybe it seems less hard.  But I can assure you that “safe” lessons are a recipe for mediocrity- AT BEST.  And as my husband so lovingly pointed out…“Mediocre efforts produces mediocre results.” And our kids don’t deserve mediocrity.