Perfect Failure
Dear Collective,
As a millennial, I lived this firsthand. My generation was told from day one that you had to go to college and get a degree if you wanted any chance at a successful life.
Looking back, that’s just not true for everyone finishing high school. If you want to practice medicine, do legal work, or become an accountant, absolutely, you need specialized higher education to ensure you are competent in the field. But for a lot of other paths? I don't think it needs to go to those lengths. For a fair amount of people, going out into the world, having real conversations, gaining hands-on experience, and actually living in those spaces can be far more beneficial than four years in a classroom.
Even for those who followed the script to the letter, life didn't guarantee a win. Thousands did everything right, walked off the graduation stage with degree in hand, and stepped straight into the 2008 Great Recession. An early 20-year-old kid didn't crash the global financial system, but they were the ones handed the bill. Then, right as everyone was finally getting into the swing of things in their 30s, 2020 hit.
These aren't things we caused. They are massive, external disruptions that just happened to us.
We see the exact same thing in sports. A team can prepare flawlessly, play a brilliant four quarters, and execute every single play, only for a terrible call from a ref or a lucky bounce in the final three seconds to decide the game. They did everything right, and they still didn't get the win.
Life isn't fair, and making progress isn't linear.
Sometimes, the entire goal of the day isn't even to push forward. Some days, you show up solely to hold your ground and stop the regression. Staying where you are and refusing to lose ground during a storm is a victory in itself.
When life hands you a bad break, you really only have two choices:
You become cynical. You throw your hands up, get angry, blurt out complaints, build politics around being upset at certain people or systems, and cry about how unfair it all is.
You become resilient. You take a look at the hardship, realize you survived it, and recognize that you learned something valuable through the pain.
It is easy to stay disciplined when every single workout is a brand-new PR. It is easy when every single healthy meal leads to immediate weight loss on the scale.
In reality, that’s not how it works. Plenty of people do everything right for five days straight, and then on Saturday they eat their body weight in whatever they can get their hands on because they felt they deserved a cheat day. In a single moment, the effort gets wiped out.
Doing everything right doesn't mean you automatically win today. It means you are building the capacity to keep trying regardless.
When the call goes against you, when the world throws a wrench in your plans, or when a bad day hits out of nowhere, you don't break down. You adapt, you hold the line against regression, and you keep moving.
Control what you can control. Hold your ground. Keep going.
With Strength and Good Habits,
Charlie
We, The Collective Fitness