One Stroke At A Time

Never before have I felt like vomiting like I did in that moment. I had worked so hard that I felt nauseous. Worse yet, I wasn’t proud of my final result. After 2000 meters on the rowing machine, I felt miserable, inadequate. I was humbled beyond belief.

Then I heard the worlds my close friend Lyen offered when talking about training for a marathon. “My personal best.” Those three little words shifted my view and made me reconsider what I had just experienced.

The truth is, for the first three and a half minutes of my body’s trauma on the erg, I was on fire. Not only did I hit a stroke rater of 2:00 minutes per 500 meters (a rate I had never hit before) but my average for that fleeting period was 2:10 (also a rate I had never hit for even ten seconds, let alone a full three minutes!).

Granted, that is when I was about to turn my stomach inside out. And yes, other team members twice my size were flying by me on our hypothetical “boat” race—machines bolted to the boat house floor. And no, I wasn’t happy with my final score.

But when we set aside right and wrong, good and bad, record or not, and look through the lens of compassion rather than competitiveness, the words come: “My personal best.” Whether it’s a new sport, a battle with an unwanted habit or even brief periods of time we spend each day doing something we said we would, it’s good to celebrate life’s victories.

It can also be helpful to enjoy the “rests” life brings, however brief. The fleeting moments between strokes are when we can reflect on wherever it is in our lives we are getting better than we were before. It is in the moments of pause when we can celebrate where we’ve been, regroup, and become energized about where we are going.

What we’ve done for three minutes today, we may be able to do for nine someday. Now, that’s something to celebrate! The best way to get there, of course, is to keep rowing—not all 2000 yards at once, but one stroke at a time.