Calculus & Climate Change

Each student is on a path, and where and how that path is laid out is what determines how far they will go in their training.

The thing is, determining our trajectory is more difficult than many believe. You cannot just sit down and work it out like calculus. It is determined by not only where we are, but where we came from and where we are going. A good, hard look at ourselves today is only a snapshot, a single point on a graph that spans our entire career.

Crazy as this sounds, we want our trajectory to be like global warming. It will start out gentle, under the radar. But we want to hit a point where our skill and knowledge starts accumulating, building up and becoming its own catalyst. 

But, like climate change, a single snapshot will not give us the full picture. It seems to be panning out to an average September day today. Looking at that, there is no indication that a catastrophic change in climate is taking place. Each day will have its ups and downs, some cooler and some warmer. Some downright hot or blistering cold. However overall the changes are undeniable; temperatures are moving at an upward trajectory at an increasingly rapid pace.

This is what our training needs to look like. There will to be days that feel like you’re moving backwards. There will be days where you feel like Edison with 10,000 failed attempts. And there should be days when you feel like Edison during that one successful attempt and the world lights up around you.

No matter what, each student has a trajectory. However, if you are not consistently checking and measuring, revisiting and fortifying your training, you will not have a clear idea of what that trajectory is, nor how to influence it.