Putting in the reps

A thing I've been thinking about recently is "putting in the reps." This phrase became important to me when I started doing kettlebell workouts. I wasn't very fit at the time, and the workouts could be difficult and discouraging

Through determination and encouragement, I persisted, and slowly started to see the fruits of my labor. These days, my muscles are defined, I trust my body more, and working out can actually be fun!

But this post isn't actually about working out. It's about the power and necessity of repetition. There are so many things in life that take consistent effort to build, even when the going is slow. Take my Twitter presence, for example.

To make my Twitter presence the connective, interactive experience I wanted it to be, I had to commit to posting every day, refining what worked, and not giving up when things were slow or I got frustrated.

The place I've been thinking about putting in the reps the most, though, is in relationships: friends, partners, clients. I can get together with these people for an intensely fun time a few times a year, but it's hard to build anything with that limited frequency.

I have a group of best friends – I call them my Pod. The 6 of us, who all live in different parts of the country, came together about 2 years ago. After some stops and starts, we decided to commit to daily communication.

Not because it was fun all the time, or even easy. But because we had shared values and a desire to build together. We put in the reps on our friendship, and now I have a rock-solid group of emotional technowizards with whom I navigate the world.

And in this time of crisis, I'm getting to put in the reps in a way I haven't ever before: with a select handful of clients. Previously, when my clients and I parted ways after a date, our communication was very minimal until the next time we planned to see each other.

But now, with in-person dates off the table, I'm getting to talk to these clients every day. I'm getting to hear what they think about every day, see how they're doing on a random Tuesday evening, so many special moments I might miss otherwise. And it's incredibly rewarding

I'm getting a much more detailed picture of what it's like to be them, and we're getting comfortable together in ways we couldn't have been before.

I believe that relationships are all on their own time journeys, and pushing them to a level of intimacy that doesn't actually suit them can be detrimental.

But for the relationships that are ready for it, having daily communication allows us to build in ways I never thought possible in a client-companion context. When social distancing ends, I believe our relationships will emerge stronger and more meaningful.

So here's to "putting in the reps" and to the people who join me. <3