What are your REPS?
I enjoy reading YA (young adult) novels. My daughter is a voracious reader with excellent taste, and borrowing from her bookshelf has become one of my favorite ways to spark real conversations about things that actually matter. If you're the parent of a teen, you know exactly what I mean.
Recently I finished The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen — a story about a teen who loses her leg in a bus accident after a track meet and has to find her way back. It's a recovery story, yes, but it's so much more than that. The main character, Jessica, shares a metaphor she learned from her track coach about what it takes to succeed — in track, in math, in friendships, in life.
You've got to put in the REPS: Repetition. Effort. Pain. Success. Four letters. Deceptively simple. Profoundly true.
It reminded me of what I used to tell my own kids growing up: You can do anything you choose to — as long as you put your Time, Effort, and Energy (TEE) into it. Here's the uncomfortable truth most of us already know but hate to admit: the success, the accomplishment, the personal growth — none of it arrives without the pain part. Not the dramatic, movie-montage kind of pain (though sometimes, yes). The quiet, grinding, unglamorous kind. The kind that comes from doing the thing you don't want to do, again and again, until you get better at it.
We live in a world that's obsessed with shortcuts. And I get it — shortcuts are appealing! But a lot of us are choosing perfection, fearing failure, or avoiding new things entirely because we dread the effort and the discomfort that come with growth. The problem? There's no way around it. There's only through.
Let me get personal for a second.
As a solopreneur, there are parts of my work I genuinely don't enjoy. Business development stuff — lead searching, cold outreach, introductory emails — is not my happy place. Give me an actual human to connect with and I'm golden, but getting to that human? That's my REPS.
As a speaker, I can't stand watching myself on video. It makes my skin crawl. I've avoided it more than I'd like to admit. Also my REPS.
As someone who genuinely loves connecting with people, I still get anxious walking into large, loud networking events — even when I really want to be there. Yep. Still REPS.
I share this not to complain (okay, maybe a little) but because I think we need to normalize the fact that the things worth doing come with a side of discomfort. Even for people who do this stuff for a living.
We often wonder, why can't this just be easy?
Because the important things — the deeply meaningful things — don't come with quick fixes. Not even with AI. You can't zoom in, sprinkle a little effort, zoom out, and call it success. AI might shorten some steps, sure, but you still have to learn how to use it effectively, and that takes practice. That's REPS too.
What feels truly amazing is what happens after you put in the REPS, after you offer up the TEE — and you watch your progress unfold in ways you didn't expect and maybe didn't even dare to hope for.
Here's the other thing I'm still learning, even at this stage of life:
You don't have to do the REPS alone.
Finding a partner, a coach, a teacher, a friend, a support crew, a colleague — or what I like to call a Chief Encouragement Officer — is absolutely key to reaching your goals and making your dreams real (on your own terms, by your own definition of success).
So who's in your corner? And what REPS are you putting in right now?
I'd love to hear about it. (Really...no BS)
