Untested Assumptions

This morning, I was coaching a CrossFit class when the workout called for pull-ups. As people started warming up, I asked one of my athletes, Karina, a 43-year-old mom of two and a pretty typical member of our gym, if she planned on doing pull-ups or substituting another movement. She laughed and said, "That's hilarious. You know I can't do pull-ups."

"Really?" I asked with honest curiosity. My instinct when people tell me they can't do something is to figure out why. "What's your biggest limiting factor?" I asked.

Karina looked away, sighed, and said, "I don't know. I just haven't tried one."

"WHAT?! You've been doing CrossFit for eight years and you've never tried a pull-up? This ends today."

Karina groaned. She knew she'd been caught and I wasn't going to let this go.

As everyone else continued warming up, we walked over to the pull-up bar. She stared at it like she'd run into her old high school bully at the grocery store twenty years after graduation.

"Well?" I asked expectantly.

She stomped her feet and groaned again, throwing a tantrum akin to one my one-and-a-half-year-old would throw. Much like I would respond to my toddler, I stood there with my arms crossed and waited.

Finally, she grabbed the pull-up bar, lifted her feet off the ground, and began to pull. It wasn't pretty. She grunted, strained, and squinted, slowly bending her elbows more and more until her chin came over the bar and she completed her first pull-up in recent memory.

"I hate you and I hate this," Karina smirked as she dropped down.

"Good," I replied. "You can hate me while you're doing pull-ups in the workout today."

For eight years Karina assumed she was incapable of doing a pull-up.

The only thing standing between her achieving something that only 5-10% of the adult population can do was an actual attempt.

Many of the things we think we can't do aren't things we've failed at. They're things we've never attempted.

We've never tried the workout.

We've never cooked the recipe.

We've never spoken up in the meeting.

We've never invited someone to coffee.

We've never asked for help.

Instead, we decide the outcome before we take the action. We analyze the results before we run the experiment.

For eight years, Karina treated an assumption as fact.

How many of the limits we believe we have are based on evidence, and how many are simply untested assumptions?

The moment we decide what we're capable of before putting it to the test, we begin limiting what's possible.

Fact

Research on self-efficacy has found that one of the strongest ways people build confidence is through mastery experiences, successfully completing a task themselves. In other words, confidence often follows action, not the other way around.

Action

Identify one thing you've been telling yourself you can't do. This week, don't commit to mastering it. Just attempt it once.

Question

What "limit" of yours is actually just an untested assumption?

Quote

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right." - Henry Ford