The inspiration for this week’s newsletter came from two completely different conversations that got me thinking about the same thing.
My daughter Ava wants to go to Stanford.
Whenever someone asks where she wants to go to college and I tell them Stanford, I usually get the same look.
Something along the lines of, “Oh, okay. That sounds cool... but where does she really want to go?”
And if I’m being fair, I’ve probably had some version of that same reaction in my own head for years.
Why?
Because Stanford is incredibly hard to get into. The statistics say the odds are against her.
But I started thinking about what that mindset actually means.
Why should my first reaction to someone wanting to do something extraordinary be to calculate all the reasons it probably won’t happen?
Why am I putting a limit on her potential before she’s even had the opportunity to find out what she’s capable of?
The reality is, students get accepted into Stanford every year.
Why not her?
Earlier today, I was with a group of men talking about fitness as it relates to our police standards. The general sentiment was that we’re always going to have officers who are out of shape.
And statistically, you can understand why someone would think that.
In the early 1970s, about 12% of American men were obese. Today, it’s about 39%.
You can look at that trend and accept where it’s heading.
Or you can decide you’re not going to be part of it.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.
Statistics are useful. They tell us what has happened across a large group of people. They can tell us the odds.
But they don’t tell us what you are going to do.
Maybe the odds of getting into the school are small.
Maybe the statistics say men are becoming less healthy.
Maybe whatever you’re chasing has a high failure rate.
That doesn’t mean you ignore reality. It means you do the work required to give yourself the best possible chance.
Someone is going to be on the other side of that statistic.
Why not you?
And maybe more importantly, when someone you care about tells you they want to do something difficult, resist the urge to immediately tell them how unlikely it is.
Help them figure out what it would take.
Statistics describe where we’ve been. They don’t decide where we have to go.
One person. One workout. One decision at a time.
Let’s go!
