The Humility to Aim Low: A Powerful Technique That Works in All Times of Your Life

What is the most asked question on Q&A portions of interviews or on google searches? How do I get started…? The answer is probably different than the massive effort you think it takes.

Humility should not be confused with little think. It's often the tool that can take you along the furthest journey and through any obstacle you face.

It's the humility to aim low and not be above making tiny changes and improvements.

Think of it in terms of bike gears. There's a reason many road bikes have sometimes over 30 gears. It's because the increments are small to get on the right pace for your ride.

Or think of it in terms of the rungs of a ladder like the image above.

You can also think of it in context of the gym.

Say you go to the gym and you can only bench press the bar (45lbs).

You do 3 sets of 10 reps Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Back in the corner of the gym where nobody goes, you find that they have 2.5lb doughnut weights that go on the bar.

Each week on Monday, you add a 2.5lb doughnut weight on each side, raising how much you lift each week by 5 lbs. You aim low.

Benching 225 in bench press is often considered a respectable bench press amount. If you start off with a 45lb bench press, that seems like an impossible task and one that you yourself could never reach.

Instead of this, you embrace humility. People may look at you in judgement for the low weights you are lifting and stare or laugh to their friends, but that's not your focus. Your focus is the 5 lbs of improvement you're making each week. You feel the gratitude of the strength that you have gained and the progress from where you started.

Week 4 passes by, you're still only lifting 65 lbs but you choose to look at how you've gained 15 lbs on your bench press. This is a 33% increase in a month!

Week 11, you just hit a 100 lb bench press!

Week Week 21, 150 lbs

Week 31, 200 lbs. People's looks now turn from judgement to respect

Week 40, you just achieved double barrels. A 225 bench press. People start to ask you for advice on how they can get strong too.

When I first started bench press, a failed to do one rep of 135 lbs. At my strongest, I was able to bench press 365 lbs four years later.

So we see the benefits that small steps of improvement can make, but what are the benefits we don’t see?

For one, it’s a universal law of success. If you keep making steps towards something and never stop, you’ll get there in time.

Secondly, with tiny improvements, we can hit these goals and reward ourselves with each improvement. People who go for bigger jumps like try to increase their bench press 20 lbs in a week will often fail. Then they try again and fail again. Some can push through this and actually get stronger this way. However, most end up changing exercises with so many frustrations. Also with huge added increases requires much more will power. There’s a much bigger weight to go get off the couch and to the gym when you know a workout means that you must push yourself to the extreme. On rough days, you can say “Yeah, I feel terrible today, but it’s only 5 more lbs” and get yourself there. If you’ve ever gone to the gym, you know how one missed workout can turn into two weeks or longer when you break routine. Two weeks is enough to get you out of shape and then have to restart. That decline in improvement often crushes people.

Thirdly, the technique of aiming low is so simple of a concept, that almost no one teaches it. They attach themselves to their false ego of thinking they have to have massive effort to succeed. When you know the truth of humility and aiming low, you can teach it to others as well.

Fourthly, your sense of self accomplishment improves drastically and your identity about what you can do in life changes. This technique can be applied to anything in life.

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