Cru’s Letter
I’m sorry but you have to dig deeper…
Every person wants to quit at some point and the thing that differentiates between those that succeed and those that don’t is who listens to that desire.
The desire is irrational of course but it’s present so what exactly are you supposed to do with it?
About 4 years ago, I started posting on social media consistently.
I had been running for 1300 days straight at that point and my goal was to help people by sharing the lessons I’ve learned in my life while on my daily run.
When you start out, nobody really sees your posts (unless you’re one of those anomalies). I created a video every single day where I would share my ideas while on my run and it didn’t seem to “catch on” very quickly.
I eventually got to the point where I had posted for hundreds of days without missing and the growth was stagnant. Anybody that posts on social media knows the 1-2k views per video era where the only comments are bots saying “send me this post (fire emoji).”
I would question every single day if there was any point to keep going because nobody really cared about the work I put out. I thought, “I’m giving every ounce of my soul to these videos every single day and I’d rather just keep these messages to myself because nobody gives a shit anyway.” Each time I felt this way, I’d quickly remind myself of why I’m doing it in the first place:
To help other people and keep the promise I made to myself to be consistent in doing so.
It felt like my ideas kept getting better and better but the feedback didn’t change so you can imagine the frustration and lack of hope I experienced. I’d wonder what my options were at the time and since I knew quitting wasn’t one, here’s what was left:
Try harder.
There’s that point of peak resistance that makes anybody want to give in but I knew those were the moments where it meant the most to keep pushing.
On my 1968th day of daily running, I posted yet another running video. I mentioned some of the things I DON’T do and how I’d never want to be like the people that think I’m lame for that.
That video got 52 million views…
Within a month, I went from 7k followers to 300k followers and things changed significantly.
Now, people love to say, “all it takes is one post” and those people couldn’t be more wrong. It actually took me around 1,300 of them (posting twice a day for two years) and an even larger number of days where I simply chose to try harder.
In life, we often look for the pretty answers. The ones that feel good and make us comfortable.
Sometimes those pretty answers are real but most of the time, there’s nothing to do but give more effort.
Nobody is going to save you. Your complaints are valid but they won’t come to your rescue.
So try harder and I promise you it’ll pay off in one way or another.
-Cru
P.S. Check out my recent youtube video:
