Setting the bar low

One of the problems with being mediocre is the creativity one must employ to maintain a modicum of self respect.

The technique I employ is universally known as "setting the bar low." The bar, of course, refers to something like a high-jump bar, measuring stick one must jump over in order to be successful. Setting it low implies that it's easier to get over. But what if the bar is on the ground, and you still have trouble getting over it? Maybe you catch a toe and trip on your face. You might have still made it over, but the cost of a broken nose and lying in pain in the dirt is high.

That's when you have to start finding new ways of easing your way across the bar. Perhaps you dig a little trench in which the bar can lay, below the surface. Perhaps you have to build a little ramp. It's not easy finding new ways to find the new low highs.

I've been running on the Rib Mountain trails as my hard workout for about a month now. I don't know how far I run, and I don't time them. So setting the bar low is difficult. Often the goal setting comes on the fly: Run, or approximate running by not walking, to that tree there, I'll tell myself. Or, If you make it through that area of rocks without falling and splitting your head open, you've won.

Yesterday, I set the bar a little bit higher. Even I have a squinch of pride which forces me to "progress" in my workouts. So I decided that I would run to the top of the hill without stopping.

Here's how I set the bar low, however. The "top" really isn't the top. It's a juncture in the trails at which there is a bench. One branch of trail leads to the "park" part of the Park, another branch circles around the hill, back to the parking area. I consider this intersection the top, even though going both other ways requires quite a bit more climbing.

See what I've done there? I've changed the meaning of success. The top has been redefined to make it seem like I'm doing more than I'm actually doing. This technique is used by marketers and politicians the world over. It's not lying. It's "a strategy of repositioning success."

And running isn't really running at all. It's a slow sort of climbing one does on a long set of stairs. Toward the end, it's really more like stumbling forward and catching yourself time and again. But it's not walking, either, which probably would be faster.

I have to say, in this "repositioning of success," I was brilliant yesterday. I slogged up the hill without stopping, although I've probably even redefined "stopping" in this particular instance. I might have even gone backwards at one point. But I never really quit, not even when my "pulmonary toilet" began to flush two-thirds the way up the hill.