I follow several fitness gurus on social media. One of my favorites is a guy named DanielJRStretch, and here's a link to one of my favorite videos of his: Embrace the Suck

For those of you who don't want to take the time to watch the video, here's the transcript:

Did you know that wanting fast and immediate results in anything is a big sign of a huge ego and makes you a dum dum? Because anybody that's good at anything sucked at it first. And you find it hard to make consistent progress because you don't allow yourself to be bad at something long enough to get good at it. So you need to silence your ego and embrace the suck. Appreciate the journey. That is how you stop "starting and stopping" stuff.

That video is not just true for fitness. It's applicable in any area in which you're trying to learn a new skill. I see it in my Microsoft Access students all the time. People expect lightning-fast progress. They breeze through the beginner lessons or the first few expert ones, then hit the developer-level VBA, SQL, or advanced relationships and flame out. Raw talent carries you only so far. You have to let yourself sputter, fail, and spin your wheels long enough to build real momentum.

I remember in school, grades 1 through 10 came easy. In high school, I got into calculus, AP bio and physics, and realized I had never been bad at a subject. I was always a no-effort, straight-A student. Suddenly I was sucking, and it was humbling. That's when I actually had to learn how to learn.

So if you're wrestling with Access, Excel, fitness, or any other skill, silence that voice that screams "Are we there yet?" instead learn to say, "I'm not there - and that's okay." Fall down, pick yourself up, and take the next step.

This applies beyond skills too. In any walk of life - it can take years to unlearn old habits and show up differently. It doesn't happen overnight. Embrace being "slightly off" today to get better tomorrow.

And yes, the Star Trek nod is inevitable. Think about Wesley Crusher in TNG. He's often seen as a prodigy, but in the episode Coming of Age he fails the Starfleet exam the first time. Then he tries again. He doesn't just coast. He fails forward. That's real growth. That, more than genius, makes him human.

So next time you feel frustrated - fitness plateaus, debugging, relationship cycles - ask yourself: am I refusing to suck long enough to get good? Stop skipping the suck, and let the journey shape you.

LLAP
RR

P.S. And yes, when I first started learning Microsoft Access, I sucked hard. Because I was coming with the mindset of a BASIC programmer, and I didn't take the time to properly learn relational database techniques and SQL. I almost gave up and just went back to regular programming because I got frustrated, and I wasn't the kind of person who liked being frustrated. Once I embraced the suck, I got much, much better at it.