My middle child, Eamon, had a day recently.
Not just a good day. One of those rare days where everything seems to click at once.
He landed his double front flip on the trampoline – something he’s been working on for weeks.
Then, on the way home, he solved his first Rubik’s cube. Just sat there quietly, working away at it, and then held it up with the most enormous grin.
And then, to top it all off, he told me his teacher had announced they’d be doing class president speeches – and he was going for it. Which, if you know this kid, is wildly surprising in itself. As soon as we got home, he performed the speech he’d written for the whole family and I was like…
It was funny, heartfelt, completely him.
Three things. One afternoon.
I watched him at dinner, just… buzzing. Not from sugar. From himself.
And I found myself thinking about what success actually does to us. Because the thing I noticed wasn’t just that he’d had a great day. It was how he carried himself into the next one. The way success compounds. How one win doesn’t just feel good in the moment – it changes how you show up for what comes next.
It reminded me of something I notice a lot in the context of movement and exercise.
So many of the women I work with are stuck in a cycle with exercise: they set a goal, fall short, feel like they’ve failed, lose momentum, and start over. Sometimes straight away with the same plan. Sometimes not for months with a completely new one.
Either way, over time, they come to believe it says something about them. That they can’t stick to anything. That other people seem to succeed more easily. That they need to wait until x, y, z before they’ll finally be able to.
But here’s the thing. Self-efficacy (your belief in your own ability to succeed) is actually what drives motivation, not the other way around. We don’t get motivated and then feel capable. We feel capable, and then we stay motivated. Which means if we keep setting the bar at the ideal – the perfect week, the perfect routine, the perfect outcome – we’re essentially engineering a cycle of perceived failure.
And failure is not what keeps us going.
This is why I’m such a big fan of ranges over ideals when it comes to movement.
Not “I will train five times this week”; but “I will train three to five times, and three is a win.”
Not “I need to hit 10,000 steps”; but “somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000, and 7,000 counts.”
When we build real ranges into our goals (not a polished target with a consolation prize tacked on, but a genuine range where the lower end is truly good enough) we give ourselves the chance to actually succeed. Regularly. And that’s what keeps us going.