As I was strength training, I learned about the concept of progressive overload and realised how it applies to life more generally.

In the gym, when you’re at the rack choosing your weights, you can reach for something comfortable or for a heavier weight you haven’t tried before.

Once you understand the concept, you know that if you want to get stronger over time, choosing the heavier weight makes sense.

Even when I’ve practised an exercise for a while and know I should be ready, I sometimes still find myself reaching for the lighter one.

I tell myself, “This is fine,” or, “What’s the point of pushing today?”

Of course, there are times when there is a legitimate reason to go lighter. If I’m running on too little sleep, on my period, or it’s a deload week, I prefer to push less.

What I’ve realised, being honest with myself, is that underneath that is fear.

Not of the weight itself, but of picking it up and not being able to handle it, and then making that mean something about me.

Hence the comfort of staying with what I know I can do so I stay with what I know I can do. The set gets done and I still walk out feeling good about myself.

But as I didn’t really push myself, the muscle doesn’t grow from that session the way it could have.

Progressive overload works because your body adapts to what you actually demand of it, not what you’re comfortable with.

That’s essentially how growth works.

Growth happens right at the edge of what you can currently do. Once our body gets used to the same weight, it adapts and the muscle no longer grows.

If you lift the exact same weight for the same number of reps every workout, your body adapts and no longer experiences the stimulus needed for growth.

Progressive overload forces the body to keep adapting by continuously increasing the stress. Studies show that the body’s natural response to survival is to rebuild the muscle stronger than it was before to handle the stress more easily next time.

I think about this a lot outside the gym too.

How often “this is fine” is what I say when I’m really just scared of what it would mean to try something harder and fall short.

It might be a difficult conversation I keep finding reasons to delay. Or something new I’m interested in learning but haven’t committed to, because it means confronting not being good at it at the start.

This is what Directional Drift looks like in practice – just staying comfortable long enough that your current actions do not actually take you to where you want to go.

But every time I’ve actually moved forward and progressed on something – at work, in how I think about myself, in relationships – there was always a version of picking up the heavier weight.

It was just uncomfortable enough that I almost didn’t do it. But when I do, that’s when something actually changes and I’m much prouder of myself for at least showing up and trying.

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