Faith is essential to accomplish anything of value. We have to believe that whatever we are trying to do is possible. It could be said the level of your faith needs to match the level or your goals and dreams. That is true to a degree. Some days though we might not need that much faith to achieve our goals.
Faith is a tide that rises and falls. Some days it is there at the ready. Other days it must be summoned from deep within. The days where faith must be summoned can be very hard. When having to summon faith we can remember we only need to summon five pounds of faith.
What is five pounds of faith? Well five pounds comes from my days lifting weights. Five pounds is the smallest increment you can add to a bar and progress in most gyms. If you added five pounds to the bar, well then you progressed. That is the faith that time and time again I had to summon. I had to summon the faith to be a little better. I knew what I could do last time, I needed to find the faith of five more pounds. That is the kind of faith we often need to summon, and it’s not really a ton of faith when you think about it.
The faith of five pounds is just about doing a little more. We often know what we have done, so finding the belief to just do one unit more isn’t that hard. That is all that is needed on the hard days. Just enough faith to make the smallest of progress. If we can do that most days, then our momentum becomes unstoppable. We must only find the faith to try and commit to a little more.
The faith to try a little more is a small amount. In the gym I knew that five more pounds wasn’t likely to make an exercise dangerous or crazy. I only had to have the faith to try a little more risk. The same holds true in many areas of our lives. We just need a little more faith day after day to try a little more.
The faith to try is about a lot of things. It is a belief that you can probably do a little more. It is about the belief in the end that you will be ok if you fail at what you’re doing. Almost all the time in our lives, things will turn out ok in the long term. If you can believe that, then you can believe enough to do five more pounds. This faith is about believing in the path you are on. If you are on the right path you will find the way forward. All you need is the smallest amount of faith.
This fits so well in the gym, and everywhere else in life. Finding our faith every day, and just going a little deeper down the rabbit hole is what we do. That is where we find success. When we waver, we need only ask if we have the faith of five pounds. Five pounds isn’t much. Compounding five pounds of faith over time, that is the path to victory.