One of the best (I’m using that word generously) late night commercials I’ve seen was for supplement for men. It asked, “Men, are you going to the gym but not seeing the gains you want?”

Of course, they are going, and of course, they are not seeing the gains they want. That’s how muscle building works.

As a marketer, I’m tuned in to advertising tactics. I find some of them funny, while others are clearly manipulative. I mostly despise ads that play on the fears of people, like security companies who suggest your home may be robbed while you and your family are sleeping. However, effective ads do get to the heart of what we feel, what we want, and understand the obstacles we face in life, and then present a solution.

This is How Ads—and Life—Work

That’s why I thought the ad above was both funny and ridiculous. As a gym goer, I tend to go around noon each day, five to six days a week. I see mostly the same people every time I go. After years of working out and seeing the same people over and over, I’ve never seen anyone look as if their muscles have doubled in size—not in the past month, past year, nor past three years.

Do you know why? It’s because it doesn’t work that way. Almost nothing in life works that way. Working out every day improves both heart and brain health, plus countless other body systems. Most people who consistently work out and live a healthy lifestyle will definitely gain muscle mass. Still, I’ve not met one guy who has said, “After all these years of working out, my biceps are big enough. I don’t want them to get too big, so I’m going to lighten the weights.”

Whatever growth you’ve had, it’s never enough. The rest of life works that way, too. Healing from sickness, recovery, and growth in anything are so slow. It’s so slow, it can be discouraging, frustrating, even infuriating. It’s human nature: we want the progress to be fast, and fast enough to notice it.

Long Trips are So... Long

My wife and I lived in Miami, Florida when we were in our early 20s. We made the road trip to Ohio countless times, since flying was out of the question in our newly married financial state. We drove six hours just to get out of Florida. Then, we had to drive through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. Once we finally reached the Ohio border, we had another three hours of driving to reach northeast Ohio. That trip took forever, even speeding.

On road trips with that many miles, one city starts to look like another. The stretches of highway between major cities can be hypnotizing. On the right there are trees, warehouses, and billboards with fast food ads. In the median, it’s just grass and the occasional No U-Turn Sign. On the left, trees, fields, seemingly nothing, and then, more of nothing… for miles at a time.

When you live with chronic health conditions, it can feel like one of those road trips. Healing and growth take forever, and you don’t always see progress. You can feel stuck, even if you’ve improved.

You're Crushing It!

I’m in much better physical shape today, I hope, than I was 10 years ago. I’m sure I’ve made progress as far as the amount of weight I lift, but that has happened slowly, and in tiny increments. Did I mention those increments were tiny? No one doubles the amount of weight they lift from one month to the next.

Invisible Progress

I’ve been through rounds of occupational therapy and neurological physical therapy. Those therapies are for movement disorders I have as a result of cardiac arrest and anoxic brain injury. Some therapies feel very challenging. Others seem so easy you’d wonder if they are at all helpful, but they are.

Some of the tasks I’ve been given as therapy have included walking on a treadmill while watching a video of people walking in Times Square. That makes you dizzy, and it’s to increase tolerance to things that cause dizziness. Another task is walking with a one pound ball, looking left to right, up and down, top right to lower left, top left to lower right, all while switching which hand carries the ball. Another is carrying a small glass of water in a styrofoam cup and being timed how quickly I make it from point A to point B.

These things are intended to help with balance, coordination, and other things. Believe it or not, they actually result in improvement. What’s not so difficult to believe is that when I’m in therapy, I see no progress whatsoever. Like, none. It’s only during a scheduled assessment where I am scored by the second do I see that I’ve actually improved. It felt good to hear my therapist say during one of those assessments, “You’re crushing it!”

I was? I appreciated hearing that because I didn’t think I improved at all. I didn’t realize I needed an objective third party to show me numbers and let me know I wasn’t just making progress, I had come a long way.

I work really hard at all the tasks I’ve been given by doctors and therapists. Yet, I frequently feel like I’m failing because I tend to be an overachiever. I don’t know what you face, but I bet you don’t give yourself enough credit for grit, consistency, and pushing yourself. It changes the story when someone else can point to where you were, where you’re at, and where it looks like you’re headed.

Slow, Not Stopped

Just like a trip from Miami to northeast Ohio takes forever, eventually you get there. Miles and miles—hundreds of miles—that look the same aren’t actually the same place. What can feel like a standstill, or a crawl, is real progress.

Growth feels like a crawl, but do yourself a favor and look back every once in a while. You’ll see that you’ve come farther than you imagined.

You just might be crushing it!