Every Monday, we send out a short Daily Chase essay built off an idea we’ve explored in our most recent episode — a single thought or idea worth starting your day with.
If you’d like to read more of these, you can find them here.
Most of us understand what physical training looks like.
You show up. You do the work. You do it again tomorrow. Over years, the body adapts.
Annie Thorisdottir spent 15 seasons doing exactly that at the CrossFit Games — training rope climbs, snatches, and everything in between until her body could do things most people’s never will.
But according to our friend Christine Bald, who spent five years co-writing Annie’s biography, that’s not actually what made Annie who she is. The whole time, Annie was training something else with the same discipline: her character.
Every time Annie asked for help instead of white-knuckling it alone — that’s a rep. Every time she responded to a setback with action instead of excuses — rep. Every time she celebrated a younger athlete’s success instead of feeling threatened by it — rep. Every time she stayed curious enough, in her 15th season, to keep learning something new — rep.
These reps didn’t feel like training. They felt like ordinary moments. But they compounded.
The Annie who shows up on the podium — calm under pressure, generous in success, resilient after failure — wasn’t assembled there. She was built in a thousand quiet moments nobody saw, long before anyone was watching.
We don’t become who we are in the big moments. We become who we are in the small ones, and then we find out who that is when the big moment arrives.
So the question isn’t whether your character is in good shape. It’s whether you’re training it — the way Annie did, one unremarkable rep at a time.
Show up for the ordinary moments until they create extraordinary ones.
That’s the work.
