After I finished my first marathon, I didn’t celebrate for long. Instead, I thought, Well, I need to run another one—just to prove that wasn’t a fluke.

Same thing happened the first time I broke 3 hours. I trained hard, raced well, crossed the line under 3—and thought shortly thereafter, Better do it again. Just to be sure.

I do this a lot. I’m working through it. Maybe you are too.

With running. With relationships. Even with Peregrune. I’ll hit a goal —and some voice inside says, Maybe that was luck. Do it again, then we’ll talk.

Psychologist Albert Bandura might say this is about self-efficacy—our belief in our ability to succeed. When that belief is fragile, we look for external proof. We repeat accomplishments not for growth, but for reassurance. We don’t feel like a runner, founder, or leader until we’ve done it twice.

Writer Steven Pressfield from the War of Art, which I have written about before, has a name for that voice. He calls it Resistance—the force that sows doubt, second-guesses your wins, and tells you you’re not real yet. Resistance whispers: One marathon doesn’t make you a runner. One sub-3 doesn’t make you fast. One product doesn’t make you a founder.

And Carl Jung would tell us: that voice isn’t something to silence. It’s part of us. It's trying to protect something vulnerable. The path forward isn’t to ignore it, but to integrate it—to recognize it, thank it, and keep going anyway.

Because the truth is: flukes don’t happen from hard work.