It’s common in the health/wellness world to hear about a 90-day timeline for progress.
If you want a stronger, fitter body, you stay consistent with a 90 day training plan.
If you’re trying to succeed with fat loss, you work a 90-day nutrition/training program.
Many coaches (myself included for my online clients) may offer services with a 90 day minimum commitment.
The goal being: that you can develop a foundation of trends and patterns to plot a path towards success.
The funny thing is, there’s nothing magical about 90 days.
Within the research of forming habits, you can form habits in less time and sometimes it takes much longer than 90 days for a habit to stick.
However, 90 days is a measurable and realistic timeline for most people to envision, rationalize, and plan for.
I recently invested in a 90 day program myself. This one is aimed at social media growth specifically for Instagram.
I’ve been spending the last couple of years consistently posting content on Instagram and have been trying to learn and navigate the ever-changing algorithms and understand how I can best serve my followers and position my online services.
That being said, I’m no expert and while I never have a shortage of content ideas, that doesn’t mean that I’m posting the right content for the platform.
So, just as any of my clients might hire me for coaching strength training or nutrition, I knew when I was out of my depth and it was time to learn more for myself.
What I find interesting is that many of the same tics of human nature in fat loss and exercise are also in social media growth.
You see, I’m in a group coaching program and many of my fellow colleagues are also service providers. Some are just getting started and have very few followers. Some are more tenured and experienced and have many more followers but are trying to scale higher.
Our leader has grown her platform by leaps and bounds and we’re all following her guidance to see what works best for us.
And, as you can appreciate, we’ve all been asked to embark on a 90-day reels challenge.
In other words, we have to post a reel a day for 90 days and continue to tweak the way the message is delivered to see what resonates with our audience, our avatar, and our communication styles.
It’s still in its early stages (we’re not even two weeks in) and you can sense the frustration, impatience, and wonder that happens when things work as expected, worse than expected, and when nothing makes sense at all.
Suffice to say, we don’t have control over how the algorithm operates. We only have control over our consistency and how we deliver our message.
Our fearless leader reminds us to stay focused on the goal, don’t get too caught up in the numbers, and be patient!
Sound familiar?
Fat loss is not much different.
You can be doing all the right things and the scale will go up.
You can take a dietary detour and shockingly, the scale might go down.
Fat loss is one area (and not exclusively) where effort doesn’t always equate to desired results…but you have to put forth the effort anyway.
And my 90 day experiment is similar.
It’s easy to be impatient. It’s easy to doubt the process. It’s easy to want instant gratification.
But there are too many variables that are out of my control.
What I can do: is learn the trends, craft better hooks, be attuned to my audience, engage where I can, improve on my communication skills and be genuinely myself.
If you’re struggling with your plan, there’s a lesson here for you too.
Stay consistent, stay curious, change what you need, be patient, control what you can, and stay the course.
We’re all trying to improve what we can in our personal and professional lives. Don’t get too lost in the minutiae that you forget about the big picture.
And if you want to watch my 90 day journey, you can find me at: jasonleenaarts
(Photo courtesy of Paul Engel)
