One of the more frustrating things you’ll encounter as you’re trying to improve any aspect of your life is how much motivation will ebb and flow, how often you’ll feel uninspired to do the work, and how easy it will be to talk yourself out of making progress.
And that’s because nothing about progress is linear.
It’s messy.
Progress, whether financial, physical, or mental gets stuck, loses ground and picks up steam again.
And that’s assuming that you stay committed to it.
I look back through the history of the majority of my clients, and motivation tends to start strong.
A few weeks later, people get stuck.
They realize, often the hard way, that the road between here and their goals is going to be marked with more potholes, detours, and dead ends than they expected.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t get where you want to go, it means you need a better plan for when things go wrong.
Expect to not be motivated every day and have a strategy for what you still call a win.
Expect to not be the poster child for disciplined effort but have a plan to remind yourself why you are your number one priority.
If you find that you can stick to your diet for only three out of seven days in a week, look at the areas you’re getting stuck and see how you can improve them. You don’t need a 180 degree turn, you need to pivot about 10-20 degrees and stay there.
The clients I’ve worked with who have been with me the longest, and have seen the best results, have chaotic schedules, they’re raising children, they’re working, their diets aren’t laser focused, they don’t hit personal bests every time they hit the gym, and they still fall victim to negative self talk.
Which means, they’re a lot like you.
Stop chasing perfection and then giving up when you don’t string 14 perfect days together.
Just aim for better.
If you slip up, learn how to improve.
Some people like hearing numbers to help them focus on improvement, 1% better, 10% better, etc.
I personally like how Maya Angelou said it: when you know better, do better.
It’s not always about the numbers.
It’s about being able to look in the mirror, taking honest inventory and telling yourself that you did better than last week, last month, or last year.
Most importantly, don’t ever, ever, give up, because no one can do the work on you, but you.
And that’s the hardest and most valuable work of all.
