Improvements don’t come in a steady incline

“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

How many times have you heard this, after spending 10 minutes explaining that you’re finding something difficult? I’m guessing a fair few. Although it may not seem supportive, nor helpful, our audience are conveying a very simple and important message.

Change is difficult, get used to it.

We as humans have the irrational belief that the process of improvement is linear. Deciding what you want to improve is the start point, improving in that area is the end point, with a steady rising gradient connecting the two. It’s a lovely fairytale, but it’s looking upon the issue with rose-tinted glasses. 

Your road to improvement - no matter how large or small - comes with peaks and troughs. 

Lets take an example; building muscle. 

Most lads (aged 18-30) will initiate the idea of going to the gym in the hope that they can ‘get hench/swole/big/etc’. The concept usually derives from some minor ribbing off their friends, or even glancing at the cover of one of the popular fitness magazines. They see, they want, they ‘commit’. 

Fast-forward 3-6 months… 

The majority of our fledgling Mr Olympias have hung up their lifting belts, and slumped right back into their old habits - but why?

These guys saw what they wanted and assumed it was an upward trajectory from the second they walked onto the gym floor. They thought that all they had to do was pick up heavy shit like the rest of the meathead bodybuilders, and they’d be big in no time. 

Well, weren’t they disappointed. 

Their intentions were positive, but their expectations were not. The men you see on the front of those magazines have spent the majority of their time on this earth living the fitness model lifestyle. 

They spend 2-3 hours in the gym, 7 days a week. 

They eat a ridiculously low amount, regardless of the time of year.

They skip out on enjoying social occasions and birthdays, fearing their body will turn to mush overnight. 

These guys commit; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get that physique, and you were expecting to smash it out in 3 months? 

So expectations were high, surely as humans we have the capabilities to realign our forecast with reality, and continue to progress regardless? 

Possibly, but unlikely. 

Imagine jumping on a bronco whilst under the impression that it enjoys being ridden, and inevitably (at least to everyone else) being launched 6ft into the air and crashing to the ground. Would you re-saddle without question?

So, now we’ve crashed back down to earth, with our expectations looking like they’ve gone through the set of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, how about we tackle the whys?

Let’s go back to our previous example; why can’t any old person just walk into the gym, pick stuff up and eventually gain muscle?

They can, with emphasis on the word ‘eventually’.

Most believe that if your form is correct and you lift ‘heavy’ weight frequently, you’ll achieve your goal. Even though this belief has the basics covered, there’s a whole world of variables that are left in the cold. Namely; protein intake, sleep, nutrition, stress, anxiety, individual pain threshold, individual perceived levels of exertion, water intake, illness, diseases, age of individual, hormonal imbalance, injuries, handicaps, calorie intake, etc. Some of these things we can control, others not so much. 

These factors vary and fluctuate from day-to-day, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute. It all boils down to something I like to call, indirect variability. 

How on earth could our gradient of improvement remain stable, when all these inconsistencies are at play? 

In fact, I would go as far as to call it a miracle if you managed to go 6 weeks with consistent improvements, never mind 6 months. 

So instead of entering the world of self-improvement with your eyes shut, start by accepting the unavoidable negatives as par for the course. 

You will have moments where you feel like you’ve regressed.

You will have negative thoughts and emotions about your progress.

You will go to bed some nights feeling like you’ve failed.

You will feel like quitting… a lot.

All of this is part and parcel of self-development and it’s not only normal, it’s inescapable.

Difficult, stressful and mentally draining times, are what help our minds grow, adapt and prosper. Bad days are what put the successes into perspective. They give us a memory to look back on, when we finally achieve what we set out to do. They don’t feel like gifts at the time, but it’s exactly what they are. 

After all; how would we know what a good day was, if that’s all that we lived?

Loving the process

Have you ever wondered why the fulfilment you feel after reaching a target is so short-lived?

It doesn’t matter; how big an achievement is, how long it’s taken to get there or how much you’ve sacrificed to be successful, the satisfaction post-completion is always short-term. 

Why is that? 

The fact is that the vast majority of people who realise a long-term ambition, respond with more negative emotions than positive. It’s as if the structure they have built into everyday life is filling a void which only becomes clear after the need for it has been removed.

How do we avoid this?

Most people tend to jump straight into their next goal. However, I believe that a person that jumps from one achievement to the next is stuck on a road to short-term happiness. They spend so much time looking to the future, that they don’t stop to think about the here and now.

What makes me think this? This was me in a nutshell. 

I’d say that I’ve spent around 95% of my life thinking about the future and what it might hold, never appreciating what I had in the present. This isn’t me shitting on future-proofing yourself - that’s just smart life-admin - but I don’t believe for a second that the happiest people in the world are the one’s who think with the (what I like to call) ‘I’ll be happy when’ mindset.

This mindset encapsulates the exact type of person I was describing. They set a target, achieve it, indulge in short-term feelings of gratification and move on to the next thing. Sure, they’re experiencing so many things in their lives that others could only dream of, but are they really learning and gaining enjoyment from those experiences?

Most tend to see achievement as a process of hard work over a stretch of time, in a bid to achieve something that will improve their life. Though this is sort of true, it describes a direct outcome for your time and effort, but mentions nothing about the indirect outcomes. I believe the experience gained whilst attaining a goal is what people are overlooking in their search for higher levels of fulfilment. 

You don’t enjoy whatever hobbies float your boat for the outcome, you enjoy them for the process. Even though your mind is excited at the prospect of being able to complete the task, the act of engaging with the activity’s intricacies is what really ramps up your enthusiasm for doing it.

Think about it like this:

You and your friend love badminton, and get together to play each other every Tuesday. How unsatisfying would Tuesday's badminton session become, if your mate turned up, admitted you were the superior player and crowned you as victorious?

It doesn’t matter if we’re discussing your life’s hobbies or your life’s ambitions. We have to gain enjoyment and experience from the everyday grind, or the outcome will be worth nothing. To learn from your achievements and gain positive long-lasting experience from each one, you must be fulfilled by the process.

Between the years of 1992 and 1997, one name reigned supreme across the world of bodybuilding - Dorian Yates. Yates won the international bodybuilding competition ‘Mr. Olympia’ for 6 consecutive years, placing himself as the 5th most successful winner of all time. Yates became synonymous for removing himself from the public eye during the off-season and waltzing straight to the top of the podium on show day, earning himself the nickname of ‘The Shadow’.

But what’s Dorian Yates got to do with anything?

Yates is the absolute personification of loving the process. 

Bodybuilders are some of the most vain, narcissistic and self-obsessed sportspeople in the world. However, Yates was different. As his nickname suggests, he wasn’t in it for the admiration. He would rock up to a contest dressed in a baggy hoody and sweatpants, whip his kit off for the judges, smile/tense, get handed his winner’s trophy and slip off back into the darkness. In fact, Dorian has suggested that posing for pictures on contest day, wasn’t where he found his enjoyment for the sport. He found it his preparation. Contest day wasn’t where Yates found his competition, he found it on the gym floor. 

Like Dorian, we should be aiming to seek out the knowledge and experiences that our process presents. Without taking stock of our short-term improvements, we are destined to live a life of transient episodic happiness. 

If you feel like you don’t love the day-to-day slog of whatever you’re doing, I’d question whether the outcome will ever be worth it. Though for arguments sake, let’s say it is - who cares? 

Much like Yates himself, that feeling will disappear into the darkness by the time the champagne cork hits the ceiling. 

The fear of failure

When living in a society built on comparison, it is difficult to escape an overbearing feeling of inadequacy. Achieving at a lesser rate forces us to believe that we are somehow inferior to others, and unable to reach similar heights. Whether it’s through a lack of ‘essential’ commodities or god-given talent, consistency in the face of your apparent deficiencies feels inconceivable. However, just because these deficiencies exist, does not mean they are an impenetrable blockade.

In her book ‘Mindset’, Professor of Psychology Carol Dweck discusses two opposing mindsets that dominate the human race - Fixed vs Growth. 

A fixed mindset tends to be employed by individuals who live in the belief, that applying effort to achieve their goals highlights their deficiencies. Meaning their potential achievements are either postponed or abandoned through fear of uncovering that ‘weakness’. 

A growth mindset is often utilised by those who see failure as a means to learn and improve. By treating failure as an inevitability, they lack the preoccupation of weakness and therefore have a much greater potential for success.

The problem is that the anxiety that comes with failure doesn’t descend from self-judgement, but from the judgement of others. If we allow the opinions of others to dictate our actions, we fall into the trap of treating failure as a trait rather than an outcome. Accepting other’s opinions as beliefs rather than realities, decreases the influence they hold over your decisions, and therefore reduces the likelihood of surrendering to the fixed mindset.

In a 1999 New York Times article, Cultural Historian Scott Sandage called attention to the progressive change in our views on failure.

“Failure has been transformed from an action to an identity.”

Sandage’s research shows that the meaning of the word ‘failure’ has gradually mutated from an act into a flaw. The alteration itself has been drawn out over so many years that few had noticed it’s detrimental effects, not only on the amount of people willing to fail, but the amount of people willing to risk.

Lauded visionaries of today are held aloft as shining examples of success, yet there is little mention of the failures they endured to achieve it. Do you think that Apple Inc. was created in 1976 and has been continually successful to this day? How about Microsoft Corporation in 1975? Sony Corporation in 1946?

Various failures in protection of customer data, along with financial debacles such as; Sony’s 9 year stint of Bravia TV seeing losses of £4.6 billion, Microsoft’s $6 billion bath on the purchase of aQuantive in 2007 and Apple Inc’s $450 billion drop in market value in the first quarter of this year, say otherwise.

The average person has none of this on the line. No money. No employees. Their decisions have virtually no impact on the lives of others. Yet that fear is still present. Not only is it still present, but it’s debilitating. 

So, how do we stop this freight train of uncertainty? 

Just because you currently align yourself with the fixed mindset, doesn’t mean that this cannot be consciously altered. In her book, Professor Dweck goes on to discuss the changes people can make to help adjust their mindset.

The studies that Professor Dweck presents, show a remarkable change in the responses of subjects from minor tweaks to their prospective. Opting for more challenging tasks, aiming for improvement rather than achievement and praising effort over talent, all had positive effects on the participant’s ability to accept failure as part of the process. You would be forgiven at this point for thinking that this all sounds a little too easy - where’s the catch?

The catch is that it isn’t easy at all. Forcing your mind to think in a completely different way will not happen overnight. It may take a large amount of time and effort to realign your habitual tendencies with your new ethos. 

However, as long as we battle our natural urge to fallback into our previous disposition, we can begin to change the way we view our short-comings and start to progress instead of capitulate.

I hope after reading this that you have become more aware of how and why we tend to ‘play it safe’ sometimes. At the end of the day fear is completely natural, but we can’t let it dictate our actions and future. The daily battles you have with your conscience don’t stem from a flaw in your character, but a flaw in the thinking of humanity. We are adverse to risk not because we ‘aren’t wired right’, but because of a defective viewpoint in mankind. We don’t fear failure through judgement of ourselves, but through the disparaging eyes of others.

Once you accept these ideas and build a resilience to their effects, you will have a much better opportunity of leading the life you wish to live. After all, the definition of failure isn’t down the opinion of others, it’s down to you. 

Control the controllables

Some of you are living a chaotic existence; paying bills late, forgetting birthdays, neglecting relatives, all transparent symptoms of a disordered lifestyle. Relinquishing the control that you once had over these elements doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the eventual outcome of allowing your list of responsibilities to grow, whilst doing nothing to enhance your mind’s abilities to cope with that demand. 

Everyone has responsibilities and they all require a certain amount of care, consideration and attention. However with so many plates to juggle, how can we possibly stay on top of them all?

First of all, you have to accept that you are not a robot. You are going to forget things, neglect relationships and put your needs before the needs of others. These are facts of life. Once we have accepted this, we can begin to find ways of maximising the amount of control we can have.

What would you think if I said I could significantly reduce your stress levels, just by getting you to write out a daily ‘to do list’?

I’d imagine something along the lines of:

“Check this joker. He reckons he can sort my life out by getting me to write a fucking list.”

Utilising lists will not directly impact the amount of responsibilities you have. However, clearing your mind of less important tasks can alleviate some of the pressures we place on ourselves. Gaining control over your responsibilities isn’t as simple as just remembering them. It’s being able to prioritise and manage your time effectively. Once your mind has been cleared of the inconsequentials, you can begin to home in on what has eluded you thus far.

So, how does this look in real life?

Instead of attempting to cram as much information into your brain as possible, and run around like a headless chicken trying to remember it all, we’re going to list what needs to be done in the order we need to do it. 

Eg:

1. Walk the dog
2. Go food shopping
3. Pick up dry cleaning
4. Kids party @12
5. Visit Grandma
6. Clean the house
7. Sort your tax return
8. Iron clothes for the evening
9. Pick up kids @5
10. Bath the kids
11. Get ready
12. Go out with partner @8

This might seem simple. Why would you need a list to remember your plan for the day? 

As a one off, this would make zero difference in how you cope with the pressures of life. However if you had to remember all of this whilst looking after the kids, working full time, holding down a romantic relationship and fielding calls from relatives insisting they’ve not ‘heard from you in a while’, I guarantee your tone would change. 

This is the elephant in the room when trying to understand how you got to this stage. It’s not the amount of time that these inconsequential additions take up, it’s that the additions keep coming. This is why you constantly feel confused by your seemed lack of ability in distributing your time effectively. It’s not because you can’t cope with the tasks themselves, it’s because you can’t cope with the volume.

Imagine your responsibilities sit on a scale of pressure. To feel the gratification that comes with being in control, your scale must remain in balance. The more responsibilities you have, the more pressure you apply, the more imbalanced your scale becomes. Once your mind reaches capacity, it will be forced to remove anything it can to realign the scale (and you thought that being forgetful was a trait not a choice).

Side note: This is also the reason why people who have very few pressures in their life, have an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. They lack pressure, therefore lack control. The scale works both ways. 

The satisfaction your mind craves is from control. To provide the best conditions for this concept to become reality, you must implement a manual removal of all unnecessary pressures. If something monotonous needs to be done, write it down. Remove the basics and allow yourself to prioritise and manage yourself in a way that provides you with that control. 

If you don’t, your lifestyle will remain in anarchy. 

You do you

We’ve all heard this before, right? Mostly from Fiat 500 driving, self empowered young women on the majority of social media platforms. It tends to be hollered as a form of superficial quip, gesticulating support for a close friend’s actions or decisions. But let’s side step that particular landmine for now, and focus on the words themselves.

You do you. It could be taken a number of ways. 

To concentrate on ones own progress, instead of the progress of others?

To look after your self interests because if you don’t, who will?

To promote self worth in an otherwise under appreciated individual?

I’m sure there’s plenty of other meanings, but we’re going to stick to one in particular.

Concentrate on solving your own issues, not the issues of others

Have you ever done something just to please someone else? I don’t mean offering to take the bins out, or buying a gift for your better half. I mean dropping all of your wants, all of your needs, all of your desires, just to make someone else happy? I’m guessing the majority of you have (even if it was just the once). Let’s visit that feeling for a second. 

How did it go for you? 

Did you get pleasure out of it? 

Did it make your life better?

Fuck, did it even make that person happy? 

At best, it may have brought that person a short-lived feeling of gratitude or relief that they no longer had to face this particular problem. Do you know why this is short lived, and can even sometimes feel under appreciated? 

It’s because you dropping everything you believe in to please someone else, not only doesn’t make any sense to you (now that you’re sat there thinking about it), but it doesn’t make any sense to the person you’re doing it for either. 

Allow me to explain.

Creatures who crave problem solving

Here I’m going to lay the groundwork for the processes that one can go through when attempting to take responsibility for the actions/decisions of others - especially in terms of problem solving. 

Example: You get some flatpack coffee table/sideboard bullshit from Ikea. What’s the first thing you do, when all the pieces are laid out in front of you? You throw the instructions to the side, and have a crack at putting it together. Sure, following the instructions of how to build this particular Swedish jigsaw would save you time, and make your life a whole lot easier. Still, it’s just not the same, is it?

Let’s relate this to something a little closer to home than Scandinavian furniture. You come across a problem in your personal life. Perhaps it feels like your boss is singling you out for criticism. Perhaps your best friend has bailed on some plans that you were really looking forward to. Perhaps, despite studying relatively hard, you still failed a recent exam. What is the first thing you do when confronted with these or similar issues? 

Whether it is conscious or not, your mind will attempt to solve the riddle, and come to a conclusion on what the next course of action should be. 

Side note : Not all people are like this. Some may cast aside any responsibility for their problems as soon as they encounter them. People you and I would refer to as, narcissists. We’ve all met them. Those people who believe themselves to be above the inconveniences of the rest of the world. People who proceed to funnel all of their problems downstream, for someone with less self-privilege to fix. Although this post isn’t about narcissists, I will say this:

Identify and remove these people from your life. No explanations, no apologies. 

These people are happiness vacuums, ready to suffocate everyone they come into contact with, 

and should be avoided without exception.   

But, let’s assume for now that we’re not narcissistic in nature, and possess the natural urge to fix our own problems. 

What happens when our mind comes back empty? If you can’t ‘do you’, what is the solution? 

You may ask a close friend or relative for their assistance. You may seek out answers from your preferred search engine. You may even throw caution to the wind, and write in to one of the many ‘help me, my life is fucked’ columns in your chosen tabloid newspaper/magazine. There are correlations with these reactions, but what is it?

Despite the fact that you’re asking for a helping hand, you are NOT asking for your problems to be fixed for you. You still want to ‘do you’, but now require a small amount of assistance. 

This is the part where the respondent (henceforth known as the facilitator) has a decision to make. They either attempt to guide you (the troubled) onto the path they may have chosen, therefore narrowing your options in terms of appropriate actions to rectify your issue. Or, they fix the problem for you. 

When choosing the latter, a never ending cycle of relationship DIY begins. The facilitator feels the urge to service the troubled in a bid to alter their happiness. I call this, ‘The Hero Effect’. This effect provides the foundation for the majority of unhealthy relationships, and is a key driver toward the amount of progress an individual will make. In other words;

How can ‘you do you’ when you are expending all of your energy on the problems of others, and how can they do them when you are relieving them of that responsibility. 

The Hero Effect

A feeling of satisfaction that an individual achieves by solving the problems/issues of someone close to them.

The Hero Effect is detrimental for a number of reasons:

1. The facilitator is failing to allow the troubled to satisfy their urge to problem solve. This will cause the troubled to feel unconsciously dissatisfied.

2. Whilst enabling the needs of the troubled, the facilitator’s issues will go unsolved. This will result in a negative headspace for the facilitator, forcing him/her to look for an escape from that negativity.

3. Upon resolving the issue offered up by the troubled, the facilitator will feel short term satisfaction. This will trigger a recycling of past behaviours in a bid to relive that fleeting feeling. Not only does this continue the facilitator’s cycle of distraction, it also provides the escape from their self-constructed cell of negativity.

4. Over a period of time, the facilitator’s plights will reach capacity. Not only will the action required to begin solving their issues feel monumental, but they will most likely be on the brink of clinical depression. This forces the facilitator further into the distraction cycle, in the hope that contributing to someone else’s happiness will fulfil their own.

As you can see, ‘You do you’ is an extremely difficult motto to live by when you expend all of your time, effort and energy on the problems of another. But not only that, the word cycle infers exactly the reason why these behaviours lead to clinical depression - it’s continuous.

Scenario

Boy gets mad because he has a problem.

Girl feels responsible for the happiness of the boy.

Girl then goes out of her way to fix the problem for the boy.

Girl fixes the problem and feels relieved that the boy is now ‘happy’. 

Boy comes across next problem.

Repeat.

That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to this particular behavioural flaw. The fact that you’re putting someone else’s happiness before your own is merely the tip of the iceberg. The submerged-portion is that once you solve/fix/remove that first problem, you’re already staring into the eyes of the next.

In his book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life’, author Mark Manson states:

"Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another."

So not only are you spiralling into a pit of misery - feeling like your life and aspirations are going down the tube - but the person who’s happiness you put before your own is producing problems on mass. This results in you working 24 hour shifts in their factory of meaningless servitude, hoping you’ll be able to put food (the endorphins transmitted through satisfaction) on the table (the neurons in which the endorphins are transmitted). 

Help me, my life is fucked

Now that you’ve got your head around the crux of the matter, you may begin to ask - I want to do me, but how do I break the cycle?

Scenario

Girl has a problem.

Boy enquires how he can help.

Girl explains her problem.

Boys listens, empathises, and offers solutions that the girl could put into action.

Girl chooses one of the options to fix her problem (or goes in a different direction entirely).

Girl eventually overcomes, solves or moves past her problem.

In this instance, the boy has aided the girl without the need to fix the problem himself. Leaving both parties satisfied with the outcome. 

This method may seem awkward at first, especially if you attempt to implement it into a relationship where the status quo has already been established. But you will not continue to grow by incessantly fixing the problems of others. In fact, your emotions will bounce from fleeting satisfaction to self loathing like clockwork. 

Not only will anxiety become your base emotion, it will become your identity. People who get shit done on a daily basis, were not born with that trait already instilled in their personality. It was conceived there through consistent behaviours contributing to that end. 

A person who eats well and exercises regularly was not born with this already programmed into their psyche. It took long term periods of committed action and endurance to implement those base behaviours. This then allows that person to see this as part of themselves, as part of their make up, as part of their identity. 

They did them, now you need to do you, without apology. Create your identity, establish your behaviours, be selfish. Because, as you’ll see in a future post, selfishness and selflessness are more alike than you think. 

Establishing goals and creating a positive routine

Disclaimer: Before I start, I’d like to make the purpose/intention of this and future posts clear. I am not in any way a mental health professional. Nor do I claim to be an expert in the area. There are millions of people who have fallen on much harder times than myself, and I am aware that the discoveries I have made, could be rendered almost useless by that fact. I wouldn’t say that these ruminations have a ‘target audience’, I’m just hoping that someone can find solace in the words that follow. 

The past twelve months were definitely the toughest of my life. The four day window following my 26th birthday, turned my world upside down. Lonely attempts to gather broken pieces of my previous self became unthinkable. I was forced to reach out. That was my first step. My first step toward discovering who I am, and what I want. Since that first action was taken I have continued to learn something everyday, culminating in what you are about to read. I don’t know how helpful these may be for others, but I guess we’ll find out...

Everyone has some kind of routine right? I know I did. Some might call this a rut, which is exactly what I was in. I thought that happiness was being able to sink down into the couch at the earliest opportunity. Lazy, uninspired, lacking direction and overall miserable - without ever realising it. I had myself convinced, that I was happy to live this way for the rest of my life. The human mind is the world’s greatest illusionist.

A typical day:

6:00am - Drag myself out of bed and clamber into my work uniform.

6:30am - Drive with hundreds of other miserable commuters, hoping to arrive in time for work. 

8:00am - Start work, in a job where I sought out as little human interaction as possible.

4:00pm - Haul arse home.

4:30-4:45pm - Arrive home and force a half-arsed clean of my house.

5:30pm - Shower, sit down and convince myself that a third takeaway in as many days would be a good idea (as long as I didn’t have to answer the door).

That was it. My life boiled down to 6 bullet points. I thought this was happiness - seriously. The one positive thing about my life, now that I can view it in the cold light of day, was that I had someone in it who cared about me, because I definitely didn’t care about myself. 

So far, this wouldn’t be a glowing endorsement in terms of establishing a routine, would it? I’m merely letting you peek behind the curtain of where a routine without direction will take you. However, a routine with structure, goals, rewards and progression? I’m struggling to put into words how much of an effect it has had on my life. 

I happened across the idea of finding something to focus on. Ever since I could remember, negative thoughts had plagued my conscious about my weight. Sometimes fleeting, other times lingering. I had almost come to accept their permanent tenure within my mindset, but the events that proceeded this sudden departure from normality (the details of which I will spare you for now) had taken me to a place that I had not frequented before. 

My goal was set, time to assemble a structured process. I changed what I could, with the work portion of my day being the major obstacle. It wasn’t that I hated my job or where I worked, but continually found myself isolated. Struggling to keep my ever active mind from wondering. Financial constraints dictated that this wasn’t an optimal time for a change of employment and although the hours I spent at work began to feel like someone had hit the pause on my progress, I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

In an attempt to gain an understanding of something that had evaded me for 26 years, I devoted every spare second of my day to research. I wanted to maximise the amount of fat I could lose, in the least time possible. Yeah sure, I could’ve just paid some jumped-up, caffeine induced, part time fitness div from the gram to send me a meal plan and stick to it, but I wanted to take control (another thing we’ll speak about in later posts). I mean, who wants to be told what they can and can’t eat anyway?

So after learning the basics of nutrition and fitness, I began turning words on a screen into the foundation of my week. Meal prep Sundays, a 4 day gym routine and continued education, became the three pillars of my day-to-day existence. Some of you might think this is kind of sad, but I enjoyed it. It was occupying my time, I felt like I had gained a small amount of control over something that I had previously struggled with. When I look back now, committing to these habits was another step closer to gaining an understanding of who I was. I don’t mean, “Oh look, I like fitness and nutrition”. I mean how much I enjoyed learning, how much I craved control, how much I required structure to thrive.

Months went by, kgs dropped off and habits continued, until one day everyone seemed to notice all at once. I was inundated with; compliments, surprised looks, pats on the back and screams of ‘where’s the rest of you?’. I found it difficult to know what to say when people asked me how I’d done it. Do I simplify it? and say that I just stopped eating as much. Or do I tell them what I actually did? 

Accomplishing what I had set out to do was the final outcome, but the changes that took place during the process allowed me to appreciate just how important establishing that routine was. It wasn’t just fat loss, I was altering my personality. I was becoming active, motivated and better educated. I wanted to talk to people again, not just because my mood had improved, but because my anxiety when subjected to social situations had lessened.

With my make up altered and my first goal complete, I set a new one. What it was isn’t important, but the principle is. If you’ve nothing to aim for you can never fail, and as I’ll explain in a later post, failure is the most important element of success. So, set your goals; big, little, long term, short term, it doesn’t matter - set them. I have changed, altered and adapted my routine so many times that it is barely recognisable. Some of my goals are now almost unachievable, but they don’t have to be. Improvement, that’s the aim. Self improvement allows you to become a better version of yourself, to overcome and adapt to ever changing circumstances. To be the version of yourself that YOU want to be, as often as possible.

Just to clarify, this isn’t me saying you should stick to a routine, no matter the circumstances, otherwise you’ll never truly be happy - far from it. I’m suggesting that if you make a conscious effort to implement positive habits that cater to your aspirations whenever possible, you will see improvements. No matter how little.

Those who attempt to implement this life lesson may develop some questions quite quickly. Is it meant to be this hard? Did you ever have a day that felt like you made next to no progress at all? How did you deal with the nagging feeling that you weren’t getting anywhere?

Although my previous words may have indicated a relative ease in the completion of this objective, I won’t sit here and pretend that it was smooth sailing during the process - that would be a lie. In fact, I spent a large majority of it down trodden and self critical. 

Not only did I have days where I felt like I was making no progress, I even had days where I felt that I had regressed. Before my head hit the pillow every night, I spent a few moments critiquing my day. Cycling through every unit of measure one could conjure, before delivering the final verdict. Pass or fail. I believe this to be the point that separates the ones who could, from the ones who will. Dreaming up something that would be ‘nice to get one day’, may see you fall at the first hurdle, but deciding on an outcome that evokes feelings of desire and purpose will force you through those hurdles. This is not because you were ‘destined’ to reach your goal, it is because you HAD to reach your goal. Determination isn’t something that is gifted to a select few. It is a quality born from purpose and motive. 

What’s yours?