When you start on a fitness journey, where is your focus?
It’s dialed in on your end goal. That goal might be very far away when you start, but still, It’s your goal and you want to reach It. Now that amount of focus has a tunnel vision effect where we will do anything to get a step closer to that goal even if It is not productive long term.
Take a weight loss goal for example. I know too many people who have lost weight doing things like running or biking but have never had any luck keeping that weight off long term. So what do they do the next time they want to lose weight? Start running or biking.
It’s a cycle (no pun intended), and a comfortable one for most people. Without knowing where else to begin It’s easier to go back to what has “worked” in the past. Why didn’t these activities work long term, and why won’t they work this time either? In most cases it’s because nothing else in their life changed.
If you expect one single thing to be your saving grace without changing any other behavior, you are in for a long ride.
So how do we change more than one behavior?
Take a minute and write down all the things that you know for a fact could be improved upon that will help get you a step closer to your goal. Write down every single thing you can think of. Now, let’s start a new journey by taking one of those topics and making It your ONLY priority for the next 4-6 weeks.
The idea is to not only focus on this new goal, but to shift your focus AWAY from your main goal. Give this new goal your full, undivided attention. After 4-6 weeks you will have made some great progress and will have adopted some new habits along the way. After those 4-6 weeks I can guarantee, you are one HUGE step closer to your goal. Even if it doesn’t feel like such a big change, believe me, these behavior changes add up fast. Now, it’s time go back to your list of topics and move onto the next one.
Your focus only needs to be on your direct next move. Getting to where we want to be is a process of steps. We can’t just jump the entire staircase and only climb the last three steps. It’s time to start from the ground up and take each step individually.
Map out the areas that need to be improved. Give yourself 4-6 weeks to get REALLY damn good at that one thing, then move on to the next. After a few months you will have so much momentum that things will seem easy to keep taking steps towards that main goal.
In good health,
Jeff
