getting back on the wagon

getting back on the wagon

So you had a bad day, or week, or month? What are you gonna do - quit? Hang your head in shame and give up in despair? Heck no - you get up and get back to doing what's going to bring you closer to your goals.

If you're doing a 20-minute workout routine, 4 times per week, then you'll do over 4,000 minutes of working out this year. So you skipped a couple - big deal. In the grand scheme of 4,000, missing a few here or there isn't going to matter - it's the overall consistency that counts.

This is easy to do when you're looking forward at longer term goals. Where are you going to be a year from now? (or even a year from when you started?) Maybe you wanted to lose 25-30 pounds, but now you're only going to be able to lose 15. That's still a 15-pound improvement! And life doesn't stop at the end of the year - it just keeps going into the next year, so you have a chance to continue your forward progress.

It also helps to look backwards at how far you've come. Where were you 6 months ago, or 3 months ago? Maybe you were making good progress, but then your progress stopped, or even went backwards. That's ok, because there's no finish line. Whether you lose 10 pounds in a year, or 30, or anywhere in between, you won't be "done" when the year's over.

The process of continuous improvement is just that. It's a process, starting whenever you decide to start and carried forward with you for the rest of your life. It's continuous, so you get a chance to make a difference every day. And it's improvement - making yourself just a tiny little bit better counts

This is why you don't need to do anything drastic or extreme; small, marginal changes which improve yourself, done consistently throughout the days and weeks, over the course of months and years will add up to remarkable improvement.

So you fell off the wagon for a day, week, or month? Don't worry about it - just get back on. The one-year-from-now "you" will be happy you did.

-Chris Butterworth

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