You don’t JUST want to exercise more…
You want to become a person who exercises!
You don’t just want to exercise, you want to be RESILIENT!
If you can get through TWO full seasons (aka 6 months) while maintaining a relatively consistent exercise habit (read: NOT perfectly executed, but rather returning to it after you miss a few sessions), then you haven’t simply built a long lasting habit…
You have built, practiced, and honed the MORE IMPORTANT muscle & skill of resiliency.
- How do you show up to do the thing even when X, Y, & Z are happening?
- How do you practice compassion with yourself even when A, B, & C didn’t go the way you wanted?
- What does it feel like to do the thing even though you only have 5% to give?
Yes, you can stick to your plan when everything is going swimmingly, but more importantly, how can you adjust your plan when you need to?
You can’t learn how to adjust if you haven’t learned how to start & stick with it in the first place. (That’s why the 1st stage is foundational.)
So, if you are thinking about your own fitness goals and what you’ve tried to achieve in the past, how did it fit into this pyramid?
When you suddenly found the motivation to start working out, did you think you were jumping straight to stage 3 “Taking It To the Next Level” without realizing you hadn’t yet built stages 1 & 2?
Maybe you were committed to fitting exercise into your life, but that meant constantly making adjustments, trying new classes, always at a different time of day & day of the week, so you jumped in at stage 2, not realizing that makes it infinitely harder without the foundation of stage 1?
(In fact, maybe that’s exactly what Toxic Fitness Culture is constantly telling us we have to do, & if we don’t do that, then we’re lazy, unmotivated, & have no excuse?)
Or did you jump straight to Super Specific Laser Focused Training without a previous habit built up supporting you? How long did that last?
Probably not as long as you would have liked.
AND THAT IS NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN!
That’s just not how time works.
And the most important element of ABSOLUTELY EVERY fitness goal is just that…
TIME.
More about that next week!
TTYL,
Deanna
