Aim To Be 1% Better
We’ve just wrapped up month 6 of this year 2021, and it’s making me think back to how we started the year together. Many of us completed a 30-Day Challenge way back in January to kickstart our new habits and goals for the year to come... So maybe it’s time we reflect on how well we’re doing.
By now you are either looking at the goal(s) you’ve set for yourself in the New Year and you’re thinking “I’m rocking this!” Or, if you’re like me, maybe you bit off more than you could chew from the start. Take my new year’s goal of doing a handstand in the middle of the room by January 31st. I had highhhh hopes for a dramatic victory in only 31 days. But I found I put too much pressure on myself with this deadline, and took a lot of the enjoyment out of it. What was I going to do after I achieved this, anyway?
I decided rather quickly that I would instead embrace the 1% better philosophy. Each time I kicked up, I wanted to hold it just one second longer. No deadline, no dramatic victory. Only the long-haul to focus on.
It’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of big lofty goals. We are allured by their greatness and the impressiveness of making a sudden huge shift. We put huge pressure on ourselves to make a monumental effort for a monumental result.
But sometimes, it’s like the tortoise and the hare - slow and steady wins the race. Baby steps, 1% better each day.
This doesn’t appear on the surface to be nearly as impressive or noteworthy, but the hardly noticeable 1% shift can be astounding over time. The little tiny habits you are implementing now to help you achieve your goals can have a massive effect on your life in a relatively short period of time.
So, this is what I’m reminding myself of this week, to halt the panic and overwhelm that start to creep in at about this point in the year. And this is what I want to remind all of you— especially those in my Total Wellness Program who have commit to long, steady change.
I hope you enjoy these bits of wisdom I’ve experienced from James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits.’ (A read I highly recommend)
“Habits are the compound interest of self–improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.”
Think of it in terms of what habits are you repeating over time that are bringing you closer to being the person you want to be and living the life you want to live. And what habits are not serving you? If you are not consistently ‘course-correcting' like an airplane that’s just off it’s target by 1% each mile, you are going to end up very far from your destination.
This can be eating just a little bit too much each day, taking more days off from the gym than on, spending just a bit more than you save.
Creating new habits can seem daunting if you’re not seeing results right away. But your habit needs to persist long enough to break through what James Clear calls, the Plateau of Latent Potential.
“When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it. But you know that it’s the work you did long ago— when it seemed that you weren’t making any progress— that makes the jump today possible.”
This is the place where the handstand is held, the clothes are fitting much looser, your book is a bestseller. People don’t see the 1% habit put in place each day to get you here.
One last quote from Atomic Habits (can you tell how much I love this book?)
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”