There is a certain reality to pursuing a fitness goal. You may have noticed it by now. Simply put, you have to be the one who carries the load. If you don’t show up, no one will notice or care. If you don’t put in the work, your rewards will be delayed. If you don’t stay on your diet, the results simply won’t come.
That seems obvious, but here’s what’s not so obvious. The value you get from achieving your goals is often greater than you imagine it will be. The reason this is not obvious is that we evaluate our progress primarily in visual ways. The real progress comes in addition to that. The real progress comes from how you feel, not just how you look. It comes from what you have learned to do, not from what you haven’t done yet.
From one workout to the next, you will see little or no results. The scale won’t change much from Monday to Tuesday. Your strength won’t increase much from Tuesday to Wednesday. Your arms won’t grow much from Thursday to Friday. Your abs won’t pop suddenly from Saturday to Sunday. The things we hope to see the most don’t show themselves that quickly. But the value is still there. We just have to stop looking for gold in a mine filed with silver and just focus on the fact that we are surrounded by wealth.
This is one thing that I’ve come to learn more and it’s pushed me past the initial goals and enthusiasm to a place of really understanding how much value those day-to-day workouts really have, way beyond what others might see. That understanding is available to anyone. But first, you must have the faith and belief to put in the time needed for you to both see and feel what you are in the process of earning.
So it gets to be about you investing in yourself. Make your goals important enough in your mind that you will pursue them. Understand that you are worth investing the time and effort needed to reach those goals. Treat your workout schedule the same way you would treat your school or work schedule. You have important appointments on certain days every week that you will not miss. You have certain foods that you need to give yourself on a regular basis to both feel and do your best. You have a clear vision of improvements you know you can make if you simply stay on the path. No one but you can stop you. Not one but you will care if you stop.
Fitness is a very easy thing to not do. But it can also be totally under your control. Every day that you practice it, you are giving yourself a gift. Someday, there will be a pile of presents for you to open!
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