When making life changes, it is tempting to go all out immediately…resulting in burn out. Disappointment, frustration, and a sense of failure is sure to follow, leaving us not back where we started but further behind.
How many times has this happened to you? Whether it is with weight loss, installing a new healthy habit in your life, trying to save money or stop using that credit card, or planning your Uncommon Life, we have all committed to change completely today, only to find that tomorrow we are still in our old behaviors and old ways. I’ve certainly done my fair share of this tango (sometimes it feels like more than my share!), but what I’ve learned over the past few years is that with life changes it is better to be the tortoise, not the hair. Let me explain what I mean…
Over the past few years, I’ve been struggling to bring exercise into my daily life. You know those people who get up every day and go to the gym? The ones who don’t feel right until they’ve got that run in? That is the type of commitment and love of exercise I’ve wanted to incorporate into my world, the only problem is in spite of my best efforts it has proven elusive.
I’ve been in this cycle where every few months I’ll get the fire back and decide I’m going to be an exerciser – someone who does it regularly and exhaustively. So what do I do? I will go to the gym every day for about 10 days straight, doing an hour of cardio plus some form of strength training each day. The first few days I’m determined, the middle few days I’m smug, and the final few days I’m struggling until the will finally peters out and I don’t go for a month.
It’s an ugly cycle, and one that may be familiar to you. However, this past summer I figured out why my daily exercise wasn’t sticking: the change was too drastic.
In all of our lives, we know that physically it is impossible to fly from New York to London without spending about 4 hours flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Our have planes move steadily over this expanse of middle ground to reach our destination, and we don’t question this – it is just the way things are, you physically can’t get to London without doing this so we accept it and buckle down for those tedious hours of nothing but ocean views.
So why do we insist on moving our habits and states of mind figuratively from New York to London in an instant, when we know that in reality you need to cross middle ground to get there? I am not a naturally athletic person, so why do I think that I can just wake up one morning and suddenly have the discipline and stamina to exercise for 1.5 hours a day every day?
Just as we can’t teleport to our physical destinations (yet), we can’t mentally teleport our minds to the end result. We have to endure the middle ground of laying the foundation of our changes, we have to go step by step.
We have to be incremental.
Being incremental means moving slowly but steadily to a set goal. Instead of taking one giant tango step forward, you take many small steps forward. You become the tortoise, not the hare – and surprise surprise, you actually get where you are going.
Just as the plane needs to fly over the ocean, our minds need to make a slow journey across a middle land to make a change. An example of incremental change would be saving one dollar a day instead of taking two hundred dollars out of your checking account for savings only to have to put it all back in ten days later to pay a bill. It would be spending an hour a night researching and laying the foundation for your Uncommon Vocation instead of quitting your full-time job immediately to “try” to make it work.
For my own example, the incremental change that made the difference was committing to do just 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week to start. And all I can say is, “so far so good!” This is a comfortable, small shift that I can easily incorporate into my daily life but that can lead to more change – maybe in a few months I’ll up it to 40 minutes every 5 days – that will eventually get me to my goal.
While being an Uncommoner means having grand ideas and letting your imagination take giant leaps forward, it also means having the patience and awareness to know that the only way you’ll get there from here is to take small daily steps. There is certainly a time and a place for grandiose gestures, but when you are really trying to change any element of yourself – from your diet to your lifestyle to your job – incremental changes will get you where you want to go, and in the long run do it faster than all the giant tango stepping will.
So remember: be incremental, and be proud of it. You’ll get across the ocean faster than you think.
Here’s to your Uncommon Life,
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