The Big Secret

It is time for my monthly post! So here it goes...

It's a new year already. Heck, January is all but gone. Every year at this time many people get bit with the fitness bug. We make resolutions to get in shape, lose some weight, tone up, eat better, sleep more, or whatever. Many of us make these resolutions because we want to be healthy and we want to feel good. For many of us, the new year inspires us with hope that we too can change and improve ourselves; that we can be new again. Then, February rolls around and that new inspiration of hope starts to feel more like a fleeting dream because life starts to get in the way.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can change if you want to, you don’t even have to wait for a new year to begin either. There is a secret to making a new you; whatever your goal might be. It is a secret that holds tremendous power and it makes all the difference in the world. It is the one secret that separates those that succeed from those that fail. That secret is: Consistency.

Merriam-Webster defines consistency as: 1 firmness of constitution or character : persistency

Consistency is probably the most important ingredient to success. Whether your goal is to lose 30 pounds or to run 10 miles, it is your ability to be consistent that will get you to where you want to be. You could have the best plan in the world and fail miserably if you lack consistency in following your plan. Conversely, you can have a not-so-great plan, but a good vision of where you want to be, and succeed wonderfully if you have the discipline to consistently follow your plan and chase your vision.

Consistency is not glamorous, it is not miraculous, but it is that special ingredient that is necessary to succeed at whatever your goal might be. So, lets say you had a strange goal to eat a whole elephant. As the joke goes, the best way to eat an elephant is by taking one bite at a time. However, you probably shouldn’t expect to eat the entire elephant all in one day, or one week for that matter. But, if you consistently took one bite at a time, day after day, week after week, eventually the elephant would be gone. Crazy analogy, I know. Besides, elephants are full of saturated fat. BUT, the point is if you have a goal and you consistently take small, doable steps towards reaching that goal, you can’t help but be successful.

If you made a resolution this year, you can achieve it. Just be consistent. There will be road blocks, there will be hurdles, there will be challenges. That is life. But none of those things has to stop you. If you consistently chase after your goal and follow your plan, you will succeed.

As for my own training, it is going well. I found my butt the other day. I tried to swing the 32kg as much as I could in ten minutes. Turns out, it wasn't that much, but my butt feels like I swung it 1000 times...