When I started working out, I told myself overnight that I was going to be a fitness enthusiast by beginning my exercise routine the very next day. The first time I fell off track, after three days of working out, I didn’t attempt to run or skip again until a week later. After a while, I mustered up the courage and began again but when I stopped, it was for an even longer time. The times I would get my period, I would do no form of exercise for an entire week, then take another week preparing to get back on the road.
All the while this pattern existed, it was because I believed that my efforts were wasted. If I fell off the treadmill, I told myself my efforts were wasted. If I didn’t complete a 30-day fast, 100-day fitness challenge, if I fell off by day 12, I would say to myself, that doesn’t count, you have to start again.
However, becoming better at something doesn’t work that way. To keep going, you have to not only be willing to get back up, but to know that falling did not end your progress. The moment I started counting day 13 after I fell off, I was more willing to continue. I became gentler with myself after eating junk after I had promised not to. Or after 3 days of no exercise. No matter how many times I said tomorrow and failed, I continued the next day, or the next time I was willing to.
What happens is that you realise that will-power is not instant energy. It is not just summoned out of thin air. It is a build-up of your willingness to continue, one day after the next. Soon, without even knowing it, you realise you have finally mustered up the courage to be a person who works out, a person who eats healthy, a person who delivers on their job, not just as a goal but also as a lifestyle and, gradually, as the definition of who you are.
If changes were instantaneous, you will see as it is happening that you are getting better at whatever you put your mind to. But what happens is that even though you thought you sucked at say, riding a bicycle, once you get up on the bike to try again, it is at that moment that you realise, you have gotten better. Somewhere in between the last failure and the moment you try again, something magical happens. And I believe this process is the art of getting back up again, which most people get to appreciate.
I no longer need to count days now. All I need to know is that I am a person who is doing the thing, and then I trust that the magic will happen, and then, do it again.
