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“How was the Earth created?”
This was the question my 7 year old son posed to me recently as we were driving in the car.
You might not thing that this question has anything to to do with health, wellness, or fitness but let me explian how the journey the Earth took parallels to our own journey to health.
The question my son asked me is one of those questions your kids ask you and you struggle with how to explain the answer in a way that they can comprehend. (You also tend to question yourself as to whether you even know what the right answer is!)
After thinking for a little while I went with this…
”There were a bunch of rocks that came together because of gravity and over a VERY long time it formed Earth.”
Of course then my 11 year old daughter chimed in and said…
“That’s not right! When we watched the history of Earth condensed into 24 hours it said there were only 2 rocks.” 🤦
Oh the joy of having kids.
A Parallel with Obstacle Course Racing
It just so happened that earlier in the day I had run an obstacle course race and I somehow made a connection between these two events (the mind is a weird thing sometimes).
Let me try and explain…
I was thinking about how hard obstacles were when I started obstacle course racing in 2015 and how now almost 10 years later, I didn’t really struggle with many of the obstacles.
Here is an example of an obstacle at the race. Ten years ago when I started obstacle course racing this would have been impossible for me to do, but yet today I went through it without an issue.
The progress I have made in obstacle course racing did not happen overnight. I didn’t start in 2015 and struggle and then the next month become an “obstacle ninja”. It took years (nearly a decade!) of training, practice, torn calluses in my hands, injuries, and failures before I considered myself pretty proficient at most obstacles I see in a race.
This is just like how the Earth formed (kind of…stick with me here). There wasn’t just a bunch of rocks floating in space one day and a few hours later there was this beautiful planet capable of supporting life as we know it. It took billions of years to get to this point!
The Olympic Perspective
Coincidentally at the same time I made this connection between these two events earlier in the day my wife and I were also watching the Olympics. The thought then occurred to me that these Olympic athletes have been training all their entire lives for this one competition, and if they are lucky enough to compete in the Olympics again, they will be preparing for the next 4 years before they compete again.
After all this contemplation about time, consistency, and effort, I started to think about our expectations when it comes to our own health and performance outcomes.
The Journey To Health: The Quest for Quick Results
Everyone wants and expects results within months.
“How can I shed this weight the fastest?”
“How jacked can I become by the time summer rolls around?”
“What hacks can I do to correct my consistently elevated blood sugar/cholesterol/blood pressure?”
We want immediate results.
Modern Interventions: Shortcuts to Health?
In some ways modern science is making immediate results possible.
Consider things like gastric bypass surgery or the new class of weight loss medications like Ozempic, Majrno, and Trazepitde which elevate levels of a naturally occurring hormone called GLP-1 to make your appetite nearly non-existent. These medical interventions can reverse a lifetime of subpar lifestyle decisions that led to excess weight gain and in some cases provide some life-saving benefits.
Another good example is performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). When done properly these drugs can yield some incredible results in terms of enhancing muscle and physical performance outcomes.
Now I don’t fault anyone for taking advantage of modern science to get to their goals faster. There can be perfectly valid reasons to use these interventions.
However, in many cases you still need to put in the hard work to continue to maintain the results after the effects of the intervention have taken its course.
If you have gastric bypass surgery or stop taking a GLP-1 medication and you go back to your old lifestyle you are just going to end up back where you started.
If you take PEDs and don’t actually workout, you are not going to get bigger, stronger, or faster.
If you do the diet that leads to the fastest weight loss but never do the work to figure out a diet and lifestyle that can maintain that weight loss, you are doomed to end up gaining all the weight back.
The Necessity of Long-Term Commitment
The moral of all this is that we can’t escape the fact that putting in the hard work over a long period of time is necessary to see results in our health, wellness, and performance. We can’t be so naive to think that we can do something for a short period of time and get to our goal and then just magically maintain that for the rest of our lives.
One of the great things about humans is that we are resilient. Our bodies can take on decades of poor lifestyle habits before it impacts our health to the point where we need to do something about it. Most people’s expectation when the time comes is that it all can be undone within a few months and we can go right back to living like we did before.
The unfortunate truth is It might take YEARS of hard work to correct decades of damage.
And if you have some kind of performance, athletic, or aesthetic goal it might also take years of hard work to actually even come close to your expectation. I have spent 9+ years getting to the point where I feel fairly confident conquering most obstacles in obstacle course racing…and I am nowhere close to being a professional in the sport.
After reading all of this it might seem discouraging, trying to tackle things that take years is a daunting and overwhelming task.
Tackling Long-Term Goals
How do we tackle a goal that may take years to achieve?
It starts with doing the small things consistently.
Think of it kind of like saving for retirement. The amount you likely need to save to retire might seem quite massive and unimaginable. It might seem pointless to even try to save any money when you think about the end dollar amount.
The way financial advisors advise people to start saving for retirement is to start small. They encourage people to put away a small amount of money every week or month and to put it on “auto-pilot”. The reason why is because of compound interest. Due to the magic of compound interest, that small amount of money grows exponentially over time until some day you open your bank account (several decades later) and you see that magical number that you never thought you would achieve.
Achieving health, wellness, and performance goals can work the same way.
The Power of Compound Health Benefits
Let’s take strength training as an example. The benefits of strength training really start to compound over decades. In the short term, let’s say within a year, you add a bit of muscle, but that muscle has many compounding effects.
The additional muscle not only makes you look better, but it also makes you more metabolically healthy, reducing your risk of heart disease, mental health disorders, and many more chronic conditions.
As the decades pass and you keep strength training you may add less and less muscle (there are several reasons as to why but that is not important for this example), but as you age the most important benefit is not adding muscle, but instead the benefits shift to the fact you are not losing muscle. Your peers who are not strength training have a big problem, they are actually losing muscle mass! They are not only less healthy than you but now they are decreasing the likelihood that they can live independently because they won’t have enough muscle to do the tasks required in the course of everyday life.
By beginning strength training just to add a bit of muscle the benefits continue to compound as the decades pass. You are not only healthier than your peers but now you can continue to live life to the fullest for a longer period of time!
Just like your money will compound over time, one small health habit, like strength training regularly, can compound as well…the health benefits really show their true value the older you get.
This is why having a long term, multi-year, multi-decade mindset when it comes to your health, wellness, and performance goals is important…we need time to allow the benefits to compound.
Consistency: The Key to Long-Term Success
The other issue when it comes to thinking long term about health, wellness, and performance is consistency…how can you be consistent doing something for decades?
It all comes down to habits and finding approaches to your health related habits that allows you to be consistent.
I can’t tell you what approach to take for things like your diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management routines because everyone needs their own unique approach. What I can tell you is that you need to keep an open mind and keep exploring all approaches.
You need to be a lifelong learner when it comes to your health. Always be open to doing the opposite, taking a U-turn, doing a 180, don’t get married to anything. The one thing I can tell you for certain is that the approach that works for you today won’t work for you a decade later. Life changes, your goals and desires change, health science changes. You need to be adaptable, flexible, and resilient.
Resources for Your Health Journey
There are two resources I can give you to help you figure out what approach is going to work best and then to try that approach consistently.
To help you figure out what approaches work the best for you I suggest you explore my mastering the basics video series. This will help you wrap your head around the high level pillars that will get you going in the right direction and it also gives you some different approaches for developing the right habits.
When it comes to consistency I have created a consistency calendar that is free to download. This will help you take 1-3 different habits you want to develop and help hold you accountable to do them. For more information on the consistency calendar and where to download it check out this video.
One final resource for you is my group coaching program. I open enrollment for this program a few times a year and it allows for a more hands on approach to identifying the right habits for you and also the accountability to keep you consistent. The best way to make sure you can jump into the program the next time it opens is to join my newsletter. All you have to do is enter your email address below and you will be the first to know when the program opens.
The Formula for Success
Whether you leverage the resources above or not, the formula to successfully reaching your health, wellness, and performance goals is about 3 things:
- Time
- Exploration and Learning
- Consistency
When you mix those 3 things together you can’t help but transform yourself into who you want to be.