Life is all about timing, or so it seems like that sometimes.

In the fitness business everything is typically measured in time even though it’s in my humblest opinion that this is the worst way to perceive things. Let me explain a little further with some questions and statements I’ve heard over the years to relate how health and wellness is usually measured in time.

-“How long will it take me to lose ‘X’ lbs?”
-“I want to lose ‘X’ lbs in 60 days.”
-“How long do I need to eat this way to get off ‘X’ meds?”
-“I’ve been working out 3 days a week for 2 months and haven’t seen the results I want.”
-“I need to look good for my wedding in 60 days.”

I get it, we’ve dealt with timelines and deadlines our whole lives. It’s starts as a kid and bleeds into schooling and then into our work life. Every single thing we do has time associated with it. It’s time to break free from these constraints and just ENJOY THE PROCESS of the things that we devote ourselves to. This literally applies to everything we do. Something that happens for someone in a certain amount of time will be completely different for another just like the same program will produce different results for people across different points of time. So why are we constantly applying this barrier to the things we try to achieve?

Since the majority of us work for a living I’d like to relate a little to that side and I’ll get back to the health points in a minute. Let’s say at your current job you’ve put in the work for a year for that big break or that big promotion and a year comes up and it hasn’t happened. You get all upset and decide to leave the company or even worse, stop working as hard with the feeling that you’re not being appreciated or something similar. Now let me blow your mind. What if the thing you were waiting for was at month 13 instead, but instead you have already checked out and now it’s not going unnoticed. What if you would have just been a little more patient, a little more persistent, a little less constrained by the thought that it should happen within a certain amount of time? What if your timeline simply didn’t play out the way you wanted? What if you simply would’ve believed that the work you were putting in was going to pay off at some point? What if you learned that the process is part of the journey?

This leads into my next point…

If there’s a statement I really do not resonate with its “trust the process”. The problem with this is it still coordinates our effort with time. By simply trusting that something will happen we’ve put a time frame on it whether knowingly or not. Don’t get me wrong, placing or creating trust in something will go a long way, I just want to point that we still generally associate it within a time constraint. So instead, if we refocus our effort into learning how to enjoy the process that gets us there, maybe things will start to look a little different in our lives.

Back to fitness and health…

Too many times I’ve seen people give up on a diet, or pivot to another because it wasn’t following their timeline. Too many times I’ve seen people quit a fitness routine because they haven’t learned to enjoy the process in putting on newfound muscle or losing the weight they want. They think something should work just because it is supposed to and not because the effort that is really required.

It’s time to stop putting time constraints on our plans and  time to start eyeballing our end goals and putting forth all the effort we can to achieve them regardless of when it happens. Effort AND time gives us results, not just doing something for an arbitrary amount of time.

I’ll end with this: What if, the diet you gave up on in 3 months was about to have its tipping point at month 4…

***I realize that my thoughts here are generally scattered. This is the beauty of having to raise a toddler who’s every goal is to somehow get me unhinged by 10am. It’s tough to get any substantial amount of solitude to write down my thoughts in one undisturbed piece, especially when that thought hits during dad duty.  Thank you to everyone who is patient with what I have to say.