Every Day, In Every Way, We Get A Little Better

Growing up I was never a great athlete, in fact in most sports I wasn’t much above average and that remains true to this day.  That said I did work hard on my conditioning and training in the second half of high school and into college.  That resulted in me getting in pretty darn good shape, which had me thinking I should make an attempt to play college football.  I walked on at Southern Oregon University, and trained with them through their winter conditioning program and spring football practices.  At that point I was cut from the team, and my dream of going from small college walk on, to NFL star took a serious blow.  Even though I didn’t make the team, the 6+ months I spent training with those guys had an impact on me.  I learned a lot about what a college level strength and conditioning program should look like, and I also learned some of the finer points of coaching.  The head coach at SOU at that time was Jeff Olson, and he had a saying he used at practice all the time…  “every day in every way, we get a little better”.  That saying has been bouncing around in my head for 11 or 12 years now, and I’ve even used it at plenty of practices I was coaching, but I’m writing today to tell you why that saying is dead wrong…

My problem with this saying is really just with the middle part, and the implications that come with that middle part.  I would like the saying just fine if it was just “every day we get a little better”, but that doesn’t have the kind of rhythm as saying needs to become a good chant!  Here’s the thing though…  I see people all the time who are paralyzed by perfectionism, and I used to be in the same place.  I’ve gone through multiple periods in my life where I lost a bunch of weight.  The only way to do that, is to have multiple times in your life where you gain a bunch of weight.  The times when I’ve gained weight have always started with getting “too busy” to get to the gym, which has rolled into an extended period of doing nothing, which has rolled into an extended period of eating like crap.  See I always used to battle this all or nothing mentality where I told myself that if I couldn’t train like a competitive athlete, then it wasn’t worth doing anything.  Additionally I had a mentality that if I wasn’t working out like a beast, I might as well eat whatever I want cause I’m going to gain weight anyway.  It’s sounds completely ridiculous to write it out, but that’s the way my head used to work.  Would I have been better off spending some time walking each day even if I was really “too busy” to get to the gym??  Yes…  Would I have been better off getting to the gym a couple of days a week, and doing what I could, instead of quitting altogether when I felt I didn’t have time to train like a competitive athlete???  For sure!  Would I have been better off eating clean while I wasn’t exercising???  Most definitely!!  I was paralyzed by all-or-nothing thinking, which is a form of perfectionism.

I hear and read people all the time who say “I don’t have time for exercise right now”, or “I don’t have money to eat healthy” (all-or-nothing).  I also hear and read people over-analyzing the details of eating plans, so much so that they paralyze themselves trying to figure out the most minute details (paralysis-of-analysis).  Lastly, I’ve come across so many people who make some positive changes, but the first time they slip up they fall completely off the wagon (perfection-or-bust).  In my mind all three of these types of excuses are very closely related.  Whether you’re an all-or-nothing person, a paralysis-of-analysis person, or a perfection-or-bust person, it’s time to give up the ghost!

  

We don’t need to improve every day in every way to continue heading in the right direction.  We don’t need to train like an NFL athlete in the off-season to improve our fitness.  We don’t have to worry about whether green beans are paleo, to improve our eating habits.  And we don’t have to do everything right all the time to be improving our health.

Today you will have an opportunity to make a few hundred decisions, which will impact your health.  In my mind if you made one more positive decision today than you did yesterday, then today was a success.  In fact if you made ANY positive decisions for your health, then today was a success!  Give yourself praise for the positive choices and changes you make, and forget about the mistakes.  It’s a marathon not a sprint, and every step you take gets you closer to where you’re headed.

What did you do for your health today?  If you can’t come up with an answer to that question, what’s holding you back?  If it’s some form of perfectionism, let go of that, and move forward one small step at a time.