New year New You?
I love the January fitness rush. Not just because I get paid out the door as a personal trainer (I don’t)
But because of the buzz you feel. There’s a collective motivation. Everyone messed up over Christmas. Everybody knows it’s time to get back on the horse.
You’ve disgraced yourself over the Christmas and know enough is enough
So you do what’s natural and try to fix everything. Sleep, veggies, no sugar.
Too Much Motivation
You’re highly motivated to get your act together.
But the mince pies have barely left your digestive tract, the brain fools you into thinking this motivation will last forever.
Like the smoker who takes a drag and goes on to say this is their last cigarette. You fail to realize again and again that this surge of motivation doesn’t last. Over time the shame your Christmas shenanigans fade. All the old vices rear their ugly heads once again.
It might take a day, a month, a year. Some set back, some stressor that kicks you back to your old patterns. And like last year, you fall off the wagon.
The margin of Safety
What if there was a way to avoid always falling off the wagon.
To finally stick with the goals you set. There is and it has nothing to do with fitness. Instead it comes from engineering.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for some engineers. Imagine you are tasked with designing a bridge.
Vehicles must safely cross the bridge indefinitely. Any miscalculation spells disaster.
A key feature engineers integrate is what’s known as a margin of safety.
Instead of an exact calculation for vehicles, engineers design bridges with enough strength to withstand multiple times the weight ever needed.
No matter the circumstance, the bridge has more than enough capacity to remain safe.
Our Goals- The opposite of Pressure Proof
Our fitness goals are the opposite though. We overcompensate with new years alright. If our own capacity and willpower was like a bridge, we place weight on weight putting ourselves to extreme limits (Think “no more alcohol ever”). Yet every year we fail to see this design flaw. When all these well laid plans come under extreme strain the bridge collapses.
Setting your own margin of safety.
We should think more like engineers and set margin of safety with your goals. Rather than extreme with goals, what if instead like engineers, you set goals that could withstand any scenario. You install a margin of safety.
Any goal you set can have a margin of safety. It requires only two steps.
First you set your main goal.
Think of any common fitness target. Go to the gym every day for example. This is the bridge at its max. You can do it but everything needs to hold up elsewhere.You need to feel motivated and prepared.
But of course there will be days where this just isn’t going to happen. There’ll be days where the alarm feels like getting jabbed in the face. These type of days exercise doesn’t fit high on the priority list.
So within this goal you have your second step, your own margin of safety.
As a margin of safety if the day goes crazy instead you go on a brisk walk.
The Importance of Small goals.
“The man who moves a Mountain, begins by carrying small stones”- Confucius
Obviously the walk is not going to be the pinnacle of your health targets to reach. But your big targets like no more alcohol and no more takeaways, these are big rocks that need to be addressed.
But most people find themselves continually falling off the wagon. and you never get to move mountains.
With a margin of safety you make sure that there’s always progress towards your goal.
No matter how bad you are feeling or how bad your day is going, you can still make progress.
No Motivation Needed.
The motivation you are feeling won’t last forever.There will come a time when your old patterns will rear their ugly heads taking you away from your goals. Your goals should include a margin of safety like engineers. If you can’t do the perfect goal, you can still do something to keep your goals on track.
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