Focus on the Little Things
My dad has a saying that sticks with me still all these years later:
“Don’t sweat the little stuff, and in the end it’s all little stuff!”
For the longest time, I was in agreement with him. Then I met my wife, and we began our family. My life has grown ever more complex with each passing day, especially as I have begun my last great push towards a healthy weight.
At the start of this year, I think I’ve finally come to a full understanding of what is important, and with all due respect to my father and his many wisdom’s, I believe in this instance that he is wrong.
It has become my experience that we should focus on the little things to the point that it blocks out all the larger goals that they are leading towards. My father’s wisdom points towards only one thing mattering: the big things. I shall use my own weight loss journey, to illustrate my point, . My goal at the start of this year was to lose a hundred pounds. That’s quite the steep goal, and honestly it was (and still is) a bit frightening considered by itself.
However, let’s use today as an example of the appropriate mindset to have:
Today, I went to the gym.
As far as accomplishments go, this ranks right up there with “I did the laundry” or “I did the dishes”. I’m an adult; I’m supposed to do those things. I’m at the mid-point of a hundred pound weight loss goal. The gym is just one of many things I have to accomplish each day.
However, that does not change the facts that today the excuses did not win.
Today, I went to the gym.
That is what I could control today. Instead of allowing my past habits of reasonable-ish explanations preventing my daily workout, I just got up and went. Instead of soaking in my own hedonistic desires for video games and other distractions, I went about the daily task of improving my health.
Today, I went to the gym.
Upon returning home, I opened the fridge as is tradition. However, instead of reaching for the two liter of Diet Lifeblood which they insist on calling Mountain Dew, I instead grabbed the jug of filtered water. My neon green friend tastes neither of mountains nor of dew, but I digress. It was only after I had downed a solid thirty ounces of purest hydro that I returned to the citrusy embrace of the one true beverage.
Drinking water after I work out (and consuming more on a daily basis) was the request of my physician. It’s not a large thing, but since I’ve begun turning to water to quench my thirst, I’ve noticed that I am parched far less often than I am used to.
Neither of the tasks I have mentioned are impossible. Heck, if anything, they are downright easy. I was at the gym for a little over half an hour, and my wife has always stocked our fridge with a filtered water container. And there are a dozen more I work on as well, from cutting sugar out of every meal to trying to get more consistent sleep.
None of these tasks are beyond anyone’s capability. Let’s face it; if I can do these things then anyone can. Yet if you stepped back from all the little things and looked at my original goal, most people would give up before they started. Losing ten pounds is a trial by fire. Losing a hundred of them is a mythical desire of the youthfully ignorant, right up there with trying to be an astronaut or a fighter pilot. It sounds amazing, right up until you consider just how insanely challenging every single step of the process would be.
So instead of all that hullabaloo, I ask instead that as we make our goals and work towards them that we scratch off the larger goals and focus on the little things. Start shifting from “I’M GOING TO LOSE ALL THE POUNDS” towards “I’m going to go to the gym every day for the next five days.”
Once you’ve accomplished that, begin adding new things to the mix. Don’t forget to still go to the gym as well! Slowly, agonizingly, each new step will continue to build towards your larger goal, until one morning you wake up and realize you’ve lost fifty pounds. You’ll go to the gym and and spend thirty minutes on the treadmill mixing power-walking with jogging. And then you’ll come home and grab the thing which actual hydrates you instead of the soda which tastes like a lime killed a lemon in mortal combat and you’re drinking the result of their confrontation.
Today, I went to the gym.
I encourage you to as well.
Littlefully,
The Unsheathed Quill
