Start Small

We’re less than a week away from the start of September, and therefore, the start of our habit challenge. Start preparing now, because it does start on a Sunday. Traditionally, people hate starting challenges on Sunday, why not just push it back to Monday? Well, the Sunday start is nice because it forces you to complete your habit on a day that you would typically prioritize rest and recovery, not new habit starting. It’s a nice kickstart.

If you’re having a hard time coming up with your habit, I urge you to start small. Ambitious challenges are impressive, but usually skew our perspective to think that all worth while challenges must be big. Fortunately for us, that doesn’t need to be the case, you can start with a small, reachable challenge that will have a big impact as well. For a sports analogy, try hitting a few singles instead of always going for the home run.

The prove this point, I’m taking on a simple challenge for the month. I’ll be doing 30 push ups per day. Should be easy enough, but it’s an exercise I don’t like doing, which is why I’m bad at them and doing them consistently will certainly help change my mind about push ups. Something, like 2 minutes of a deep lunge stretch or 10 push ups or 30 bodyweight squats per day are all really good challenges for you to take on.

You habit doesn’t need to be grandiose. Instead of choosing something big and impressive and wishing that it happens, choose something simple and be impressive with your consistency.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach