You’ve Forgotten, Haven’t You?

You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? Remember those routines you tried a few times and felt good about, but then abandoned? You feel like you’ve always done because the feelings you got from your abandoned high hopes didn’t last, why would they? That’s why they’re temporary. You don’t shower for a few days, find it refreshing and cleansing and then just stop doing it, do you? What about brushing your teeth?

It’s the same with the morning exercise routine, the motivating playlist before you start work for the day, the waking up early knowing exactly what the most important thing is and then doing that while the rest of the world is still asleep. You have to keep going to see results that change your life, and you have to keep going beyond that so that they become habits that you no longer even think about, let alone negotiate.

It’s never too late to turn back.

Turning back doesn’t mean you get back with one step, one leap, one superhuman effort; it means that the steps you take will at least be in the right direction. So keep walking, one foot in front of the other, without fail. So when you restart the habit you abandoned so long ago, don’t expect your life to change overnight.

A solid exercise routine will take 6-8 weeks, at least, before yielding visible results and at least three months before being transformative. By then you’ll get to a point where the activity is not just non-negotiable, it’s easier to do it, than not. Most people, and some of us have been there, give up before the first threshold. The complaint-free diet, the new food regime, the avoidance of outrage media — we never stick it out long enough to see the results that would transform us, but it’s never, ever too late.

So turn back. Turn back and give it time.

Let’s say you’re driving ok the motorway and miss your exit. The next exit is ten minutes away. You wouldn’t just continue after the next exit, would you? And when you take that exit, you turn around and come back, knowing that you have to retrace your route, but that doesn’t stop you from carrying on, does it? You have somewhere you have to be, and you know it’s going to take you time to get back to where you forgot to take the exit. It’s the same with your life. You have somewhere in your life that you need to be. There is someone you need to be.

The problem we have is that initially, it’s like a hill. It’s easier to go downhill than uphill. Guess what? Something magical happens if you go uphill a few times. It starts to feel great. Yes, it does.

For you too.