“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” That Chinese proverb, and many sentiments like it, are famous around the world. Nonetheless, it is a call to action that can be extremely hard to follow.
Shooting For The Moon
If we are being honest, American culture is not much for single steps. We’re more into leaps and bounds. In fact, the word that more aptly captures the personality of the country would probably be “moonshot.” Americans still see the trip to the moon as one of our signature achievements and we rally around it whenever we find ourselves in a tight spot. President Obama called his program to end cancer a moonshot. Alphabet, Google’s parent company has called several of their initiatives moonshots. Most recently a variety of officials, including vice president Biden, have invoked the term when talking about a vaccine for the coronavirus.1 It’s become such a popular reminder of national achievement that Merriam Webster actually changed its definition this year. Moonshot used to mean something with extremely long odds, i.e. a long-shot. Now the definition has been expanded to mean something ‘monumental.’2
The Promise Of Greatness
When you look at fitness advertisements what do you see? Almost all of fitness advertising is focused on an end result that is nothing short of an amazing, total transformation. Almost every advertisement, every product, every supplement features a perfect, young, sculpted body with minimal fat and maximum definition. This eye-candy is presented as something that is totally within your grasp—for a price of course. On a subconscious level, the ads are designed to give you the impression that it is all yours for the taking if you just go for it.
The reality is more complicated. Fitness models are not people who started working out six weeks ago and who were transformed by the magic of some product. They are people who, besides being naturally gifted, have spent years working on their bodies and who now get paid to maintain them by advertisers. The same holds true for personal trainers or yoga instructors or all the others who, as part of their brand, have an enviable physique. These people are exceptions rather than the norm and for the average person, achieving that kind of a physique is far from simple. It’s more like a moonshot.
Take That One Small Step
Striving for big things can be useful, of course. Shoot for the moon, as another saying goes, and you’ll land amongst the stars. However, there is a downside to constantly focusing on only mammoth efforts and fantastic achievements: there’s no appreciation for the little victories, for the small steps. They become obscured behind the grandiose outcomes. You hear that small diet changes helped so-and-so lose fifty pounds. You hear that ten minutes of meditation a day cured someone’s anxiety. You’re told that a daily walk ended someone’s arthritis pains. When the focus is always on the results, there’s simply no room to experience the journey. No one cheers the fact that a person made an important change in their life, that they moved forward.
There’s a better way to approach health and wellness. That way is to focus on the small steps in-and-of themselves. For example, if you have aches and pains and you start strength training, focus first on the fact that you’re learning a new skill. Then, as you get stronger, focus on the fact that you are stronger. Notice the changes that are happening that have nothing to do with aches and pains. Celebrate those. Only then should you start to focus on whether or not your pain is solved. It might or might not be, but you will have accomplished a lot anyway. You will have become something more than you were when you started.
As another example, if you would like to use a few pounds try something very simple, like eating more vegetables. Make no other change, just eat more vegetables. Then, as you maintain that habit, celebrate the fact that you are eating healthier food. Revel in the ways that your menu has changed. Appreciate the new foods you eat. Look at the scale later, much later, if at all. If you do get on the scale and find it hasn’t moved then ok, celebrate the change you made so far and, energized by that celebration, make another change. Follow the same plan until you’ve made enough changes that you feel satisfied with the result—even if the result is something different than what you initially planned for. The results are incidental. The changes are what matter.
If you feel like you’ve always struggled to achieve your health and wellness goals ask yourself whether you have ever made the changes, by themselves, the focus. Have you ever decided it was worth it to make one small change and then really celebrated that change? Have you ever focused on the experience of what it’s like to embark on something new, rather than focusing on whether you’ve arrived where you thought you would? If you can learn to do that—to appreciate the forward motion—you might just find that you travel much farther.