In today’s world of delivery in as little as one hour and the highlight-reels that are social media, it’s nearly impossible to stay out of the trap of instant gratification. I often find myself wishing I could accomplish something faster, whether it’s a work task, a new athletic skill, or my health and fitness goals. I’m sure you relate to that feeling and wish it would go away too. 

Although I’m sure the desire for instant gratification will always be around, there are ways we can quiet our needy brains and actions we can take that will help us reach our goals and not give up when it gets hard. The slowest way to make progress is to give up, and this is oftentimes what we do when we don’t see results in the unrealistic timeframe we set for ourselves based on someone else’s finished product.

The best way to make progress quickly is to move slowly. Let’s take learning a skill in basketball for example. This weekend, Cosmos and I went out to our local park to shoot around. He didn’t play basketball in school and now wishes he learned and asked me to teach him. We were working on layups and jump stops, which are very fundamental skills to master. He was having trouble making the shots, so we broke the skill down into three simple steps: jump stop, look at the rim, and then shoot. That’s it. That’s all he needed to focus on. 

We went at about fifty percent speed for a while so he could get the hang of it, and he, like most of us, was having trouble focusing because we were moving slowly. But here’s the catch - when we move quickly on something we have not mastered, we do not give ourselves the opportunity to master it. When we skip over the foundation, we do not give ourselves the strength and support we need to move on to more complicated moves. We do not give ourselves the opportunity to continue improving and moving forward because we have nothing to build off of, and no consistency to see any results. In exercise, this could look like getting injured from jumping in too quickly, not prioritizing our form, and progressing at a rate we are not strong enough for because we saw someone else do it. With food, it could look like following a very strict and restrictive meal plan without learning the basics of why we’re eating and avoiding certain foods, giving up very quickly, and damaging our relationship with food. 

Thankfully, Cosmos was willing to see this perspective and was deliberate and intentional with his movements of coming to a stop on both feet, keeping the ball up high, looking at his target on the backboard, and following through on his shot. Once he was able to slow down, focus on the steps in front of him, and not worry about the rest, he was seeing his desired results much more quickly.

It is easy to get distracted when we break things down and take them slowly. We must not do this. We must dial in our focus even more and pay even greater attention to build the strongest foundation we can. Only after a strong foundation is created can we begin to build upward with the confidence of improvement, longevity, and exponential growth. Without a strong foundation, we are bound to crumble back to the beginning, feel a sense of failure, and have a much more difficult time coming back to this goal and being successful in the future. 

Xoxo

Coach Maggi