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Every week I will go Live and talk about some idea, some thought, some small improvement that you could make in your life that could possibly help you in your fitness, work outs, lifestyle habits, nutrition, really anything and everything.
If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that everything is connected. Because of this, if we can make tiny little improvements in one area of our lives, we can see that ripple out and we can possibly enjoy some of the benefit of that improvement in other areas of lives as well.
The goal of it all is continuous improvement. What is continuous improvement? Constantly making little adjustments and little improvements.…think 1% better every day…so that over time you look around and you realize, “wow, I’m in a completely different place and I didn’t even realize that I was really making that big of an adjustment to my normal daily habits.” But why just small improvements? Why not just go big and make the changes we want right away?
There is a lot of research that shows that when we are faced with challenges and things that take us outside of our comfort zones, and when these things are sudden and drastic and big, that there’s a part of our brain that gets stimulated…the amygdala. The amygdala processes sudden, drastic changes in our environment and lives as a threat to our survival. Long ago, sudden drastic changes would often mean a life or death situation. If you were out on a walk to get water and you suddenly ran into a saber-toothed tiger, that would be life or death. The amygdala would then stimulate your fight or flight response.
Imagine how this can affect your goals today. For example, starting a new diet. You could decide that one day you are going to change your diet…no sugar, no dairy, no grains, no processed foods. That’s great, but if you’re coming from eating a standard American diet that is typically filled with those types of things and then you suddenly say you’re going to cut it all out tomorrow…that’s sudden and drastic. The amygdala reads that as a threat to your survival and then you’re in fight or flight mode.
If we can instead make tiny improvements and little changes every day that are so small that they don’t register in the amygdala, then it’s almost like we don’t even know we’re doing it. We can keep making these small changes and then all of a sudden down the road we’ve reached our goal or our new plane of existence.
Continuous improvement will bring changes that are small and done slowly over time in a natural progression, which will bring about sustainable lifelong changes rather than quick fixes that keep us just trying to see how long we can hold on for.
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