Less than.More than.Equal to.

Be the best version of yourself. That is the advice that I give to myself first and foremost. It is also the central principle that I look to instill in those individuals that partner with me for mindset coaching. We all nod in agreement when it gets brought up…then life happens.

I was thinking about something today as I found myself doing my strength work in the garage this morning. Here was my musing: sometimes we can do the required work for the day, sometimes we can do more than the required work, and sometimes we can only muster less than what is required. You can stop reading if you don’t believe this to be true.

As I did my strength work in the garage I thought to myself, today is a day when you do the required work and no more. I have a sick infant in the house and there’s a wicked cold front blowing in that’s wreaking havoc on my sinuses. I didn’t need to cut back on what my coach gave me to do, but the required amount of sets and reps would do just fine for today. Tomorrow is another day.

I firmly believe my logic to be sound. While doing my exercises, in the garage, by myself, it all made sense. If I am not careful however there are two things that can begin to question what I deemed to be a rational decision: comparison to myself on another day or comparison to someone else. Yep, I highlighted the word I need us to focus on…COMPARISON.

Be the best version of yourself…each day. Shot I left that out. Well but wait, it can still roll if we simply apply “be the best version of yourself”. Why you ask, well I am glad you did. How do you ultimately get to be the best version of yourself? Can you learn to multiply without first understanding addition and subtraction? Good luck with that. Can you become the senior leader on your team without first going though the bumps and bruises of life as a freshman? Not likely.

Each day builds upon itself. Consistency is the key. I often get asked the question about workouts not being challenging enough or the fact that “for a Cat. 1 you don’t really ride all that hard”. These thoughts come from a mistaken logic that implies that one day of tremendous gains would be better than much smaller gains made over the course of time.

Haven’t we all heard of the person that hits the gym on January 1st and annihilates every machine in the whole place, along with their bodies? How long does that person last going to the gym consistently? I’m sure you answered that question correctly. Workout Gyms live off of these kinds of folks who keep paying but eventually make more room for “steady Eddy” who can walk without limping from the gym everyday but hasn’t missed a workout in 4 months.

Back to my musing I had in the garage. There will be days when “the best version of yourself” is to actually back off a bit and live to fight another day. Don’t compare Monday to Tuesday or last year to this year. They couldn’t be more different. Don’t be discouraged with any action that you take towards meeting your goals and achieving success today. Quite frankly sometimes that may mean taking a day off completely from what it is that you do in order to be able to give your best the next day. Embrace it. The best version of yourself is ever closer with this mindset.

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