Do it and Do It a Lot

One of the hardest lessons to learn, since starting my weight loss, was to put progress on the back burner and just focus on racking up another day.  If you derive all your motivation on what the scale says, if your bench goes up, if you've logged more miles, or if your sales have gone up your motivation can come to a screeching halt if you plateau or see a decline.  Everything that was carrying you diminished and now you're left just trying to grit your teeth and move forward.  The mountain seems taller, the road longer, and you're wondering if that's as far as you'll go.

Occasionally, it feels a lot like this

The trick?  Focus on consistency, and take pride in everything you do.  The idea is you have to keep your focus secure on your goals, but at the same time you need to let your eyes relax and unfocus a bit and find satisfaction in a number of different things (try to look at all you've done all at once).  If it's working out, take satisfaction that although you might of not had a great workout you still got your ass out of bed and didn't break your stride.  Your weigh-in might of not been as great as you were hoping, but time marches on, and if you keep at it you will see the results you want.  Other times, you have to look at the distance traveled and you can't always bank on how far you've come recently. The sweet taste of progress can bring you to the heights of self-satisfaction and pride, but it can also sour the taste of your other accomplishments "who cares? if I logged my food for 5 months straight, I lost 35 pounds!"  You can end up putting your goal on such a high pedestal that you never see all the other pieces it took to make it work.

Insert out-dated 40 Year-Old Virgin joke here

As time goes on, and that consistency starts to pay off, the results will show, and you won't have to rely on the scale to keep pushing you forward, it's now second nature.  This applies to all things.  By finding all those little morsels of satisfaction, to keep you moving forward, you help ensure your own success.  Take pride in your journey and the destination will find you soon enough.

It's so much more important to be in the gym, hitting the pavement, doing your research whatever it may be than hounding the scale, grades, or miles to see if it's all worth it.  Enjoy the goddamn journey, be happy that you're doing it, and stop letting the results motivate you.  Now get to work! and if you learned ANYTHING you better be doing it tomorrow as well.

Keep moving forward and you can accomplish anything.