Elements of Successful Progression

I saw an ad this morning for Nature’s Bounty Hair, Skin, and Nail Gummies with Biotin. 

This is a special kind of garbage, but it highlights an aspect of America that sometimes gets in the way of our achieving amazing things.

Quick Fix Culture

We live in a Quick Fix Culture.

We want a solution immediately and we will pay for it.

We will take a pill or chew a gummy that’s going to give us something we might not (yet) have the determination and patience to achieve for real.

The quick fix is a false god and the enablers like the one mentioned above are making a buck by exploiting our indolence and vanity.

Nature’s bounty does not come in a bottle. 

With health and fitness especially, most quick fixes are not real and behaviorally, they are terrible, as they prevent intrinsic motivation and identity development.

Meanwhile, we can get healthy and fit at almost any age from almost any condition, but it won’t be a pill that gets us there.

It requires progression from contemplater to novice to intermediate to expert.

Making Real Progress

Progression is the process of advancing and a hallmark of growth.

Anyone who has become proficient or expert at anything was once a beginner. 

Indeed, there was a specific moment sometime in the late 60’s when Michael Jordan picked up a basketball for the very first time - a moment that occurred in the world just before he’d ever taken a shot or even dribbled.

We can employ the elements of progression to accomplish amazing things that seem almost impossible before we get started.

A series of small gains over an extended period of time is critical to building and maintaining fitness but this gradual path is often overlooked or misconceived.

Progression brings the truth to this world of false gods and nature’s bounty.

I’m going to break down some of the elements which foster progress but first a word about achieving health and fitness goals when they might seem unattainable.

When we have a long road ahead that road might seem daunting. Maybe we’d love to lose 50 or 100 pounds. Maybe we’d like to run a 5k but we can’t even walk one yet.

Keeping the elements of progression in mind provides reference points on our journey and level sets our expectations.

They provide insight and guidance for those who seek to advance across a spectrum from narrow skills like 5K speed to broader life progressions like gaining metabolic health. 

They are not all mandatory to progression. Some of us excel at certain items and neglect others. There are no perfect formulas.

The Elements of Effective Progression

The elements of progression are interrelated and some flow into each other. This is a preliminary list. Please feel free to contact me with ideas or things I might have missed. Here we go…

Grit

This is one of my favorite elements for almost anything worth doing. 

Grit is this capacity to dig down when life is tough or the chips are against us and to hang in there, persevere, and accomplish.

It is a foundational element of progression and almost all success in this world.

There are people out there who never exhibited grit before or who don’t even realize they have it, who wake up one morning and decide they’ve had enough or they got scared by a doctor, or their spouse left unexpectedly, or they got fired, or whatever - and they discover their grit.

I love these people.

This happens all the time and it is almost never too late. I am sure there are 80 year-olds who just discovered their grit. 

Respect, gratitude and praise to everyone finding their grit!

Time

Progression takes time. It is an extended commitment.

Unsustainable diets and “60 day abs” are subject to give backs.

Durable health gains occur over months and years. 

Occasionally, we make large gains in a short period but most of the time we make small gains repeatedly.

Sometimes, we plateau for months or get injured and take steps backward.

It takes time to make progress and achieve amazing things. No quick fix. So sorry.

Time Perspective

Related to time but with important distinctions > Time perspective is a cognitive capacity to imagine, consider, and plan for the future.

If we want to go from walking a mile to running a 10K, we’re going to need to possess long-term time perspective.

We’ll want to pull out a calendar and plan milestones along the way.

I use bridge building as a great example of a developed sense of long term time perspective.

To build a bridge it takes the architect years of study, intensive and time consuming planning, and then years to build.

This is similar to building enduring good health.

Visualization and Goal-Orientation

Being able to visualize a goal, whether broad like attaining metabolic health or specific like doing 20 good pull ups, unlocks goal-oriented action.

If we have an idea of the destination, we can set a path that is more clear and more direct.

We can define a goal and visualize our successful future state vividly.

The journey of a 1000 miles begins with Google Maps… (Apologies to Lao Tzu, lol)

I wrote more about visualization here.

Break Things Down Into Increments, Achieve Amazing Things

Progress often requires breaking things down into discrete steps. We can achieve amazing things with modest milestones to shoot for along the way.

For those planning to run a half marathon in under two hours, maybe we start by running 5 miles in 50 minutes, then 6 miles in 59 minutes, then 7 miles in 67 minutes, etc etc etc.

I am shooting for this particular goal and the last time I ran a half, 5 years younger, I was more than 11 minutes slower than my goal this time around.

But I am getting a little bit faster with every weekly long run and I am setting incremental milestones.

Know-How

Sometimes, we attempt to make progress and fail not for lack of effort but because we don’t know how or, maybe worse, we’re operating on bad information (or gummies).

We see this a lot with people trying to lose weight. There is so much bad information about sustainable weight loss even from sources that should be reliable like our own government.

Sometimes progression requires research, trial and error, and/or false starts while we discover and learn the effective information critical to the path forward. 

Pace

This is a tricky one because everybody is different and there are many factors that affect the pace at which we progress. 

We want to move ahead without injuring ourselves, running out of gas too soon, or losing momentum.

Some people are naturals or super ready to make a change and progress quickly while others take three steps forward and two steps back.

There is no right answer except, perhaps, to accept our own progression, remembering that we will have setbacks along the way and that some will go faster than we go while others will go slower.

Role Models 

Whatever we want to achieve, there are people who have done it already and they might serve as role models and teachers. Sometimes these role models share their knowledge generously.

Find these people, learn from them, and let them inspire.

JT had a huge influence on me going from two to eighteen pull ups.

If you have something health-related you would like to progress towards but do not know of any role models, hit me up in the comments, by replying to this newsletter, or @reply me on Twitter and I might be able to help you find people.

Community

Related, finding a group of people who have made the progress you seek to make is priceless.

A profound example of this is Alcoholics Anonymous where those making the effort to stop drinking forever can find others who have succeeded and who are intent on sharing their wisdom and providing support as a step in their own continued recovery progression,

Humility

Making progress in any worthwhile endeavor will humble us along the way. If we approach the path with humility, it will make those moments a little bit less painful and less likely to derail our journey.

Progression and the Theory of Relativity

I will never be Michael Jordan or John Coltrane at anything. It doesn't matter.

The path we take is ours alone. Progression is personal and relative. 

We are measuring ourselves against our prior selves, nobody else.

The Three Things

If we are making progress towards anything, even if it is not health related, there are three ingredients that improve performance.

Rest, Nutrition, and Movement.

I will be writing more about the three things and improved performance in the next few weeks.

Self-Discovery

As mentioned above, sometimes we don’t realize we are capable of doing amazing things. We recognize this in all kinds of ways but I love the words of Theodore Rethke,

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Patience 

Patience is last but definitely not least. We must be willing to allow time to pass as we progress, sometimes bit by bit, sometimes taking two steps back, sometimes learning hard lessons, and sometimes following a circuitous route.

Embracing that it might take a while can decrease the risk of giving up prematurely.

A Note

None of these elements are mandatory

There are people with incredible grit who lack time perspective. Etc. These are some of the critical elements of successful progression but they are not mandatory.

Also, I’m sure I have left some elements out so if you think of something that seems like a good one please let me know.

Failure as Part of the Progression

In my last post of 2021, I set some goals for this year. One of them was to do 20 good pull ups on my 55th birthday. 

Monday was my birthday and I attempted 20 but managed only 18.

However, on the road to failure, I did more pull ups than I ever did before and did not get injured. 

Also, I re-upped my goal for 20 on next year’s birthday and I might increase that to 25 if I get 20 before the end of this year.

Things that seem impossible when we are just getting going can be achieved. 

It happens all the time.

Applications

The Elements of Progression can be applied across different scopes from the narrow like increasing how fast we can run a 5K or how many push ups we can do to the broad like improving metabolic functioning.

It can also be applied to things that are not health related like building bridges or becoming a saxophone virtuoso.

A Meditation on Progression

When I am preparing for a new progression whether it is narrow and skill based or broad and identity-focused, I use the following meditation.

You can choose any subject you like. I might choose John Coltrane.

Sometime in the early 1930s, there was a day that was the day before John Coltrane picked up a saxophone for the first time.

I imagine Coltrane as a boy in that moment in detail just before he became even a novice, the moment before he ever learned to hold a horn, blow a single-reed instrument, or play a major scale.

This moment was real. It occurred in history and I can picture it in my mind and then the days and years which followed as he practiced, learned, discovered his own personal genius, and shared it generously and spiritually with the world around him.

I imagine Trane’s progression from novice to intermediate to expert to genius and his path taken along the way.

There is a moment before any of us are novices at anything, before we try something for the first time when we have only begun to contemplate or consider the possibilities.

Maybe it’s a moment filled with fear or excitement or dread or anticipation or boredom. 

Maybe we are daunted because the challenge seems big and yet, whether we realize it or not, we have already made initial progress.

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Have a great day everybody.