Momentum

A few years ago, I was supposed to meet a friend of mine for lunch and she called to say she was running late.

When she eventually walked through the door, it was with an air cast around her right foot and lower leg.

“What happened?” was, of course, the very first thing out of my mouth.

“Stress fracture,” was her immediate reply, followed by, “Things may have gotten a little out of hand with my fitbit. But I was on a serious streak and I just couldn’t bring myself to take a break!”

I was on a streak…

I get that.

Streaks are funny things. 

If we can manage to draw the line before we get into, say, stress fracture territory, they can be damn powerful motivators, too.

My favorite meditation app, Insight Timer, has a feature where at the end of your practice, it shows you how many consecutive days you’ve meditated using the app. 

I get stupid excited when my consecutive days start piling up and there’s no way I’m going to bed without getting my meditation in and adding another day to the count.

I joined a fiction writing group at the start of the new year and began the leader’s recommended habit of putting a gold star on my calendar for every day that I meet my minimum word count goal on my book.

A literal, honest-to-god gold star. I’m totally not kidding.

And it’s working. 

The longer my streak goes, the more committed I become to not breaking it and the deeper the habit goes.

This book’s getting written, baby.

Because here’s the thing:

MOMENTUM IS FREAKING MAGIC.

Magic, I say. Magic.

One tiny little “win” keeps us motivated to get to the next little “win” and suddenly we’re unstoppable.

Maybe more importantly, we feel unstoppable. So we keep going.

And that’s how sh*t gets done.

Look, it can be really, really hard to get our balls rolling, whatever the ball might be at a given moment.  

Movement often requires us to start before we feel entirely ready. To dive in while we’re still intimidated or overwhelmed or not at all sure we can do whatever it is we want to do.

It requires us to take a big ol’ breath and give that ball a heave and a ho, and more often than not, all that effort gives us only the tiniest, barely noticeable movement.

But it does move.

And if we can let ourselves feel and enjoy that initial give, that tiny shift, we can draw on it for the next push. And the one after that. And the one after that.

And if we stay with it, suddenly we find the ball rolling more easily and we’re doing more steering than pushing.

Even better, that ball ends up a snowball, and we realize that the gravitational pull of all that movement has yanked other parts of our life with it, adding to the momentum.

I mean, think about the last time you had a great fitness streak going. Didn’t you find yourself sort of automatically eating healthier too? 

When we're seeing progress and movement happening in one part of our lives, we can’t resist the belief that it’s possible to see that kind of movement in other things as well. Because we are seeing it.

So here’s my invitation and challenge to you:

• Pick a goal you’ve been dancing around, some thing you’ve been struggling to gain some traction with. It can be anything from developing a gratitude practice to learning to speak Spanish to starting a blog to running a 10k. Any goal.

• Decide on a minimum that you can commit to that goal every day. Maybe it’s 5 minutes. Maybe it’s a certain number of words written. Whatever. But make it tiny. Ridiculously tiny. Because this is the minimal amount that you give to this goal every day and it has to be reasonable no matter what else is happening in your day.

• Do something toward that goal each day within that minimum. It’s okay if you give more, but you get 100% full credit for hitting your minimum. You hit your 10 minute minimum of Spanish in five 2-minute sessions while standing in lines during errands? Gold star for you! Which brings me to... 

• Track it. I’m a huge fan of the gold star myself, but whatever works for you. My recommendation is to make it something easily visible on a calendar- nothing says streak like a calendar page full of stars, yo!

• Don’t be deterred. You will miss days sometimes, because…ummmm…life, my friend. But those missed days just give you a good excuse to try to beat your last streak! If your longest streak so far is 2 days in a row, keep working toward 3. Then 4. It’s exciting to see the progress, and— here’s a secret— getting back to it when you’ve hit a bump in the road can feel like a pretty big “win” in and of itself, so take it! Take it and use that momentum to keep propelling you forward!

Try this and tell me about it. I want to know what goal has been nagging at you, won’t let you go, is demanding you pay attention to it. And I want to know what your minimum is. I want to hear about the ways you squeeze it in to your real, everyday life.

I’ve promised my book a minimum of 10 minutes a day or 250 words, whichever comes first. Then the gold star goes in my calendar. I’m 9 days into my longest streak and I feel on fire! I’m seeing the words pile up next to those gold stars and despite the long road ahead, seeing the progress that a tiny bit each day creates is unbelievably energizing.

So.

Let’s do this together.

Let’s get our balls on the move and start watching them pick up speed.

Momentum is magic, and we can make some starting right now.

Want help getting started? Want to give your “ball” a gigantic heave-ho with the help of another set of hands? I can help:

Stay curious out there, friends!