Just Start / "Walk Slowly - But Never Backwards"

Remember back in high school or college when you’d have to write a paper for an assignment? Even if it was just 500 words, starting the paper was always the hardest. I’m not alone in that feeling, right?

It’s interesting, because the same issue is often felt with any intimidating or daunting task we need or want to pursue in life.

Let’s say you’re looking to rehab your recent hip issue, wanting to lose weight, or make better eating choices. Most of us get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan. Giving ourselves some credit, we do well at setting out MOTIONS with our best interest in mind.

We do our research.
We buy the new Nike’s.
We look up ‘Healthy Simple 15 Minute Recipes Your Whole Family Will Love.’

But when it comes to ACTION, we generally falter after a few good college tries. This is the difference between motion and action.

Motions are strategizing, planning, and learning. And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much you do any of those things - they don’t produce results. Action on the other hand is what delivers an outcome.

Researching at-home exercises for your symptoms or looking up a provider to see for your hip issue isn’t going to fix it. But sitting down and doing the reps of rehab or scheduling an appointment is.
Buying those new Nike’s isn’t going to make you get into better shape. But actually stepping those fancy new kicks into the gym and putting in the work will.
Bookmarking hundreds of new recipes isn’t going to make you lose weight. But actually going to the store, buying the food, and learning how to fit it into your meal plans is going to be a good start.

Don’t get me wrong, motions are very useful. Sometimes we need to do them in order to generate more interest, experience, or knowledge before carrying out the action. But quite often people get stuck in this planning stage. They’re perpetually in motion yet never carry out the action. Constantly in a frenzy and seemingly getting a lot of stuff done but without any notable results or outcomes to speak of.

Maybe that’s because neurologically our brains feel a slight sense of accomplishment from succeeding in the motion? “Hey, at least I tried. Right?” Or maybe it’s because we’re hard-wired to be afraid of failure by taking action without knowing the result? All that’s going to do is either delay or enhance the inevitable failure.

So, what do we do?

As the title of this post says..

JUST START.

And when you do start. Keep going. Constant repetition is how we continue to grow and learn. More reps over time is the recipe to drive change.

I read this story from a book recently and I think it summarizes the importance of repetition very well:

“On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups. Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the "quantity" group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.

Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the "quality" group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.

At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learing from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.”

Woah. I LOVE that example. We need to practice and play ACTIVELY to learn. This is especially crucial when it comes to expanding our abilities in novel ways (things we aren’t familiar with.) We need to go through real-life situations where failure is - or could be - part of the experience.

It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing is perfect. Keep going.

Clinically, we see this all the time when we prescribe at-home rehab or corrective exercises. Our patients are so afraid of doing them wrong that they don’t do them at all. ANY repetitions is better than ZERO repetitions. Even if that means we’re doing them with sub-optimal quality. Because just like the photography students, you’ll actively explore the variables and internally learn what your system needs/wants with each repetition.

The drive to focus on ‘perfect form’ or ‘ideal posture’ isn’t necessary. We get stuck when we think that there’s such a thing as wrong or right ways to move. (Remember, we’re hard wired to fear failure!)

Rather, there’s varying degrees of right. This frees us of failure and opens us to learning novel strategies from not only our successes but our mistakes as well.

So what are you waiting for? GO START THE DANG THING!

And if starting the dang thing means scheduling that appointment with your provider you can do that here!