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Good Afternoon…

Today I am once again hanging out at the NFLF Fitness Center, sipping coffee and offering it free to anyone walking in the door.

The other night I was driving back from Manchester and listening to a podcast from the Northpoint Community church that was discussing how we can keep those important New Years resolutions. While I did not have any resolutions, I welcome ideas on how to maintain focus on goals I set for myself. Previously I have read books on creating habits and found them to be helpful, but new ideas are always welcomed. The podcast speaker talked about goals, such as better financial control, improved relationships, and better health and wellness. All of these are areas I would like improvement for myself, so the intro grabbed my interest.

I will share the link to the 3-part series, as I think it is great, but I want to discuss it from my prospective as a coach and trainer.

If you will, picture a large jar empty and this empty jar represents your goal, a resolution, or a habit you would like to create. Next to your empty jar is a large bag of marbles and these marbles represent the elements of your investment in your goal, resolution or habit.

Let’s focus on health and wellness, which could be various aspects such as, body composition, better running, injury prevention, or just better overall fitness. We understand (somewhat) it will take discipline, but let’s refer to it as consistency instead. When I am not hanging out at the NFLF Fitness Center, I work part-time at the YMCA as a personal trainer. I see fitness trends and not surprisingly the increase of those working-out from January 2nd was substantial. However, I have seen a steady decline of some of those new faces as we approach the ladder part of January. Already those goals of improved fitness are declining.

Back to our marble containers…

Success of resolutions, goals or habits require small incremental steps and as represented by the marbles. Initially the jar (our goal) is empty and needs a steady infusion of marbles in-order to develop the habit we desire. January 3rd, we hit the gym and drop a single marble into the jar, and we feel amazing, and back to the gym on Jan 5th and another marble makes an enjoyable clank as it hits the bottom of the jar. We are motivated!

The problem…

We have hit the gym a bunch of times, and we have a bunch of marbles in our jar, success. However, we now get on a scale to check our weight or we check out ourselves in the mirror and the results we desired at the start, are not there. A few marbles do not change anything, and our motivation to get to the gym on a cold evening wavers. We give the marbles to our kids to play with.

The solution…

A real change requires a single marble at a time and continuous cumulation of marbles into the once empty jar. Body composition, better mobility, improved functional strength, or whatever improvement we look for, comes with a consistency of little investments of those marbles. In time we realize our jar is half full of marbles and we also are noticing actual changes in our bodies.

Typical of many of us, we want to put 15 marbles in the jar at one time, by overdoing it at the gym right off. Not a good strategy, change needs to be a consistency of a single marble at a time. This is where NFLF wants to help. Our goal is to help people with a fitness program specific to them, insuring the best chance for success. We care about you and your empty marble jar. Come see us for a free workout and we will start a marble jar for you!

If you would like to hear the detailed podcast you can go to:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/better-part-1-do-this-one-thing-jeff-henderson/id262317288?i=1000427125902&mt=2

Or watch it at: http://northpoint.org/messages/better/do-this-one-thing/

These are both from the Northpoint Community Church and are Christian based.

Snow headed to us in the Northeast this weekend! Maybe I can get out my X-Country skis!

Have a great weekend!

God Bless