Do the Work

Progress doesn’t happen overnight.

If you want results — in any area of your life — you have to put in the effort.

Over the weekend, I hit a fitness goal that I'd been working toward since the end of February (check out the video at my Instagram @jchcoaching).

When I say I'd been working towards it since February, I mean I've been following a program, with workouts 6 days a week, that was specifically designed by my fantastic trainer boyfriend John Gaeta to help me reach that goal.

But I've also been training with kettlebells pretty regularly for almost 3 years. And I've been working out most days a week for more than 15 years.

It doesn't happen overnight.

And it only happens if you do the work.

Doing the work means focusing on the process, not the outcome. I was actually so focused on the routine and just doing the work that I wasn't even thinking about the goal until it was time to re-test it.

Many times, the outcomes are out of our control -- maybe we'll lose the weight, lift X amount, improve our time -- and maybe we won't.

I very narrowly missed hitting another goal last week as well, and even though I didn't hit the number I hoped for, I still set a personal best and feel good about my progress.

We tend to over-emphasize the end goal and under-emphasize what it takes to achieve it.

So many times, I've heard "I just can't seem to ______" or "I've tried everything and I still can't ______."

Many of those times, when I really got down to it, there was a lack of consistency. If you've "tried everything," it's likely that you didn't try them long enough for it to stick. If you just can't seem to get something done or achieve a certain goal, you might realize why when you take a hard, honest look at what you're doing (or not doing) on a daily basis to make it happen.

It's really hard to trust the process when you're not seeing the kind of immediate results that "quick fixes" have led you to expect. After all, it is Amazon Prime's world, and we have been trained to get what we want by tomorrow with free shipping.

I've seen plenty of people get frustrated by the lack of overnight results. Often they'll get mad and quit and blame it on the type of workout or the diet or their schedule or whatever.

Most of the time, the issue is the accountability. If you're working out once or maybe twice a week, that's absolutely better than not moving at all, but it will also take longer to reach your goals than if you were working out more frequently.

If you're eating healthy breakfasts and lunches but then overeating at dinner and snacking at night and drinking on the weekends, that's also going to limit your progress.

If your nutrition and workouts are on point but you're routinely sleeping poorly and getting fewer than 7 hours, yup, that's going to affect your results as well.

I could write an entire email about things that I finally achieved once I committed to working on them almost every day. Hip mobility? Deep squat holds after every workout until I worked up to one minute. Shoulder pain? Mobility 6 days a week for the last 14 months.

If there's something you want to accomplish -- health, fitness, work, you name it -- do the work. Not just every couple weeks, not only when it's convenient, not when you feel motivated, but consistently, day in and day out.

Focus less on the end result and more on the daily actions you can take to make it happen. And then keep going. Do the work, even when it's boring, or you don't feel like it, or when it's hard.

The hard stuff, the work, the consistency? That's what it takes. Luckily that's the part that's completely within your control.