Years ago, I found myself caught in a constant loop of anxiety and depression. It felt so normal to me that I began to believe this was just who I was, something unchangeable, something I would just have to live with and get by. There were moments when a bit of light would shine through, but my rigid beliefs and inner stories held me back from seeking real solutions. I didn’t believe things like ADHD, anxiety, depression, or chronic pain could shift, at least not for me. That mindset kept me in a 9 to 5 job for far longer than I wanted. I couldn’t imagine having a business or supporting myself in a different way. It felt impossible, like that kind of freedom wasn’t really possible. I still see a lot of people that remain stuck just like I did for too long because they don’t really believe in the good possibilities and miracles. I still get stuck sometimes but I don’t live in that space and that’s the key. If you stay too rigid for too long you start to break down. Shake up your beliefs about what is true and new possibilities for life come into the picture. A miracle just might happen 🤙🏼

We become stuck because we wait too long to act on our ideas. It is so simple, but true. I used to sit on ideas for so long. Waiting for the right moment, waiting until I felt ready, waiting until I had it all figured out and…… nothing happened. I stayed stuck for years living a life filled with anxiety, depression, ADHD and pain because I wasn’t moving forward like I knew I could. The moment I started to shorten the time between when an idea arrived to when I took action on that idea, everything started to change. The energy moved. Momentum came in. Things actually started happening. So now, if an idea or inspiration activates and feels aligned, I just follow it and do it. What is one idea or emotion you’ve been sitting with that you want to move forward or release?

Five principles on consistency and sustainable progress, all backed by research and practice. If you go for broke you often end up broken. If you swing for home runs you often end up striking out. But if you just put the ball in play—over and over again—good things tend to happen. When it comes to health, well-being, and peak performance, quick fixes and heroic efforts are the common theme. They are exciting, enticing, and a whole lot easier to sell than slow and steady approaches to improvement, which can sound (and genuinely be) a bit boring. But here’s the thing: slow and steady is what actually works. According to 2017 data collected by the University of Scranton, only 9 percent of people stick to their resolutions for a full year. Most experience a stark decline: 27 percent of people fail their resolution after one week, 32 percent after two weeks, 42 percent after one month, 55 percent after six months, and then eventually all but 9 percent of people peter out by the end of the year. I suspect a big reason for this is that people overestimate what they can do in a day but underestimate what they can do in a year. Perhaps you are experiencing this right now with some of the changes you set out to make for 2022. What follows are five principles on consistency and sustainable progress, all backed by research and practice. - Heroic efforts tend not to end well—resist their allure. Pulling all-nighters, working out until you vomit, going on extreme diets, and so on may be fun to talk about, and they may even feel good for a bit, but these things usually end in illness, injury, or burnout. Ignore people’s social media posts on this stuff. These efforts are largely dumb (at best) and harmful (at worst). Yes, it is okay to go to the well every once in a while, but these exceptions prove the rule. Even most hard efforts should be repeatable. There is a big difference between comfortable (sustainable), comfortably uncomfortable (mostly sustainable), uncomfortably uncomfortable (can be sustainable in the right dose), and downright uncomfortable (very hard to sustain). For example, research shows that injury and illness tend to occur when volume and intensity of work suddenly goes up by a significant amount over the one-month trailing average. Though these sorts of empirical studies have largely been performed in sport, I suspect the same theme is true off the playing field, too.