Motivation Monday: Nonaesthetic Progress

It sounds good in theory but tastes magnificent when it happens: lifting a heavier weight, going from 12 push-ups to 68, or the sensation of the palms of my hands touching the floor while keeping my legs straight in a forward fold. Ah, pure sweetness! It happened this weekend, after 2.5 years of yoga averaging one class per week my hands will touch the ground...not just my fingertips. I tell you life is different in that position.

I know we all want to workout and eat better to look slimmer in a pair of shorts but the truth is that the overwhelming empowerment of accomplishing a physical fitness milestone is a rush. It's the feeling that all the little steps worked. I've never had the time to realistically make it to my favorite class more than once per week so I know I have to allow myself years of practice in order to keep having these fun moments of what I call "nonaesthetic progression.

Be on the lookout and pay close attention to the physical fitness progress that's made. Maybe it's being able to complete a mile a little bit faster than previously recorded. It's anything that we're getting better at because we continue to plug along. Sadly many of us have days or weeks where we don't see any progress, it's just realistic to see this happen. The psychology of not seeing any progress when hard work happened over and over again is incredibly common. Unfortunately sometimes we throw in the towel just before our body catches up to what we are doing to give us that shiny result we'd been longing for. Motivation this week is to keep plugging away. It will work.  It has to, its science!  (And yes to answer the question we all are thinking, I do have pants on in this picture, just cropped out the hips and the shorts I had on)