“You have complete control over the direction that the rest of your life takes.”
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
Both of these quotes are simple, yet quite powerful. Both are taken from the first chapter of The Slight Edge (though the second quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson). I don’t know about you, but I have spent a lot of time stressing over the direction my life did not take. Beating myself up over the mistakes I’ve made and the successes I could have had, if only….
If only I had started contributing to my retirement fund sooner, I could have a lot more money now.
If only I had chosen a different major in college, I could have found a job I actually enjoyed rather than bouncing from one dead-end job to another.
If only I hadn’t been so reserved and shy all the time, I could have made more connections and had more friends at this point in my life.
If only…
This could go on and on for many of us, each of us with our own personalized list. But the first quote above notes something very important: no matter where you are right now, you can choose how tomorrow—and the rest of your life—will look. You can’t change the past and you can’t get back time lost, but you can change course.
As I read this book I appreciate how clearly Olson explains his philosophy, the philosophy of the slight edge. So often people are looking for a quick fix to a problem that took months or years to create. It is an important lesson to remember—there are no quick fixes and no shortcuts for creating a great life. A great life is created by the little things we do each day. It is the little things we do every day that make a huge impact on our lives over time.
Consistency is Key
For example, if I only have a small amount of money in my retirement account, that isn’t an issue that happened overnight. It happened because of choices I have made over the last twelve years of my working life. Thus, it won’t take only a month or two to correct this issue. It will take consistent effort over the next twenty-five years to get my retirement account to where I want it to be. And just say I had done everything right and started contributing aggressively to a 401K in my first job out of college; that effort would make a big difference only if I did it every month. It wouldn’t have helped that much if I only did it for a year and then stopped.
Over and over again as I read this book I am reminded that consistency is key. In any area where we want to achieve success in our lives, we must maintain consistency. The people who have beach bodies don’t work out a few times a year. The people who have a successful business don’t just work on it a few hours a week. The people who become bestselling authors don’t write just a few times a month. All of these accomplishments—a beach body, a successful business, a bestselling book—take consistent effort over many months and even years.
This leads me to look at my own life and question where I need to implement more consistency, and how I can do that. It is all well and good to read these principles and recognize their truth, but we each have to figure out how to set these truths into action in our own lives or they will be essentially worthless.
Recently I heard someone revise the old adage that “knowledge is power,” and instead say that knowledge put into action is power. This was powerful to me because I have spent years listening to and reading inspiration material but I haven’t always thought intentionally about how I can apply the principles to my own life in a tangible way.
Having a baby has made my routine life rather unpredictable. Four months ago I was feeling completely overwhelmed, like I would never have time for anything again besides cleaning blowouts, breastfeeding, laundry, and trying to soothe a fussy baby down for naps or bedtime. How could I find time to exercise or read or cook healthy meals or clean the house or send my loved ones birthday cards or even dress in regular clothes every day (and not my oversized sweatpants)? These are just a few of the things I still wanted to be able to do but they felt nearly impossible. The if only question began circulating in my head at that point.
If only my baby took better naps, I could get more done.
If only he didn’t fuss so much when I put him in his bouncer, I could get in a workout.
If only I’d had a baby earlier in life, I would have more energy to get things done.
But those if onlys will inhibit my ability to find positive solutions for the challenges I am facing in my efforts to get things done. So I made a pact with myself to stop thinking in those terms. Instead, I’ve done a few things to shift the way I think about these challenges.
Reframe Challenges
First, I accepted that my life is going to look different than it did before I had a baby. This sounds glaringly obvious but in the first weeks after I had my baby I struggled to accept just how much my world had changed. You hear that it’s going to happen; you know that it’s going to happen. But nothing fully prepared me for the reality of it. Over many weeks of struggling I realized I needed to embrace my new normal and not expect life to look like it did before. I wouldn’t always be able to clean the kitchen immediately after we ate a meal. I wouldn’t always be able to go to bed early because sometimes my son had bad nights. I wouldn’t always be able to go to the gym four days a week because sometimes my husband would get home later than planned and my window of opportunity would be gone.
Sometimes we need to step back from a situation and ask ourselves what we can change but also what we need to accept. Accepting the reality of a situation does not equal defeat. Just because I realized my main focus had shifted to my baby didn’t mean I could never find time to do anything for myself again. It did mean I had to readjust my expectations and look for ways to still focus on myself from time to time.
Second, I identified what issues would be most important to address. For example, as the weeks passed by I saw a pattern where my son was napping less and less during the day. I knew that until I got him in a good pattern with his daytime naps, I wasn’t going to have time to do anything productive. And he wasn’t rested. It was a lose-lose situation. So I began reading up on sleep training and gathering advice from multiple moms on the topic. For the past three months I have stuck to a consistent nap schedule for him.
Before this decision, I didn’t really have any structure to my day. I had always naively assumed that babies would start to fall asleep on their own when they were tired. That might be the case when they are three weeks old, but that is not always the case when they are three months old. Now, even though my son still doesn’t take long naps most of the time (I am still trying different techniques to increase his nap times), I know that I have a routine for him and it is helpful for both of us. He now knows that when I read him Happiness Is and sing “You are my Sunshine,” it is time for a nap. Granted, he still fights me some days, but we have made progress.
Third, I made a commitment to focus on the little things I could do every day to make my life better, easier, and more successful. For example, I made a commitment to myself to exercise at least five times a week. That exercise commitment might look different from day to day—for example, some days I am able to get in a full hour workout, including a weight session plus abs and cardio, while other days I do a twenty-minute HIIT session. (This is where I draw from lesson one—accept that my life is going to look different than it did before having a baby.)
Yesterday, my son was more fussy than usual and half of my workout was done with him in my arms. I would do a set of squats with him and then set him down to do a set of dumbbell rows. I would do a set of lunges with him and then set him down for a set of should presses. Rather than focus on the length of my session, which used to be roughly an hour every time I exercised, I focus on the doing of it, period. If it is the little things we do every day, if it is the commitments that we make to ourselves, then actually doing my sweat session is the most important part.
When I shifted my mindset, everything else began to feel a little easier. I have decided that I don’t want to look back someday on this period in my life and say if only to any situation I am facing right now. If only I had started that blog. If only I had made time to exercise. If only I had made time to read during some of my son’s naps.
I want to look back someday and feel grateful for the little things I did every day that brought me greater happiness, health, and skills.
