Progress: More Than Just A Number

Written by: Kassandre Harper-Cotton

Taken from my online journal beginning March 7, 2007:
“3/07-posting the [progress] pictures publicly

5/07-seeing my legs get firmer and stronger and actually LIKING the way they look; being consistent with the workouts (5-6 times per week); with the help of this site, finding a diet plan that works for me

6/1-Ten pounds down and six inches off; twenty to go

6/11-sprinting @ 7 mph on the treadmill

6/27-back to pre-pregnancy weight of 173 lbs.

7/18-Hit the 160's!

7/28-Wore a swimsuit and felt good in it.

9/22-Hit the low 160's!

9/24-Got a personal trainer.

10/21-25 pounds off!

10/28-Wearing a size 8!”

Many articles have been written about the numbers not being used as the sole measure of our progress. Yet, we can still hinge our feelings, hopes, and dreams on whether or not that digital reading climbs just a bit too high. We can walk away feeling like a champion or feeling like our efforts were for naught. Progress can, and should be measured in many ways.

As I began taken care of my body, my changes were not only physical. They were mental, emotional, and even spiritual. Improvement in one area led to improvements in others. And I would not have been able to appreciate that if I had not made the conscious decision to ‘make it all count’. I knew there were going to be times that I faltered and made mistakes. But, I also wanted to highlight the positive choices that I was determined to make outweigh those times.

Learn These 5 Steps to Reach Your Full Potential

If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. Complacency kills and familiarity breeds contempt. Yet for many life becomes seeking security and safety, or as Pink Floyd puts it, becoming comfortably numb. But if life is anything at all it's about reaching our highest imaginable potential, or achieving what Abraham Maslow described as self actualization in his famous paper "A Theory on Motivation".

Where do you sit in the self actualization hierarchy? Be honest, because the answer has everything to do with the satisfaction you achieve in life. To reach the highest point of Maslow's hierarchy is to achieve our greatest expectation of self.

When we talk about goal setting, we're usually describing some personal attempt to move up the needs hierarchy, and how high we aim for has mostly to do with personal motivation and the sense that our lower needs have been fulfilled. 

And that's the catch.

Too many people get caught up in the lower hierarchy levels in a state of need. It's important to note that, as we move up the needs hierarchy, we progress from filling our own needs toward helping to fill the needs of others. Helping others is, in effect, the key to self actualization!

So how do we make this progression up the needs hierarchy? Below lists 5 important ways:

1) Define your highest calling

This is very personal and unique to each individual. Be your own CEO, define your personal self actualization based on what's important to you, not on what will please or impress others, including significant others. What personal gifts do you have to give away that will improve other's lives?

2) Quit wallowing in the self

That's the stuff at the bottom of the hierarchy. Abandon self pity. Love what you once thought of as discomfort. Accept that you're not supposed to be loved by everyone. Quit pretending life should be perfect. Maintain faith that ,as you grow in helping others, your basic needs will be fulfilled.

3) Gain necessary skills

As Steven Covey says, sharpen the saw. Gain the skills necessary for your self actualization. Read. Take classes. Get certifications and degrees. Speak on the subject. Write on the subject. Begin teaching others. Practice, practice, practice.

4) Set SMART goals

Set goals for your self actualization that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time sensitive. Write them down, put them on your refrigerator, live by them. Achieving these goals are literally the difference between a fulfilled life and an unfulfilled life.

5) Focus on goals, not on obstacles

Obstacles are what we see when we lose sight of the goal. Obstacles do not stop those who love their goals and their vision of self actualization. Love your goals more than you hate the obstacles by a factor of 10 and you will smash through any barrier.

We only get one shot at life. We owe it to ourselves and to those around us to be our best possible selves by overcoming our personal needs and by growing to serve others with our unique, personal  talents.

Wake up Call

Have you ever had a life wake up call? I had mine this week.

It seems that I've had a defect since birth that has slowly been destroying my left kidney over the course of my lifetime. I've known for a while that something wasn't right as the condition worsened and began revealing itself. So when the test results came in this week I was prepared for bad news.

It turns out that I have almost no remaining function from the left kidney, and options are limited. The good news is that my right kidney appears healthy and up to carrying the full load. The better news is that I have a new, evolving perspective on life.

My situation isn't life threatening, but it hit home hard anyway. For over five decades I've taken my health and fitness seriously, but I've also taken it for granted. I'm the man of steel. Indestructible. Something like major organ failure happens to someone else, not to me. I conquer the weight room, run bike and swim great distances, scale mountains. I'm invulnerable.

Wrong, dude.

I'm lucky because I have a backup kidney, but this is a close call beyond comfort. If a kidney can fail, so can something less dispensable like a heart, a brain, a liver, a central nervous system. It's a notification that we all walk the thin edge with our health, and even our very best efforts at living right provides no guarantees, and that each new dawn with a healthy body is a gift, not a right.

While it's easy to feel dismay and self pity, and to be sure I've had some of that, I'm thinking now of those who have had it much worse than me; my high school friend that overcame testicular cancer, a college friend that overcame colon cancer, former NBA star Wayman Tisdale who lost his leg, and then his life to cancer, the inspiration I got years ago from reading Lance Armstrong's book "It's Not About the Bike".

And even more, I've thought about my Dad, who's almost 80, still goes to work every day, and has had both his large colon and his prostate removed without missing a beat. More than that, he still gets excited every day about what he's working on and seems to continue milking the most from every single day.

I have a client who two years ago at a fairly young age had a sudden brain hemorrhage that almost took her life. After 24 months and two brain surgeries she was cleared to become physically active again and has been working out with me at Omni-Fit for about two months.  Her resilience and determination has been impressive, and I think now I understand why our paths crossed - she was sent to me as a helpful message about what was about to come in my own life and how to deal with it, and I'm grateful for that.

So the surgeries start for me this coming week, if all goes well I'll only have two of them, and then? In the past I may have said that I'll return to a normal life, but I realize now what a shame that would be. This humbling experience would be a waste if I didn't learn more from it, that life is a gift, that we get one shot, and that it can be over in a blink, without warning, and maybe that leading a normal life isn't acceptable anymore.

Thank God for wake up calls.

Health and Fitness Evangelism - Share the Love

Other people – people you may care deeply about – need you to get them started on their own personal health and fitness journey. As a member of the fitness community you will have an obligation to share the love with others.

In his classic book The Tipping Point on viral networking (a great book, by the way), author Malcolm Gladwell describes “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable”. Gladwell leverages the tipping point concept from physics and applies it to how ideas travel and become accepted in a society. In physics, the tipping point describes how a relatively small amount of weight added to a balanced object can cause it to suddenly and completely topple.

We need to completely topple society’s existing paradigms regarding health and fitness, and it starts with each one of us going out among our friends, our families, our neighbors, and our associates and informing them that, regardless of their past or of their current situation, few limitations exist on our ability to realize the greatest levels of health, fitness, and strength that we’ve ever known.

7 Reasons Why Workouts Fail You

While literally millions of people workout, very few realize true workout success. Most dabble in the gym on and off, never getting results. They quit working out, usually under a myriad of excuses along the lines of being too busy or of disappointment that "they're just not seeing results".  Below are seven common reasons why workouts fail:

1) No clear goals - If you can't measure it you can't manage it. Too many people head into the gym with either no thought of what they're trying to accomplish or vague goals of "losing weight" and "toning up".

What to do: Be specific and write it down. If the goal is weight loss or body fat loss, identify how many pounds or the target weight, the time element, and what you'll do every day to make it happen. If it's muscle gain, identify things like desired bicep and chest measurements or one-rep max increases.

2) Motivation is missing - motivation has two key elements: a) possessing a goal that is deeply meaningful to you, and b) feeling mostly in control of the outcome.  If motivation is missing from your workouts, examine these two factors and identify what's missing. Why do you care about your goals? Do you feel you can make them happen or do you need help?

Improve Your Physique with Muscle Balance and Flexibility

We tend to think of our skeletal systems as what keeps us upright and erect, after all they’re the most rigid part of our bodies. But it’s our muscles, not our skeletal system that makes this happen. In fact, our skeletal system is simply the framework that our muscles attach to in order to work.

To be sure, our bone health is critically important, and an added benefit to resistance training is increased bone density, but our skeletons, and thus our bodies, are nothing without a very strong, flexible muscle base.

Yoga instructors often talk about not “settling into your joints” meaning that our muscles should carry our weight, not our joints. This is really a key concept in understanding the importance of a strong muscle base. For most of us, our joints have several decades of use on them, and if our muscle base is allowed to decline then the joints must bear more weight, stress, and wear.