Commit The Rest of Your Life To Get Better

They say you have to get better everyday to see improvement. 

I would like to tell you, "No, you don't". 

I really don't think everything in life is a linear progression, where we can always climb against the gradient, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. It is just unrealistic. There is no way you can always get better every single day. Sure you can for the first few days, especially when you are taking a huge step forward. Eventually, your progress will stall. When it stalls, it is what you choose to do that matters most.

Take weightlifting as example. When you first start working out in a gym, you will gain noticeable amount of muscles. At this point, you are experiencing "newbie gains". Your strength will shoot up rather quickly. All is well until one day you step into the gym, and you pick up the weight and say to yourself, "Shit, why can't I lift this?" or maybe you stop progressing. You either lift the same weight as you did last week or worse, you have to scale down the weight. At this point, you plateaued. What you choose to do at this point matters. Will you quit? Will you take a de-load week? Will you continue to push through and potentially injure yourself? Your decision matters. If you quit, I am sure you don't treat everything in life seriously. If you continue to push through and potentially injure yourself, what you do during recovery matters. Even the time you come back from injury too. Will you continue to hit the gym? Or are you too afraid to step foot in it anymore? However, if you take a de-load week, it certainly is the wisest choice among the three of them. You still hit the gym, train with lighter weights, rewiring your Central Nervous System (CNS). You take a de-load until you feel you are ready to get back at it. No fixed time period. This is what top tier athletes usually do. When they plateaued, they rest. They rest until they feel like it, come back and push themselves harder than ever. Plateaued again? De-load. They know it will never be a linear progression. 

This should resonate with what is happening in each and every single one of your life. 

There are times when you just don't feel like it, you find it hard to push yourself. Hell, even moving is a demanding task. When you really hit the wall, you rest. You just cannot expect everything you do in life is always going to be a linear graph. It is most likely to be a parabola graph. You reach the summit of your life, suddenly you fall off. It is okay if that happens. Reflect on your mistakes, think of what you can do to prevent the same mistake from happening. 

Not everyday has to be going against the gradient. Some days, it could be keeping constant. Some days, it could be going down the gradient. 

Why set a time frame for yourself when you don't know what is going to happen next? One thing you do and should know however is that as long as you are breathing, you must aim for improvement and betterment. It doesn't have to be everyday, It doesn't have to be 1% better each day. It can be 0.01%. That is still an improvement. Celebrate your small achievement. 

Baby steps matter, for it is the formula to reach the summit of your life.