Sunday Story…80/20%

There is an old saying that 20% of your efforts will yield 80% of your results. This is known as Pareto’s principle. This law is probably named after some guy named Pareto who spent a lot of productive time studying other people’s productivity. Sadly this means that you are spending 80% of your time in non-productive pursuits, just spinning your wheels. Most of you already know this and I am not going to re-hash it here.

Last week and many previous weeks we have been talking about food. It is often said if you can be 80% compliant with your eating (and drinking) plan you will be OK. And that is true…if you just want to be ok. But it is in that last 20% where the magic lurks!

You see when you lapse that last 20% your body begins to expect those not so healthy choices to appear and it begins to dial down the optimum response. It is in that last 20% the part where you want to be where you are going to get the results that you really want.

I understand it is hard to stay on the path 100% of the time. But just do this math…if you get 80% of your results in that 20%...the extra effort of just 2% is going to yield massive results in proportion to the effort it takes. Your first 2% gets you very little but your last 2% are going to turn your world upside down.

What are we talking about here? In the course of 1 week you have 7 days of meals…if you are 80% then there will be 4 or 5 meals you will go off course. Instead of 5 “cheats” or not so great choices what would happen if you only had 3 meals like that? That would be an exponential improvement. And how hard would it be? It isn’t going to be any harder to make those choices…after all you are doing it 80% of the time and now those last 2 meals just aren’t that hard. And in those 2 meals you will find results greater than imagined.

We aren’t talking about perfection; we aren’t talking 100% compliance. We are talking about 82-85%. You can do that. You want to do that to have your results go from blah to Boom. Just 2 meals that’s all I am asking for.

One small change for a few weeks, a massive shift in results for your entire life.

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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Sunday Story…Food (again)

Yesterday the Hydrostatic Fat Testing truck showed up here. Many of us hopped into the tub and got our lean muscle mass measured (notice how I changed the wording on that?) Some people received a rather rude awakening and others a pleasant surprise. Hopefully, the results motivated you in some way to make some changes, especially around what goes on in your kitchen (and what goes in your body).

The problem most of us have is that we look at those changes as being on or off. I am on a diet or not. I am eating clean or not. I am doing Paleo or not. When I am on I am doing what I think I should. This will get you results but it won’t get you permanent results.

Increasing your lean muscle mass (and decreasing your fat %) is not a sometime proposition. It isn’t something that we do once and forget about. Once we get where we want to be we need to maintain it. You don’t fill your car up with gas just once do you? Or change the oil? You maintain your car regularly. You need to maintain your body regularly as well.

Rather than going ON a diet or eating plan, decide you are going to commit to nourishing yourself for life. Rather than just slogging through another 12 week challenge of abnegation and self-denial decide to explore and adjust the way you are eating. You don’t have to be perfect but you do need to learn what works for you and your loved ones. If something doesn’t work you learn what doesn’t work, it isn’t a failure, it is a learning experience.

By using this way of thinking you are deciding to make the effort to integrate your new habits with all of the other parts of your life. If your family always has Pizza on Friday night is there a way to make the pizza better, healthier, or something else? A tradition only becomes a tradition because you make it one. There was a time when you didn’t eat pizza on Friday night. So do something different…your family will still love you!

Find ways to enjoy the journey, embrace your new culinary skills, learn to love your fitness community, find a community that supports your goals rather than thinking fitness is something we do once like putting gas in the car, it is exactly like putting gas in the car…something we must do regularly and often in order to enjoy the life and the body we have been given.

On the concrete side:
Eat more protein
Eat more healthy fat
Eat less refined carbohydrates
Eat real food (all the time!)
I leave you with this:

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work … He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull in to Nome. — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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Sunday Story…Get it done

I have written about commitment before. Let’s face it…commitment is hard, held back by the twin demons of finite time and hard work (as in I don’t want to do it.) There is no way to success without commitment. There is no change without commitment. There is no goal that gets achieved without commitment.

Once we have committed to change some things are going to change in order to get what it is I say I want to get. You can’t stop drinking in a bar, starting a diet in an ice cream shop is ill-advised, and becoming fit isn’t going to happen sitting on the couch with your friends. You are going to need to change your environment and your time allocations.

So start with the easy stuff; look around you. Are you surrounded with people who are positive and supportive of your goals? Is your life filled with people who, even if they won’t join you, will be on the sidelines cheering for you? If not you are going to have to fire those people. You need to be in an environment that raises you up, not pulls you down.

When we look at time the mistake so many of us make is to add the new thing. This is a huge error. You need to subtract something to make room for the new things. Trade television watching for your new work out time. We all get 168 hours a week. There are some things you must do…sleep, eat, and work. If you are going to be truly committed you are going to have to take the carving knife out and cut something out to make room for the new ones. Be brutally honest with yourself but there are sacrifices to be made on the way to getting your goal achieved.

Environments are going to need to shift. If it is fitness you are after you need to spend some time in the gym, on the road, in the pool. You can’t avoid it but if you think you are going to knock out a 40 minute workout in the corner bar, you are kidding yourself. You need to create an easy path to success. Clean eating takes planning that is going out the window as soon as you are tired from working a 12 hour shift and that double mocha macchiato with a cupcake calls your name because you failed to prepare a meal in advance. You can’t change by wishing it so, it is going to take planning and making sure you set up an environment of support.

You are going to need to do the work…the down and dirty work. When the alarm goes off, when it is time for class, when practice is scheduled you strap on your grown up pants and go get it done. You need to start. You don’t have to be great or perfect to start but you have to start. It won’t always be fun and sometimes it will suck but you do it in the face of no guarantee of success. You do it because it committed to doing it. You do it because you made the time to do it. You do it because you planned on doing it.

Want success? Be committed. Follow that commitment with a blueprint for making it work. Cut out stuff to make time for new, more important stuff. Set yourself up for success by doing advance planning. Get down in the trenches and do the work.

This will not be easy, there is going to be sacrifice, struggle and pain. It isn’t going to come any other way. But there is no time other than now to begin. Slaughter the unnecessary, slash the time with impunity, create new by removing the old and do the work.

You can beat mediocrity. You can be better. You can change your life. You can change the world.

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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Sunday Story…It's Duckie

A friend of mine used to gauge interest in something by what was known as the “duck” index. This index was very simple…think about a small child, maybe 4 or 5 years old, who is at a pond where there are lots of ducks. And the child is feeding the ducks pieces of bread and laughing and giggling and loving every second of the experience. Watching a child do this is an expression of unbridled joy and happiness. So when an activity is high on my “duck” index I am all in for the experience.

If you think back on your life you have had some experiences that were pretty darn high on the “duck” index. Skydiving was like that for me the first time. When I stepped out of that airplane in the first milli-second my “duck” index was off the chart. In the seconds before that my heart was in my throat, though.

This is often the case with things that elicit a high response. There is some fear and trepidation before going stepping off the ledge…whatever the ledge it for you. The ledge could be asking out that person you have wanted to ask out for so long. The ledge may be signing up for a race, or a class, or committing to a goal. The fact is simple: if it doesn’t scare you a little it isn’t big enough, hard enough, or challenging enough.

Living a life of mediocrity, of average experiences is not going to move the needle on the “duck” index. You need to find things that are going to hit your “duck” index. Things that excite and scare you. Things that when you finally get done you will know they have a permanent residence in your memory banks.

I don’t need the video from my skydiving excursion to remember it. There is a tape I can play in my head at any time. My walk to work this morning I forgot before I was here. No “duck” index on this one.

Find your “duck” index…your “heck yeah” factor. Call it whatever you want but find it. Then find experience that will put that index over the top. It is passion that will fuel your life and success. It is being a little (or a lot) scared right before you jump that will get your life out of the mundane and into the extraordinary.

Do something today that will raise your “duck” index. Have fun with it!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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