Imperfect action
Apply this to all areas of your life
Without a doubt one of the biggest mental barriers holding people back is perfectionism. Some people identify more as being ‘all or nothing’ but it’s essentially a very similar outcome - If I can’t do it perfectly then there is no point and I am not going to do it at all.
The problem with this is that it simply doesn’t work.
It doesn’t get you results. Not in fat loss, not in any area of life.
I work with a lot of coaches now on my mentoring program AFM (if you’re a coach that’s reading this and you’re ready to get out your own way and build your business so you can help more people click the link) and I see the exact same pattern - oh I can’t post at peak time with the perfect reel that changes location every 3 secs and I don’t have my mic with me so I won’t post at all.
You’ll be surprised how far you get in business, body composition and life when you take the ethos of imperfect action. I would like to think I am testament to that!
I stay in pretty good shape year round while building numerous businesses and I can tell you - absolutely nothing I do is anywhere near perfect. If I tried to make every podcast perfect I certainly wouldn’t be putting out 5-6 a week consistently every week over numerous platforms & if I only worked out on the days I had an hour to spend at the gym I would get exactly 0 sessions done per week.
But enough about me I want to show you the results you can achieve with way less input than what you might expect… as long as you are consistent and the key to that consistency is… you guessed it.. IMPERFECT ACTION!
Example 1: Steps.
Many people come to me very inactive & with a lot of fat to lose.
and I cannot emphasise this enough:
if all you do is increase your steps this has incredible benefits to your health and RISK OF DEATH!
Look at this graph.
The steep gradient shows the HUGE health benefit of the first 7,000 ish steps you do per day.
After that, more is still better but the improvements per extra steps reduce significantly.
You don’t need to be anywhere near perfect to improve your health… in fact the closer you get to ‘perfect’ the less improvement you see.
You get the double the benefits from your first 5,000 steps compared to your next 5,000.
& so there is even more point doing an extra 10min walk around the block if you’re no where near your step target for the day.
You don’t need to be anywhere near perfect to improve from where you are…
It’s pretty insane that for most people who are giving up because they can’t do it perfectly there is this HUGE gap between what you’re doing now and the ‘perfect’ diet and exercise plan.
Yet we still have an in built go to of ‘well if I can’t do it like the plan then there is no point’
THERE IS EVERY POINT. There is literally MORE point the further away from ‘perfect’ you are.
The less active you are - the more benefit you’ll get from increasing your activity.
The worse your diet is - the more benefit you’ll get from improving it.
Not exercising at all? Great, you’re going to get a huge benefit from just 60mins of exercise A WEEK - look.
Anything in the direction of improvement is progress & time is going to pass anyway - focus on the direction and not on the speed.
Start approaching your goals like this: Any action in the direction of my goal is progress.
Consider it like this..
If you had a savings goal you wouldn’t think… my goal is save £100 a month so if I am not doing that this month there is no point saying the £50 I have..
ANY action in the direction of your goal is like money in the savings account but this savings account is your health (way more important than money).
& the extra interesting part is that the closer you get to that ‘perfect’ plan or to your savings goal the less important it is.
E.g. the different between having 0 savings and £500 in the bank is a lot.
The difference between 9,500 and 10,000 is technically the same £500 but it’s now far less impactful.
Much like the first 5,000 steps you do are more impactful than the next 5,000 steps.
Take home:
IMPERFECT ACTION consistently gets you far better results than infrequent perfection.
If you want some help to get started fill in this application to apply to work with me. If there is one thing I am good at it’s getting people to take action!
Thanks for reading!