How Systems Help - A Case Study

I'm sure we have all experienced this, you make a goal, something comes up to disrupt your routine and the goal kind of slides off your mind. The disruption ends and you just never get back into trying for the goal.

Well, this happened to me. A few weeks ago I started a workout routine. I had gotten a grand total of two workouts in and I got sick with a stomach bug of some sort. About a week later I was just starting to feel better when I got a cold and was down feeling crummy for another week.

Now if I had had a goal of losing 20 lbs. at this point I would have probably given up and conveniently "forgotten" my goal. Especially given the snow and cold and dark that inevitably helps to sap ones motivation. However, I made this endeavor a system. So despite not getting workouts in I was still succeeding in my goal through being sick.

How you may ask? Well I'll tell you. Every day that I was supposed to do a workout I tried to work out. I prepared myself like I was going to do a routine, because I was going to try. And each time I decided that I wasn't feeling physically up for it so I didn't. And that felt good. I won. I didn't lose my motivation I just lost my capacity. So then when I felt like I had given my body time to recover yesterday I got back in and did a workout.

Sure I lost time, but that's ok. I knew I wasn't going to be sick forever and so I made being sick part of my system. I turned being sick into part of my winning system of getting into shape instead of it being a roadblock.

Another benefit to this is that I wasn't stressed about losing workouts while I was sick. I was still on track and could relax. I'm not sure it contributed to getting better sooner, but it certainly didn't make it worse.