Why Fitness Should be your Foundation for Self Improvement

For the past year and a half, I’ve been an editor at one of Medium’s fastest growing self-improvement publications. In that time, I’ve read thousands of articles, fact-checked hundreds of claims, and read countless books to stay up-to-date on the space.

Yet, no matter how much I consume, I always find something critical lacking, how can each of these disparate pieces of advice come together?

We all know habits are essential, but what could that look applied to a particular situation? I’m told to break out of my comfort zone, but where do I do that? Self-reflection is the cornerstone of personal growth, but how can I apply that in my daily life?

To answer these questions I wanted to come up with a framework where individual components of self-improvement could be brought together under one roof.

Using fitness as your framework for self-improvement will expose you to the central tenets of personal growth. I’ve started a list below, including tips for how each can look and what application will look like over time.

Goals

Goal setting lies at the heart of all things self-improvement. If you want to be a better version of yourself, you must set a target to aim toward.

Fitness gives you real-world experience with setting goals: planning, failure, flexibility, and overcoming setbacks.

Want to lose some weight? You better learn to adjust to a new diet, dig into some cardio, and get ready to face slow progress and upsetting weigh-ins.

How

I’ve written exhaustively on creating great goals, I’d recommend doing a full reading, but it’s enough to say that your goals should be split into three sections.

Start with a high-level goal, often referred to as identity-based goals. It should encapsulate who you want to become. Do you want to be fit? Healthy? A marathon runner? This goal should be nebulous, don’t overthink it.

Next comes your intermediate goals. Here’s where you can start structuring how you’ll approach your identity-based goal. Ask yourself what it means to be fit or healthy. Use your answer to structure these goals. These will generally look like, “I will eat more vegetables” or “I will run a 10-minute mile.” These goals are still a bit unstructured but start to take direction.

Finally, create your micro-goals. What will it look like for you to eat more vegetables? Is that a daily or weekly goal? Whatever you do, start small. Don’t try to integrate an entirely new schedule into your life on day one. That’s a recipe for failure.

Habits

If you want to reach your goals, you must work diligently and consistently. It’s an undeniable truth, but one I often have to remind myself of.

I know what it’s like to set goals, feel a rush of productivity for a day or two, and then have it all fade leaving me to wonder how I would ever accomplish what I set out to do.

This is where habits come in. A burst of motivation will carry you for a day or two, but self-improvement is a marathon. You need to sustain the same actions over the long haul.

The gym represents a tangible demonstration of why habits are so powerful. Even three 30-minute sessions a week would show a dramatic improvement for a beginner in just a few months.

How

Thankfully, you’ve already laid out the structure for your habits. Done well, your micro-goals will turn into habits.

Charles Duhigg offers a simple solution for creating great habits.

Trigger
Routine
Reward

When it comes to fitness, the number one thing I hear from new people is that “they’re just not into working out.” I tie this to the reward portion of habits. New gym-goers seem to believe there is something inherently enjoyable about picking weight off the ground. There isn’t. I rarely pine for the moments my body is straining to pick up an obscene amount of weight.

What I enjoy most is reaching my goals, monitoring my progress, boosting my self-esteem, and time alone to reflect.

If you’re worried about sticking to your habits, ask yourself why you’re pursuing fitness in the first place.

Control

It’s one of the most common pieces of advice. Stoics and Buddhists have suggested the same thing for centuries; you simply waste time fretting over what’s out of your control, but you’ll improve your life focusing on what you can.

Fitness presents numerous opportunities to practice control and taking in its benefits,

How will you exercise?
How frequently will you exercise?
Where will you exercise?
What will you sacrifice to exercise?

They’re relatively easy questions to answer. Most people start small, working out in their homes in whatever time they can find. That’s a great start, but you’ll realize you need more structure and resistance to advance.

You’ll learn that some exercises seem to treat your body better and you’ll prioritize them. You’ll learn other exercises are challenging and that you should push yourself to master them. You’ll expand your scope, work out at home, go for runs, and venture to your gym. And finally, you’ll start to give up wasteful acts to ensure you have enough time to pursue your fitness.

How

It’s important to understand that even microscopic trade-offs, fifteen minutes to walk a mile versus watching YouTube, is an act of control. Social media is addictive, so when you choose to replace the time you’d otherwise spend distracted or procrastinating, you’re demonstrating control over your choices.

Each decision is teaching you to exert control in your life. You’re allowing yourself to make small, permanent changes to your life with long-lasting benefits.

Self-esteem

You don’t need to look like a linebacker or a fitness influencer to start feeling good about yourself.

Often people begin their fitness journey imagining how great life will be when they’ve got a six-pack or can lift hundreds of pounds. The truth is, you’ll see your self-esteem rise long before then.

I’ve been working out for the past 8-years, and I’m not anywhere near the chiseled gods you see on fitness magazines, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel good about myself. The first time I benched 225lbs, I felt great because I accomplished one of my goals. Looking at my outward appearance, most people would never have guessed I could lift that much. Thankfully, the gym has taught me that outer appearance doesn’t mean anything.

How

It may not seem like much, but continuously setting up and knocking down goals has built up a sense of pride and achievement I would never have imagined.

People like to confuse self-esteem with cockiness or the belief you’ll be great at anything. In reality, self-esteem is understanding you’re capable of working towards your goals because you’ve done so before. The way proper goals and habits are structured act as a perfect self-esteem booster.

And, when it comes to self-improvement, knowing you’re capable of achieving great things is a fundamental component of success.

Breaking Your Comfort Zone

At some point, your fitness routine is going to force you in front of others. That’s great! Our comfort zones protect us from harm, but they also prevent us from making progress. It tells us not to take any risks because we might end up a failure.

If you’ve never been to a gym or don’t know how all the machines work, you’ll be intimidated at first. Bully for you. Use this as a chance to get uncomfortable and learn something new.

How

If you’ve thought about working out before, but somethings stopped you, ask yourself why. What’s prevented you from carrying on your habit?

For some, it’s a legitimate shift in priorities; for others, it’s a lack of comfort and direction.

I didn’t start working out until I had someone who could show me the ropes. The gym felt like an intimidating place, and my history with exercise was spotty at best. So, I wanted someone to hold my hand as I crossed the threshold.

Now that I’m on the other side, I realize everything I could have wanted to learn was available online. I routinely look up proper form and guidance for new machines on YouTube, and the whole process only takes a few minutes.

As you start pushing against your comfort zone you’ll learn you can confront issues on your own. Fitness is the perfect foundation for challenging yourself to do more.

Effort pays out

I’ve alluded to this already, but it bears its own section.

Persistence pays off, that’s an obvious truth. What makes this idea powerful is when you consistently see those payoffs. They are a source of growth and motivation and that’s exactly what fitness offers.

Watching your body transition from novice to practitioner represents a massive shift in your health. And, more importantly, a shift in mindset.

When you watch your persistence take shape, you can draw on that experience in your future endeavors. You stop needing to trust others who tell you the process is worthwhile. Instead, you look at where your accomplishments took you and use them as a source of motivation.

How does this look

It’s as simple as sticking to it. If you’ve built great goals and established habits, you’re going to see the effort pay off. Again, what’s important here is how you use those moments in the future. They’ll be a factor in your self-esteem, how you set goals in the future and your confidence in breaking out of your comfort zone.

Self-reflection

Are you working toward the goals you want to reach? Are you doing it in a way that makes you feel good?

It’s easy to fall into a routine and fail to ask yourself if it’s the right one for you. It happens every day. People spend countless hours on Reddit or YouTube without ever really asking themselves if that’s right or not

I’ve gone through this exact scenario with countless exercise regimes. In the end, each served as an opportunity to practice self-reflection.

I’m not a great runner. In fact, I deplore it. It’s the worst type of exercise I can imagine. But, last year, knowing how vital cardio is, I decided that I’d make running central to my routine.

Things were going well, but I’d lost the spark for working out. Everything felt like a chore rather than an experience. Worse, I was falling behind on the goals I’d set for myself because I’d lost my enthusiasm.

How

As you make fitness a habit, you’ll start to pick up that specific exercises are more appealing than others.

I love longer weight lifting sessions compared to shorter, intense cardio-focused workouts. But, due to an injury stacking tons of weight isn’t the best choice for me. So, I had to find a routine that worked for me, which combined elements of what I loved with what my body could do.

To ensure you’re maximizing your workouts, you must take time to monitor progress toward your goals. If you’re not on-track, ask yourself these questions,

Am I comfortable with the progress I’ve made?
If not, what can I change to increase my progress?
Am I focusing too much on workouts I enjoy at the detriment of other parts of my body?
Am I forcing myself to do work I’m not enjoying for the simple sake of reaching a goal?

If you’re wondering how to start your self-improvement journey, look no further than your physical health. You’ll learn how to set goals, create habits, build your self-esteem, and break out of your comfort among a myriad of other benefits.