Sometimes in life you get stung. You happen upon a hornet’s nest, kick up a few angry critters your dog might mistake for flying jalapenos, and you get lit up. That hurts. Right away! And it’s no mystery what just happened.

But more often than not, we encounter physical distress in contemplation. We get up in the morning and wish it didn’t take an hour or two to feel right about the day. We can’t do some of the things we used to do a year or two ago. We notice, or imagine, folks making smaller concessions to us: “we don’t have to go for a run, we can walk instead,” things like that. The classic example of ill-fitting jeans seems almost too cliche to mention here except we know that feeling can be real too.

it’s a slow dissolve you never felt happening. But now it’s here.

At this point you can do two things:

1. Think. Analyze. Contemplate. How did this happen? What the hell?
You can do all that–and there’s some value in sifting through the pieces for clues, of course–but in our experience it’s hard for folks not to overthink themselves into a pit of self-flagellation and judgement. And that’s a really hard hole to climb out of.

2. Act. Turn yourself in the other direction and start moving.
My friend Coach Isaac Wilkins has an awesome concept here–he calls this action 0 to 1 movement. You just need one win to start building some momentum in your favor. Every giant change starts on an atomic level, right? Folks who run marathons sign up for a race or buy new shoes. Folks who make significant body composition changes drive to the farmer’s market to pick up veggies for dinner. And so on.

One small move begets another. Two small moves beg for a third to make a trio.
Trios become things we’ve done for a week.

We keep moving. We keep acting. Even when we reach a standstill, we marry ourselves to that forward movement again as soon as we are able.

And pretty soon we’ve supplanted that slow dissolve with some veritably giant resolve.

Act. Do the next right thing.

And somewhere down the road, we’ve become the ones putting the big sting on our goals.