When considering the benefits of a new exercise routine, we might be forgiven for pausing at step one to feel like elves in Santa’s workshop.

We’re going to have to:
*Build a new schedule
*Build a new base of movements
*Build new relationships–with a coach, a classmate, or the notification settings on a new app

It is an acquisitive process and that can be intimidating, or worse, paralyzing.

Consider this, however: as one of my old coaches Tom Furman notes, the word ‘decide’ has its roots in the Latin word decidere, which means “to cut off.” When you’re deciding on a new path, all of these things you’d like to build, often you must turn dramatically from an old one and its own scaffolding.

But I’m going to back up a bit. Before we worry too much about breaking up with your favorite pizza pie or whatever it is you’d like to hang onto (and with good reason because pizza pies are awesome), let’s consider the cut that’s so smooth it ought to cost $100 at your local barbershop:

The Fallaway.

There are probably some simple things you do right now that don’t make your life that much better. The second or third cup of coffee you don’t really need or, more importantly, enjoy. Hanging out on your phone those last twenty minutes of the evening instead of turning in.

Now, I’m not trying to turn into the Productivity Police; my point is merely that there are probably some things you could easily sluff off in service of a healthier habit. They’d fall away like old skin to make way for the new.

If it’s easy, if it doesn’t really add much, if you wouldn’t miss it, if it’s holding something better back?

Let it fall away. Start there.