February 7, 2025

1% Better Every Day

I was at the gym this morning.

Yeah… Me. At the gym!!

Never thought I would be doing that!!

But, here we are..

Anyway, my trainer asked me how I was doing with my workouts and what I noticed in my body.

At first, I said I hadn’t noticed any changes.

And then, I thought about it a little more.

“Wait,” I said. “My pants fit better. I am noticing that I do have a little more stamina. And, for the first time in a long time, my weight is going down instead of staying the same no matter what.”

She smiled and said, “Sometimes its the little changes that you don’t really notice because you aren’t looking for them. You want to see the bigger changes.”

Isn’t that the truth??

I wanted to see big numbers go down in my weight, and I haven’t. But I have noticed that my pants fit better. In fact, right now, I am wearing a pair of pants I had quit wearing because they were too tight and too hard to put on.

They are not anymore.

They are comfortable, and I didn’t have to battle to get them on.

I realized in that short little conversation that this is exactly how it is with my clients.

Often, they want to see the big changes. They have some outcome in mind that they want to see, and sometimes, that’s not the outcome they get.

Sometimes, the healing takes a little longer to appear.

Sometimes, the healing journey has to go a little bit of a different path.

Frustrating, I know. I have been there.

In my healing journey, I have wanted to see a specific outcome, and I haven’t. But I have seen so many other ways I have been healed.

We get focused on the things that have been released. We concentrate on the outcome we expect to see. We dwell on the expectation we have for our healing. Consequently, we miss the other things that have healed. The things that leave openings for a changed life.

If we only focus on what we want to see, we miss what we need to see.

We want to see the big changes. The big healing.

But, what happens more often, is the little changes. I say sometimes that its a 1% change.

As James Clear says in his book ‘Atomic Habits”,

“Getting 1% better every day counts for a lot in the long run.”

Whether it’s about habits, healing, or working out in the gym, improving by 1% every day adds up to 365% in just one year.

That’s a significant change.

Sometimes, healing looks like no reaction to something that caused a reaction previously. Other times, it looks like less “chatter” in your head. Some people report feeling more peaceful or a physical problem is suddenly just gone. Seemingly unrelated to the initial issue.

Every person is so different. Each of us has a different journey toward healing.