One small decision to make one small change and a “whoosh” effect can happen.
It all started with a simple, text on my birthday. It was a two lined text, which required an abandon of fear and self consciousness. 7/11 a text to my bio mom saying “I’m thinking of you,” lead to an invite to joining my family on our annual vacation to OBX, which lead to her abandoning her fear and responding, “I’m in!” Which lead to some connection and her getting to know my concerns for my kids’ education (she is an assistant principal at a private school in manhattan), which lead to, (weeks after our trip) her sending me a link to an article on Medium about the homework and education system.
While the article wasn’t so remarkable or life changing, introducing me to Medium was. I read articles everyday and weeks after her initial introduction to Medium I read an article by Charles Chu on how he read 200 books in a year. It started a spark inside of me. I decided I would try for 120, ten books a month for the first year. Being as I hardly read any, this was huge. In his article he referenced a book by Tynan, “Superhuman by Habit,” so I bought that and read it. And then I bought two of the books that Tynan references in his book and read them. Within three days of starting my goal I deleted Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix from my phone. I was a habitual binge TV watcher at night. After the kids were in bed that’s what I did. It relaxed me. I could just zone out. And just like that, *snap, I wasn’t. I read. I talked w my husband again.
The funny thing about all this is that while it didn’t completely change my life, it did completely change me. Everything was exciting-new information, “meeting” new people with amazing stories, advice and habits was invigorating, inspiring and exciting. I decided to start my diet plan again-one I had abandoned four years prior (when i competed in a body building competition)-eating whole healthy foods, cutting out sugar, eating for muscle gain and fat loss. I decided to start my workout routine again.
Most body builders are familiar with what’s called the “whoosh effect.” Weeks go by of doing the right thing, watching calories, eating the right ratio of macronutrients at the right time, lifting the weights, doing some HIIT cardio, where nothing visible changes…until one day it does -and whoosh-a huge change seemingly “overnight.” This experience showed me that the whoosh effect exists outside of weight loss and physique changes. It exists everywhere. Year after year of sending the same text on the same day, not seeing any visible change and then one day, Whoosh. Was it worth the wait? The patience of being consistent and not expecting anything, but doing it anyway? Without a doubt it was. So don’t give up. Keep doing what you are doing regardless if you see any changes, cause i guarantee you changes are being made.
