By Erwan Le Corre, MovNat Founder
To be physically healthy and capable is like being in a relationship. You don’t love a person by just making a single grandiose love declaration with a letter, a magnificent bouquet of flowers and a special gift – and then no effort after that. Right? For a relationship to be sustainable, you must nurture it absolutely everyday, with multiple “I-love-yous”, smiles and hugs, little helpful deeds and gestures of appreciation, and so forth. It’s a process.
In my book, I wrote “People don’t need temporary quick fixes; instead they need long-term behaviors.”
We all agree with this quote because we have ALL tried those temporary quick-fixes and they just never worked, did they? Everyone wishes they did! That would make things easy. But that’s not how health, fitness, strength, conditioning, movement skills acquisition, and real-world physical capability work. Developing and maintaining them require a process, and a process requires consistency. If that consideration alone feels overwhelming, you might need to reevaluate how much you value being truly healthy, strong and capable, because it cannot be achieved with magic pills.
You see, the multiple “I-love-yous”, smiles and hugs, little helpful deeds and gestures of appreciations, those are the long-term behaviors. The random dinner out because you realize your better half and you have been neglecting each other for days or weeks or even months, those are the quick-fixes. And they don’t work.
You are in a relationship with yourself your whole life, whether you see it that way or not. The same way a romantic relationship with someone cannot be sustainable without nurturing it, a healthy relationship to yourself – to your body, its health, function, strength and overall movement competency – cannot be achieved through quick-fixes. But it can be achieved with a commitment to clear choices, healthy behaviors, effective strategies and uninterrupted commitment.
You must ask yourself: How much do you want what you say you want?
Make a lifetime pact with yourself and your body. Choose a physical and movement behavior, as well as an overall lifestyle behavior that is healthy, vital, sustainable, and of course, that works for you. A worthy behavior that is as worthy as you are. Instead of short periods of resolution in your life, make a lifetime resolution that you commit to express daily in your life.
It’s a big deal. Make that big deal now. You need to make it only once, then to stick to it. Then see yourself and your relationship with your physical health and potential start to thrive a little more day after day!
