I wrote a post about learning to love the process on the quest for the ‘best version of yourself’ a few years ago, and as I was going through our archives, it popped up and stuck in my head again. I was chatting with Hilary Spires for her Trail Running Women podcast (look for that episode out in January!) last week and started down this road as we talked about the tiny, incremental daily habits that I write about on here and in our new book, Becoming A Consummate Athlete.
Basically, it boiled down to the fact that who you are everyday—who you choose to be every day—dictates who you become, and what the best version of yourself is going to look like. I started thinking about how this looks in real life and how I could actually make sure I was applying it to my day. To start with, I started thinking about habits that the best version of myself does on the daily:
- Yoga in the morning
- Meditation
- Training according to training plan
- Hydrating enough!
- Writing 500+ words in my next book project
- Making moves on a big project that I have in the works (this means my current one, but also I imagine that my future/best self usually has something big in the works!)
- Making time to sit and chat with Peter and play with DW at the end of every day
Read more: Habits of Highly Effective Athletes: The Ultimate Round-Up
http://ConsummateAthlete.com/habits-of-highly-effective-athletes-the-ultimate-round-up/
And the list goes on, but you get the idea. Some of the habits and routines on your ‘best version of me’ list might be out of reach right now, but I find every time I make this list, I realize that most of the things that my best self would be doing are things I can make room for in my daily life now… And of course, doing those things daily will eventually lead to hitting the ‘best version of me.’
“If you don’t love what you’re doing every day, you can’t be the best version of yourself.” –Sara Hendershot, Olympic Rower
^ That is the quote from a podcast episode that prompted my original musings on the idea of the daily habits + process leading to becoming the best version of you, and it still holds true. If right now, you think that the best version of you gets up at 5AM and runs 3 miles in any weather, but the current version of you prefers waking up at 7 and hates running but loves yoga, it might be time to shift your goal posts and try to better align your best version of yourself with your happiest version. It’ll make getting there a lot easier.
I think what’s changed from the first time that I started thinking about this idea and now is the fact that I no longer look at the ‘best version of me’ as some far-off pretend character who doesn’t exist/will never exist. I’m thinking more about the happiest, healthiest version of myself when I think about ‘best,’ not comparing my ‘best’ to someone else’s, or thinking about what society says my best self should be like.
I want you to write your own list of things that the happiest, healthiest version of you does daily: The big things and the tiny habits. And then give yourself some high-fives for the things you’re currently doing, and maybe try to start adding in a few of the other habits and routines to your daily life now.
The more we can live like the best version of ourselves RIGHT NOW, the sooner we’ll get to the point where we believe that we are the best versions of ourselves.
Pssst… For more on your Point A/where you are now and your Point B/the best version of you, and plenty of ways to actually enjoy going between the two, check out our new book, Becoming A Consummate Athlete.
