Beyond the Finish Line: 3 Powerful Metrics to Measure Your Progress

?

Finish lines can mess with your overall progress, as non-intuitive as that may sound. Achieving your goal can leave you feeling uninspired and empty, especially if you’re not measuring the achievement as a benefit of your future self.

?

On August 1, 2023, I finished the Live Hard year, including the 75 days of #75hard, and three subsequent 30-day phases within the remaining 290 days. Now that I’m done and don’t have any “requirements”, I haven’t been making fitness a priority, among other daily tasks. (Although, I have actually taken several 5-minute cold showers since, just to prove I can still do it.)

?

I have a good friend who wanted to meet her daily Fitbit goal for 365 days. She did it and is now taking some time off from daily goal achievement. When I trained for two half-marathons and one full marathon, it took me weeks to get back into a consistent workout routine afterward.

?

We miss the dopamine and anticipation of our future goal achievement.

?

How can you fill up that emptiness once you’ve achieved your goal? Part of the answer is to move beyond the finish line in terms of how you live your life. Here are three powerful metrics to move you beyond the finish line.

?

Your Big 3:

?

Take some time to figure out your “Big 3” important areas of life. These are the three areas that influence and filter your most important decisions, actions, goals, and plans. These are powerful and unique to you. ?

?

If you have your Big 3 and you aren’t using them as a filter for your actions and choices, you can shift back into those priorities, or look at your chosen Big 3 to see if they are really a reflection of what’s uniquely important to you.

?

By the way, this isn’t the time to choose what sounds good to others or what you “should” be choosing.

?

My Big 3 are Family, Finances, and Self. Family includes immediate family and also a handful of friends. Self was previously Health, including mental, physical, and emotional.

?

In a Q4 planning conversation, a friend recently asked me what would be most important for me to pursue if it didn’t have to look like progress to anyone else. I immediately had two answers:

·????? extend my London trip

·????? finish my basement uncluttering project

?

This is also when I changed Health to Self, because these two choices resonate with my Self as a priority rather than simply health.

?

Reviewing Your Past:

?

Review your wins, big and small. Seeing your accomplishments in your business and personal life on a regular basis helps you realize how much is moving forward, changing, in your life.

?

“We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment change comes.” Arkady Strugatsky

?

By looking at how much our life changes, we can see how much we are progressing.

?

Our brains are conditioned to look for threats, negative situations, all the wild beasts that hide in the undergrowth. To understand and believe how much we are affecting positive change in our lives, we must continually look past the wild beasts and into our greatness.

?

As an example, grab your pencil and paper and make a list of all the wins and positive changes in your life that have occurred during the past 24 hours. Yes, within the last day. You will start seeing movement that otherwise seemed imperceptible.

?

Review your past week, month, year, even three or five years. Do this on a regular basis (weekly or monthly) and shift into seeing how much greatness you have in your life.

?

Consider this, also. Your future self, the version of you tomorrow or next month, or even in a year, is looking back at you making this list. You are a memory of your future self. Your future self knows everything that happened and what you are capable of.

?

Living at Potential

?

No matter what your goals are, what you hope to achieve, the bottom line is whether or not you are living at your potential. Are you living at the level you’re capable of, the life you were born to live?

Remember nature. Trees don’t struggle with second-guessing or insecurities. They don’t worry about what others think. If a tree is meant to grow, it grows to its best and most capable height.

Be the tree.

?

As Andy Frisella , of 1stPhorm and 75Hard fame says, “Success is the commitment to the constant pursuit of your true potential.” When you look at it like that, why wouldn’t you succeed? All you have to do is? pursue your true potential.

?

Does this mean that goals aren’t necessary? Not at all. Create goals and work toward achievements. It’s fun to see what you can do!? At the same time, creating a filter and a positive bias helps you avoid the letdown feeling after you’re finished.