Why Raising Your Floor Increases Success

Let’s do a quick experiment.? Visualize your best days, the days you are thinking and performing at the top of your game. You wake up early, crush your workout, get 8 hours of work done by 11 am…all pistons are firing and great decisions are being made. This is you operating at your ceiling.

Now imagine your worst days. You hit snooze and skip your workout. The donuts at the office call your name and you respond. You cancel a meeting or two and write things off to a bad day. Things can wait until Monday. No discipline, all good habits set aside, poor decisions being made, one after another. This is you operating at your floor (and it could go even lower).

Your average day is somewhere in the middle of these two scenarios. For a moment, let’s table the idea that your average is probably closer to your floor than your ceiling. It’s like your drive on the golf course…sure you just crushed that drive 280 yards. But the previous 5 were slices into the adjacent fairway or out of bounds. If someone asks you about your drive, you’ll probably remember the 280 yard drive.?

When I first heard about the idea of personal floors and ceilings, I immediately asked myself “how do I raise my ceiling?” It’s a natural question, one that is usually applied to professional athletes.?

Let’s use basketball players as an example. A player with a “high ceiling” is considered high potential. They could have a night where they pour in 30+ points, have show stopping dunks and drain out of this zip code 3 pointers. But many times this same player is described as inconsistent and they are labeled as having a low floor. This kind of player will drive you crazy yet you are drawn to them because of their high ceiling. If this player were a stock, they would be a highly volatile tech stock.

An athlete with a lower ceiling but high floor is considered more consistent - they show up to play every night but they aren’t going to go off for 50 points. But you can depend on them because they deliver predictable results. If this player were a stock, they would be a utility stock that pays a dividend.

What can we learn from ceilings and floors and how can we apply this to our lives?

I’ll cut to the quick: it isn’t about focusing directly on raising your ceiling. Why? Here’s what usually happens:

• Get fired up about making a change or changes in your life
• Set big goals
• Start getting after it and maybe get some quick wins
• Then, life gets in the way. You lose momentum.
• Pressure to perform increases…you said you were going to accomplish these goals, right?
• Doubt creeps in, new activities never become habits, progress slows.
• Next, you rationalize your way to a lesser goal. Or no goal at all.?
• Rinse, repeat and you are back where you started, maybe you have regressed.

Sound familiar? See typical new year's resolution status on March 1.

A better model is to work on raising your floor.

Try this instead:

• Identify your “floor” behaviors. These are behaviors you aren’t proud of. Write them down.
• You can limit them to one category or list a number of categories.?
• Some examples: phone usage, social media, eating, exercising, drinking, when you go to bed, when you wake up, how many times you hit snooze.
• Identify a slightly better behavior. Do that instead.
• Keep iterating on this with small adjustments over time. Eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s turns into ? a pint turns into a taste, turns into I only buy ice cream once a month.

Why does this work?

Raising your ceiling often (okay, always) requires doing things you have never done before.

Raising your floor starts with an activity or habit you are very familiar with so there is no learning or unknown. It’s just a small change in volume, activity or frequency (usually).

It is easier to start putting points on the board with small wins. And putting points on the board (which simply means making progress) feels good. It creates momentum. And results start to flow.

Here are a few examples you can use as inspiration to improve your health:

• Wake up 10 minutes earlier today
• If you don’t work out, go for a 5 minute walk
• Replace the donut at breakfast with a smoothie
• Get sparkling water with lunch instead of a soda
• A burger and fries turns into a burger and side salad
• Take one flight of stairs today instead of an elevator
• Turn off all electronics 30 minutes before bed.

All of these examples are “floor raisers” and they seem small because they are. They are doable. You could do them every day and you’ll likely say “that was easy.” And the compound effect can be huge.

And then after a week or two, you tweak them again. That 5 minute walk all of a sudden turns into 15 minutes. Your sleep is improving. Energy levels are increasing. People start commenting…you seem different.

So are goals bad?

Goals are awesome and you need them. But they become easier to achieve when you get into the practice of raising your floor. The increase in confidence of raising your floor spills over into goals and your ceiling will start raising as a result?

Think of your floor as a foundation. As your floor goes up, it is supported by this foundation that is growing in size and strength. A strong foundation will help you during challenging times and also support you as you raise your ceiling.

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