“The key to any great project is momentum. To keep it moving.”
– William Zeckendorf
That quote by William Zeckendorf, the New York Real Estate developer who led the scene before Donald Trump arrived on the New York real estate stage, said it well. “Keep things moving”. What he meant by that was that once you allow a project to slow down, once you allow an obstacle to block you from progress, your project tends to slow down and sometimes stop, making it extremely difficult to “build up steam” to get back on track.
This is as true with exercise as it is with real estate development. Often you will reach a plateau and decide it’s not worth it to continue. You may decide just to stop for a while and “you’ll get back to it later”. That ugly word “inertia” sets in and it’s often nearly impossible to get the mental energy to get physically back to action.
It’s a very common event and one needs to be fully aware of what happens when you decide to take a break. It’s hard to get back in the “flow” of movement and all too often, your physical development loses momentum and comes to a halt.
Sometimes you lose momentum as a result of outside events. Right now gyms are closed, our minds are muddled, and you let those outside forces stop you from keeping up with your positive health and fitness habits. You have either adapted to other outlets for exercise (following videos, doing your own routines at home, etc), or have simply let loss of momentum take over.
If you have been healthful eaters, perhaps some have let down your guard and let isolation and frustration cause you to “slack off” of your good eating habits.
A body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by another force. That’s a mangled quote but it serves the purpose. Once you are moving physically, you will keep it up unless another force gets in the way. Right now, a “brick wall” has been erected and you can let it stop your momentum or you can adapt.
And once you start slowing down, negative momentum tends to keep you slowing to a stop, both physically and mentally, until you tend to give up, often never to start again.
How do you keep it from slowing or stopping you? The first step is to recognize it. Then it’s often a matter of choice. If your mental attitude says to allow momentum to take over, you will come to a slow, sad stop. If you recognize it in time and have the discipline to move through whatever blocks you, you will overcome it.
So you can surf a wave of positive momentum during this episode by keeping your body in motion and your refrigerator closed, or you can “wipe-out” from letting the current virus crisis take away your “good ride”, and you have to start all over again, looking for a new wave of momentum to ride on.
Keep your body in motion. Thank you for reading.