How To Avoid Going Backwards

A lot of personal development is forward facing, talking about the new or better things you could be doing to improve your life. And while that’s all true and useful, it doesn’t tell the whole story. You also need to get good about avoiding going backwards.

Many people apply themselves fully to becoming healthier, more focused in their work, or being a better friend and family member... Only to erase all of the progress they’ve made in a moment.

It’s a week of healthy eating and then splurging at dinner on the weekend. It’s working hard all week to enable a free ‘catch up day’, and then you get distracted doing things that aren’t meaningful. It’s being present in your time with loved ones except for that one time you’re tired, on your phone not paying attention.

And it’s not like we actively choose these things to happen - they unconsciously pop up. And if we don’t have the awareness or energy to intervene, then a single poor choice can do a lot of damage and offset many good choices in an instant.

My favorite way to keep myself from going backwards, and make sure I don’t undo the progress I’ve made and the momentum I have, is to define standards for myself. I establish a high standard so that I’m clear on how my best self would choose to show up in various areas of my life - exercise, nutrition, sleep, work, time on my phone, connecting with loved ones, etc. This gives me a target to aim for that helps me push the boundary of my growth and consistency.

But pursuing that ideal isn’t always practical, or realistic, so I also establish a minimum standard for myself.

This is the line I don’t want to cross, that I’ve determined to be what’s minimally acceptable on an average day. It’s helpful to know because as I notice that things are starting to slip, and I’m not following through on my best intentions, I have a safety net of awareness. I have a second criteria that I get to measure my choices against that shouldn’t be hard to do, but still enforces a certain amount of thoughtfulness and intentionality.

When you hold yourself to a minimum standard, it means that you’ve identified the point where you’d start undoing forward progress if you were to continue.

For example, I have a sleep standard. My high standard is that at 9:30pm I transition into my night routine, with the intention to turn the lights off by 10:30. My minimum standard pushes that back to 10pm and an 11pm bed time. Functionally what this does is - if I miss my high standard for bed time, hypothetically I could stay up as late as I want with no consequence. And that could do some serious damage. But having that second timestamp at 10pm holds me accountable to a making another choice that keeps me from missing the intention entirely.

Defining your standards is a process of knowing what you want, and once they’re in place, they give you heightened awareness as you approach them. Being disciplined to make the right choice against those standards is easier when you have that clarity in place, and when you bundle in a daily reflection about how you did and goals around your consistency in this area, it promotes follow through.

I’d love to show you how I do that on a daily basis, and the system I’ve built for myself in my Self Improvement Scorecard.

If you’re curious to check that out, I made a video showing you how it works!