The Art Of Showing Up

If you want to improve anything - your health, your business, your network - you need to get started. Life change doesn't happen on its own, you need to be there to initiate it, and you can’t do that until you show up to do it. For many reasons that we’ll get into soon, showing up is hard to do. But there’s an outsized payoff to it that just about always makes it worth it: Either you win and get what you want, or you learn and you’re more prepared to win in the future.

James Clear, author of ‘Atomic Habits’, goes so far to say that there’s an ‘art to showing up’ which basically means that you can get creative in how to make it happen more often. His favorite recommendation is to use the 2 Minute Rule. For whatever new habit you need to start showing up for, just commit to doing the version of it that takes 2 minutes or less to do. For example if you’re trying to get in the habit of exercising, just take 2 minutes to get dressed for it. 

Or, if it’s not a habit but an experience or opportunity you need to show up for, you can break that down into 2 minutes as well. A networking event could be as simple as committing to being there for two minutes, or for a bold email you need to send you can commit to writing the subject line and the first sentence.

And the reason this works is because once you get started with something, the rest of the behavior naturally flows from it. When you’re thinking about doing something, your mind has a hard time quantifying it and blows it out of proportion. Once you’re in action, expectations tend to normalize, and whatever fear, doubt, embarrassment, or discomfort you were feeling beforehand… A lot of it goes away once you get started. 

Showing up is everything. Ed Lattimore has been quoted saying “The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door” and that’s because it’s the one that the fewest people have the strength to move".

The challenge is, showing up is hardest to do right after you didn’t. But it's when you most need to. You made a commitment and didn’t follow through, broke a streak, or set an intention and missed it… What happens next?

Naturally we want to avoid acknowledging the error, and we let a mistake one day turn into a week or a month of more mistakes. But when you show up after it, make yourself look honestly at your performance, and hold yourself accountable to the expectation you set, that’s how quickly make up for a mistake to lapse in judgment and get back on track.

That’s why I have the daily discipline of reviewing my day and my performance in my Self Improvement Scorecard. The practice of it makes me honestly reflect on how I did, the choices I made, and evaluate if I held myself accountable to my own high standards. Showing up there helps me show up everywhere else in my life. It clears my slate and helps me turn failure into lessons, as well as celebrate my successes. If you want to see my Self Improvement Scorecard, which I trust with my biggest goals and dreams, in action - Click here for the video I made where I walk you through it.

And if you’re feeling stuck with big ideas but little follow through, it’s because you haven’t mastered the art of showing up. Start there and everything else will change!