Ah, Gretchen Rubin. You’re the author I chose to start my goal of making myself read more last year. The Happiness Project was the first of 8 books I read as part of my 2018 goal of “always be working on a book to read.”
The quote I’m sharing today is one of her “Secrets of Adulthood,” which she explains as the lessons she had difficulty accepting/learning as she grew up. A lot of these tidbits are little inspirational quotes in and of themselves. But I stumbled upon this one again recently and wanted to share the message.
“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” This is such an important reminder when it comes to healthy living, in particular, because it’s easy to get caught up on doing everything “perfectly.” And if we stray from the rigid health “rules” we think we’re supposed to be following, it can be discouraging and feel like we’ve completely sabotaged our progress. Except we haven’t at all.
ROUTINE and CONSISTENCY are what it’s all about. If you eat a bunch of deep dish pizza on a random Friday night, you’re not going to suddenly find yourself 20 pounds heavier. If you eat a bunch of deep dish several times per week, you might find it’s starting to literally weigh you down. (I’m in Chicago, so deep dish is just how my mind works now haha.)
And looking at it the other way: if you live a pretty sedentary lifestyle, but get yourself to the gym a couple times per month, you can’t expect to become a toned and muscular goddess—because you have to regularly put in the work to see change.
The work comes every day. The decisions you make on a daily basis are what matter. Does that negate the difficult hike you went on last month? Of course not. I think random feats like that are an important part of the big picture.
I just wanted to remind all of us that the little things we do every day matter, whether we’re seeing results yet or not. Make the majority of those habits in line with your goals, and you’ll eventually get there.
