How to keep going...

When you don't see the results

Sep 22, 2022

A few weeks back, I picked up the book Atomic Habits and finished it in a single weekend. The book had time and again been recommended by friends and colleagues, but for the longest time I resisted, telling myself I already knew all there was to know about the science of building and breaking habits—after all, I had read my boss’ Guide to Habits back to back several times in the process of refreshing our article archive.

I wasn’t wrong—much of the book wasn’t news to me. But it still enlightened me in small, yet hugely impactful ways. I won’t spoil the book for you (Check it out; it’s an intensely practical and valuable read). But there was one thing in particular that deeply resonated:1

The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.

That’s it, I thought. This is why I now go to the gym three times a week without effort, why I look forward to waking up at 6:30am and walking the 20 minutes it takes to get to the gym, why I miss it on days I don’t go.

When I look in the mirror, I feel pride in my increasingly toned body—a direct manifestation of my identity as someone who works out regularly. This pride motivates me to keep going to the gym to maintain that body, make it even more toned. This is why, after a decade of what appeared interminable struggles, exercise comes easily to me now.

Pride as a motivator

If you asked me two months ago, I would have said it was highly unlikely someone like me could sustain a gym routine that involved actually leaving the house.

Since May last year, I had been working out regularly, but exclusively within the confines of my building. My personal trainer came to me—I only had to walk up two flights of stairs to train with her. And outside my training sessions, I’d be kickboxing, weightlifting, and dancing to the tune of my Les Mills exercise videos in our office at home. The only exercise I left the house for was running, which explained why I could only manage a run every month or two, if not less.

When my personal trainer left the country last month, I thought it was a good time to join a gym and start training in group classes. I felt I was now strong and experienced enough to follow a group class without getting left behind or risking injury from bad posture. I found a gym that provided what I was looking for and came highly recommended. It looked promising, but I wasn’t certain I could make it happen.

For years now, I’ve been aware that for me to exercise regularly, it must be convenient. The gym was a 20-minute walk from my house. No longer could I wake up 20 minutes before a training session, savour my morning coffee, check work messages, and leisurely amble up the stairs. Now only the walk would take 20 minutes, and if I wanted to keep my relaxed morning routine, I’d have to wake up at 6:30am for the 9am class, the latest morning class the gym offers.

So I wasn’t confident.

But, to my surprise, I kept it up. One class led to another, then another, then another. I discovered a love for circuit training and an appreciation for the attentive instructors. The next thing I knew, I was happily going three times a week. I used the 20-minute walk as the time to listen to a podcast—I’ve now finished one on time management, and am half-way through another on sleep. After class, I’d stay and work in the reception area or wander my way to a café. The gym has been well and truly built into my routine, and—what’s more—it’s one of the things I look forward to the most in my week.

I’d thought it was because the classes were fun that I could make going to the gym a habit. But reading that sentence in the book, I realised the real reason behind my motivation: I kept going to the gym because I was proud of my gym body. I put in the sweat and the hours, I could see the result in the mirror, and I was proud of it.

And that pride motivated me to keep gymming.

But what if you don’t see the results?

It’s all well and good to say that gymming > toned body > pride > more gymming in a virtuous cycle that culminates in that beach body you’ve always dreamt of.

But using pride as a motivator presupposes that there is something—a result—to feel pride in. And, sadly, results to our efforts are rarely instantaneous. For something like exercise, the result can take months to manifest itself (I started working out seriously in May last year and could only see a difference in my body this July).

valsaksornchai

A post shared by Val Saksornchai (@valsaksornchai)

So the question becomes: how do we keep going when we don’t see the results to our efforts? How do we motivate ourselves to do what’s good for us when we don’t know if it’s making any difference?

These are questions I’ve asked myself a lot in recent months with regards to this newsletter. Each week I send out something that I think could change someone’s life in a small but significant way. Roughly 150 emails go out, and I hear back from one or two readers who answer my question of the week. Once in a while, I hear from someone who says my email struck a chord, made them really think. But for the most part, I have no idea if I’ve made a difference—however small—to the lives of my 150 subscribers.

I see no gym body reflected in the mirror that nods and says, yes, Val, you’re making a difference, your words matter. There is no affirmation that, each week, I’m achieving my stated goal of making my readers stop and think. There is no result per se for me to take pride in, to use to motivate myself.

And this is the case for many endeavours in life. You toil on a project at work that never seems to progress. You take up painting as a hobby you hope to turn into a career, proudly share your work with everyone you know, but years have passed and you’ve sold one painting. You keep working on yourself, hoping to become a “better” version of you, but remain as unfulfilled and frustrated as ever.

What to do when there is no result to take pride in? How to keep going?

These are questions to which I don’t have a universally applicable answer. What works for me, in the case of my newsletter, is to take pride in the writing itself. Though I have my favourites,2 I am proud of all the newsletters I’ve sent out since Val Thinks’ conception. It’s some of my best writing, and I take pride in it. On top of this, I persist in my deep yet unsubstantiated belief that what I have to say matters. And so I keep going, writing and sending out words that I feel need to be heard.

What do you think?

We have all experienced times when we had to keep going despite not seeing the fruits of our efforts. Some of us were perhaps more successful than others at pushing through. So I’d like to know:

How to keep going when you don’t see the results?

Even if you weren’t successful, what did you try? What do you think might work next time? Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone who always perseveres.