Last Saturday, it was a dark, cold day here in Iowa. I had planned to exercise by walking on the treadmill in my basement, but as the day wore on, I kept avoiding doing it. It was winter, I was tired and I simply didn’t feel like it.
Does this sound familiar? You’re following a good diet or meal plan or you’ve started a great exercise program. But some days, you can’t seem to make yourself do these things. You were fine yesterday or last week, so why can’t you stick with your plan today?
All of us have times when we lose our motivation and don’t do the things we want to do. But I recently learned about a great solution. It’s called the edge.
How the edge works
During a horse race, a jockey will push a horse to the maximum it seems capable of. But one jockey will lean in and drive the horse just a little bit harder and suddenly, that’s the horse that wins. They refer to this as the edge. With one extra push or encouragement, the horse goes just enough faster to beat the competition.
The same thing can happen in sports and events such as auto racing. A race car driver once told me, “ I drive the car as fast as it will go, then push it one more time to make it go a little faster. That edge will often help me win the race or at least come close to it.”
The edge is not a complicated tool. It’s simply pushing one more time or adding one small action that’s more than you feel like doing. On those days (or even hours) when you feel stuck, one extra push might be enough to get you past your inertia and help you accomplish your goals. You will be amazed at how a simple “edge” can completely change your behaviors.
One way to get started using the edge is to ask yourself, “Can I just…” and fill in the blank. For example, can you just…
• Walk 12 minutes instead of 10, or walk one more block.
• Lift a weight one more time or do one more ab curl up exercise.
• Do a little exercise instead of not doing any.
• Wait one more minute before giving in to a candy bar.
• Leave the room instead of eating.
• Stay away from a favorite food for one day. Then do that again the next day.
Barriers to the edge
When your list of actions is too long, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and do nothing. The horse jockeys have to intentionally ignore the crowd, the splattering mud and the other riders in order to focus on pushing their horses to do one more effort and accomplish the edge.
In the same way, you can train yourself to focus on one thing, not 4 or 5. Perhaps today you choose to skip yoga, and you don’t lift weights or ride your bike. Instead, you take one 20 minute walk but at the end of it, you push your edge and make it 21 minutes.
Challenge yourself to do an edge at least once every day. At some point, tell yourself to do a little more, take one more step, stop longer, wait longer or eat one more healthy bite. Keep reminding yourself to “push my edge.”
How I used the edge
Let’s go back to last Saturday when I felt so unmotivated. At 4:30 that afternoon, I decided to do an edge and push myself one more time. With a promise that I had to walk only 10 minutes, I put on my exercise clothes and headed downstairs.
Once I started walking, I pushed myself again and added 5 more minutes to my goal, then I added 5 more. After a decent 20 minutes walk, I headed back upstairs, happy that I had stayed with my plan. All it took was pushing my edge.