Obviously, life comes with regrets. I try not to dwell on them too much, but sometimes they are so clear and present that it becomes worth the practice of observing them and figuring out how to avoid them in the future.

At the moment, the big one for me is letting certain aspects of improving and maintaining my physical health fall by the wayside.

There are a variety of reasons why this happened and they run the gamut from:

• Moving out of our apartment into the unstable world of kind of being digital nomads for 6 weeks at the end of the summer
• Organising and executing an international move in the middle of a pandemic while simultaneously starting Bible college as a part of the continuing of my apprenticeship
• Moving again from England up to temporary accommodation in Scotland
• Moving from that temporary accommodation into the house where I am currently writing this and locked down with my family

Now, all of that isn’t to say that I’ve done nothing. In the bulk of that time, I continued my new hobby of running. And it was great. We live in the countryside and these country lanes are surrounded by sheep farms and wind farms. It’s a sweeping landscape where all of the trees lean toward the east. It also comes with a built in means of making running more challenging, and consequently more effective, because it’s ever so hilly here.

But I ended up spraining my ankle in early December and suddenly everything came to a grinding halt. Pain was present on every single day and it was intense.

And so I stopped.

The other day, I shared about how I started up doing the 100 pushups plan. And right now, the thing that I am wishing I had done while I was waiting for my ankle to heal is start the plan then. Or to have started anything at all. At least then I would be slightly more ahead than I am now. I would be stronger than I am now.

So if you’re wanting to start, just start with one thing that you can definitely do. If it’s trying to write, just write for 5 or 10 minutes. If it’s exercise, just go for a walk or try doing a few pushups everyday.

Now that I am in this stage of things and struggling under the weight of lifting my own body, literally, I can really see that anything is better than nothing.

James Clear was really on to something when he explained about trying to improve by 1%. 1% is infinitely more progress than 0%.