This week is the start of baseball season at our house. Not only are we starting up our adult league this week, and our third-grader starts kid-pitch practices, but our spitfire six-year-old started T-Ball for the first time.
Practice on Monday was quite the sight.
The Coach introduces himself to everyone, and shakes all the kindergartners’ hands. They are all jumping up and down with excitement and anticipation of their first practice beginning, in true 5/6 year-old style. He gives every boy a dinosaur sticker, and places it inside the baseball glove to show them where the ball should land when they catch it. Then, the 20 boys line up across from each other, in two lines of ten, and begin their very first attempt at playing catch together (see video below). Despite their positive attitudes, and overwhelming desire to do well, I don’t think a single baseball makes it successfully into a partner’s glove across the line….for the entire night. Baseballs are flying everywhere. The boys are all running to chase them down. Adults are ducking at balls that fly past their heads. And yet those boys are not discouraged one bit.
Jump forward three years. My eight-year-old’s practices look very different. Kids are swinging hard to hit the ball, throws are at a speed great enough to match adult strength sometimes, accuracy is nearly there, they know which base to run to when the ball is hit, and kids can move their feet quick enough to get under the ball and field it, even when it isn’t hit directly to them.
It is absolutely amazing the growth that occurs in a relatively short amount of time.
However, my eight-year-old is still frustrated that he doesn’t always catch the ball when it comes to him. He feels defeated when the ball makes it into the catcher’s mitt before his foot touches home plate. He is discouraged when a grounder rolls under his glove. But he doesn’t appreciate the big picture. Just a short time ago, he didn’t even understand the importance of the rules of the game. He, too, was spending time working on the basics of throwing, catching, and hitting. He has no concept of the accomplishments he has already overcome, simply because he doesn’t remember what it was like in the beginning.
Daily improvements, no matter how small, can really add up to make a world of difference. But, they are often overlooked when you only look for them day-to-day. You have to be able to step back and look at the whole to be able to appreciate it. We don’t notice when our kids are growing a little taller each day, but when we look back at pictures from a year ago, we can’t believe they were ever that small.
Sometimes when we begin a new adventure in life (like trying to get in shape, lose weight, or become healthier), we also lose track of those accomplishments because we can’t see those small changes from day-to-day. We become frustrated that we can’t lose that last 10 pounds, we feel defeated when we can’t increase our speed to hit that goal of a X minute mile, we wish our cholesterol numbers would come down just that last little bit into the optimal range.
However, we forget what it was like when we first began the adventure. We forget how winded we were just walking up stairs, or that our clothes used to be too tight to fit, or that our doctor was trying to get us to take medication to lower our blood pressure. We forget what the beginning was really like, and lose sight of how far we’ve come.
If you are about to start an adventure to improve your health (in any sort of a way), I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the before and after picture. Yes, I mean literal pictures, but that’s not all. Start with the physical picture. I know that seeing yourself in tight clothing at this point in your life might not be top on your list of fun activities for a Friday night, but you don’t notice those small changes in the mirror each day. You will notice them when you look back at that picture in a month from now. Then move beyond the pictures, and record other information about where you are now.
- How much do you weigh?
- How long does it take you to walk/run a mile?
- How many push ups can you do?
- What is the circumference of your waist/upper arm/thigh/neck?
- What is your resting heart rate (you can download an app to measure it on your phone via the flashlight) and resting blood pressure (use the automatic machines at your local pharmacy)?
- Visit your doctor and find out your cholesterol and fasting glucose levels.
- Include reflections about how you feel about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and how do you feel after you exercise.
Sometimes the results don’t come in the way we expect them, but when we look back at all the recorded information, we find the true growth that has occurred during our journey. Record your beginning, then look back periodically so that we don’t lose sight of the before and after.