prog·ress

/ˈpräɡrəs/ noun forward or onward movement toward a destination

/prəˈɡres/ verb move forward or onward in space or time

Have you ever started something without fully formulating the goal, only to reach a point far surpassing what you would have likely chosen as the desired outcome if you had defined it at the beginning?

That’s a long sentence to opine that we often underestimate ourselves.

I did that with my doctoral program. I started with the goal of completing the program and earning a doctorate. It would be a fun journey of learning, and I would achieve something at the end. It wasn’t until I was more than halfway through the program that maintaining a 4.0 all the way through became a goal. Last week, I turned in the remaining documents to close out the last of the dissertation courses. The 4.0 is officially locked in and achieved. Only a few tasks remain to officially check the box for that journey’s completion.

Yesterday, a different kind of goal appeared. In 2023, my health started to deteriorate across several measures, leading to serious concerns and subsequently influencing some life-changing decisions.

One of my goals for 2024 was to regain the health I had lost the year before. But I didn’t have a definition for what regain meant.

I can read my lab work and understand the fluctuations in my blood pressure. But there were alot of other issues that medical tests don’t define as easily.

So, I chose to focus on the things I can control.

I chose to gradually eliminate toxic social media content. That decision has made 2025 alot easier. The fringes are toxic…and often wrong, but that’s a topic for a different day. Not having the constant barrage of negativity as part of my consumption pattern was the best addiction to kick.

There is something incredibly empowering to “let them,” as Mel Robbins has so eloquently described.

I chose to go to the gym and focus on strength training, a priority my physician gave me. I opt for the e-gym because it makes things easy. Easy to do, easy to track.

The e-gym measures your bio age using four different inputs, each subsequently having several underlying inputs. When I started, my bio age was a little higher than my actual age…it’s more than a handful of years lower now.

But the measure I focus on the most is strength. There is only so much I can do to impact my genetics and blood pressure, but I have a lot of influence over my strength. Over the course of a year, I shaved 20 years off my strength age. Yesterday’s assessment has me stable at 24 years old. I can unequivocally say that I am so much stronger today than I was at 24…in so many different ways.

That was never a goal when I did my first set of assessments. I wanted to feel better.

And I do feel better.

Alot better.

Mother Nature bringing the sun back out with temperatures comfortably above freezing helps. Fresh Air Vitamin D therapy is amazing.

And now I have a goal.

When I celebrate another full journey around the globe this summer, I want to have a strength age that is less than half of my real age.

Once that goal is achieved, I will move on to making real strides on the flexibility measure.

Daily meditation is already doing its part to facilitate that and improve a myriad of other measures my Fitbit has been tracking for years.

It turns out that meditation is an incredibly powerful way to shed toxic energy from your life.

I’ll close with Mark Manson’s “Two Things for You to Think About” from his newsletter yesterday:

“It’s impossible to be a life-changing presence to some without being a total joke to others. Criticism is proportional to impact.”

“People will criticize you for your successes. They will criticize you for your failures. They will criticize you for acting. They will criticize you for not acting.

F*ck the haters. Do the thing.”

February 25, 2025

Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life is definitely worth the read/listen.