What’s Your Angle? How a Little Turns Into A Lot

Recently, I’ve been writing on how to do things, as part of my Be-Do-Have framework, in order to hit your goals. I want to start a series on things to help shape your mindset in regard to the doing. Today I’m pulling inspiration from tennis because the Australian Open just finished.

One aspect of tennis worth studying is the angles. A general strategy is to move your opponent left and right until they get tired and miss the ball. To do this, you change the angle you hit the ball so that you can move them around more. When I first started playing tennis, I would make drastic changes to my stance or how I hit the ball in hopes of changing the angle. This usually ended up with me missing the ball and/or not getting the angle. It took me a while to figure it out, but I realized there’s only a very small shift to change the angle. So, if I was aiming at the right corner and shifted only a couple of degrees to the left, I could hit the left corner (don’t check my math, I’m pretty sure it’s off, but hopefully you get the idea).

What does this have to do with you and achieving your goals? It’s said that we overestimate what we’ll do in one year, and underestimate what we’ll do in 10 years. Said another way, we think we need to make drastic changes to reach our goals when really, it’s about consistently doing the small things that add up over time.  

Think about the diet industry. People go on crash diets to lose lots of weight for a short period of time, only to balloon back up again. Successful weight loss is usually a combination of consistently eating a little less, exercising a little more, and/or even dealing with stressors in life. 

Think about investing. The concept of compound interest is at the core of investing. You put a little bit of money in now and add to it monthly, and the interest will build into a big number over the decades. 

Think about parenting. Sometimes we think it’s about creating amazing memories by having lavish parties or vacations. However, if you think back on your favorite childhood memories, it was about who you were doing it with rather than what you were doing. It’s about the presence and being present as often as possible. 

I think part of the problem is that we downplay the small changes or sometimes dismiss them completely. With my coaching clients, we talk about moving in a positive direction rather than doing what is “right.” If you ate 100 fewer calories starting today, you wouldn’t see a big shift right now, but you will see a shift in a few weeks. That is worth celebrating! If you “only” saved $25 every month, that’s amazing! If you change 1 degree daily, you’ll have made a 180-degree shift in half a year. 

Another way to look at it is if you improve yourself by 1% every day, do you know how long it would take to be twice as good? 70 days. I did the calculation. You’ll see that you’ve changed so much in a few years without making drastic changes.

So, what goals did you have for this year? What is a small change you can make starting today? If you’d like some support, please reach out. I’m here for you! 

Kevin helps people gain clarity on what they want in life, craft a plan, and support in the execution of the plan while getting back into tennis. Contact him at kevinkoocoaching@gmail.com or book a call at https://calendly.com/kevinkoocoaching/cvforum