The Beachhead

The Battle of D-Day was about establishing a beachhead. You can’t take over a country or an island all at once, you must get a place where you can land your boats, and begin the true invasion. Normandy was the beachhead for taking back France.

There are some very natural applications for this. When I desire to start a new habit, say reading my bible regularly, instead of trying to read 10 chapters and journal a page and a half (thus taking over all of France in one day), I tend to prefer the reading of one chapter and then stopping on purpose. The next day, I do the same. Why not? It’s only 5 minutes. Maybe I get to the end of a week and have read 3 of the 7 days. Next week, I’ll shoot for 4 days. Then once I’m reading 4 days, I might add a chapter to the days: 2 chapters 3-4 days a week. My goal is 4-5 chapters, 4 times a week plus a journal entry about what I read each day. But that would have been too much to try to do at the beginning.
I will do the same thing with exercise. I start with 15 pushups, and do that 3 times per week. 15 pushups takes literally 20 seconds. I do have 20 seconds in my day. If I don’t, I might need to shift a few things around. 15 pushups is 15 more than 0 pushups. If I’ve done that 3-4 times per week, next week I might sit down and do 20 pushups plus 5 sit-ups. Later adding some crunches or some lunges. If I make my additions SLOW, after 6 months I’ll have a real workout going and I won’t want to stop since by that time, I’m doing 40 pushups (or more), 40 sit-ups, 40 crunches, 40 lunges, 40 squats, and anything else I decided to add. Again, if I tried to do that on the first day (since I was SO desperate to get in shape) I would have failed for sure.