Let’s do a quick experiment. Visualize your best days, the days you are thinking and performing at the top of your game. You wake up early, crush your workout, get the equivalent of 8 hours of work done by 11 am…all pistons are firing and great decisions are being made. This is you operating at your ceiling.

Now imagine your worst days. You hit snooze because you were up late and had one too many cocktails. You skip your workout. The donuts at the office call your name and you respond. You cancel a meeting or two and write things off to a bad day. Things can wait until Monday. No discipline, all good habits set aside, poor decisions being made, one after another. This is you operating at your floor.

Your average day is somewhere in the middle of these two scenarios. For a moment, let’s table the idea that your average is probably closer to your floor than your ceiling. It’s like your drive on the golf course…sure you just crushed that drive 280 yards. But the previous 5 were slices into the adjacent fairway or out of bounds. If someone asks you about your drive, you’ll probably remember the 280 yard drive.

When I first heard about the idea of personal floors and ceilings, I immediately asked myself “how do I raise my ceiling?” It’s a natural question, one that is usually applied to professional athletes.

Let’s use basketball players as an example. A player with a “high ceiling” is considered high potential. They could have a night where they pour in 30+ points, have show stopping dunks and drain out of this zip code 3 pointers. But many times this same player is described as inconsistent and they are labeled as having a low floor. This kind of player will drive you crazy yet you are drawn to them because of their high ceiling. If this player were a stock, they would be a highly volatile tech stock.

An athlete with a lower ceiling but high floor is considered more consistent — they show up to play every night but they aren’t going to go off for 50 points. But you can depend on them because they deliver predictable results. If this player were a stock, they would be a utility stock that pays a dividend.

Should we try to raise our ceilings?

I’ll cut to the quick: it isn’t about focusing directly on raising your ceiling. Why? Because this is territory that you have rarely experienced and are unlikely to consistently reach.

Here’s what usually happens when you try to raise your ceiling:

• Get fired up about making a change or changes in your life

• Set big goals

• Start getting after it and maybe get some quick wins

• Then, life gets in the way. You lose momentum.

• Pressure to perform increases…you said you were going to accomplish these goals, right?

• Doubt creeps in, new activities never become habits, progress slows.

• Next, you rationalize your way to a lesser goal. Or no goal at all.

• Guilt, self loathing and finally rationalization sets in.

• You end up back where you started, maybe worse than where you started.

Sound familiar?

A better model is to work on raising your floor.

Try this instead:

• Identify 3-5 areas of your life you want to improve in. For example, Mindset, Sleep and Nutrition.

• Identify your “floor” behaviors for each of these areas. These are behaviors you aren’t proud of. Write them down.

• For example, a “floor” behavior for sleep might be staying up later than normal watching Netflix and eating junk food and then sleeping in the next day.

• Another example, hitting the snooze button on a regular basis.

• Identify a slightly better behavior. Do that instead.

• For Sleep, adjust your bed time so you are always in bed within 30 minutes of your target time. This would be a simple way to raise your floor for sleep.

• Or, just stop hitting snooze. When the alarm goes off, use Mel Robbins 5 second rule to get out of bed.

• Keep iterating on this with small “floor raises” over time. Another example of raising your floor: eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s turns into ½ a pint turns into a taste, turns into I only buy ice cream once a month.

Why does this work?

Raising your ceiling always requires doing things you have never consistently done before.

Raising your floor starts with an activity or habit you are very familiar with so there is no learning or unknown. It’s just a small change in volume, activity or frequency (usually).

Think of this in a literal sense: you are standing on the floor and touching it. The ceiling is out of reach and can’t be touched. We are all much more familiar with the floors in our lives than the ceilings.

It’s easy to start putting points on the board with small wins. And putting points on the board (which simply means making progress) feels good. It creates momentum. And results start to flow.

Here are a few examples you can use as inspiration to improve your health by raising your floor:

• Wake up 10 minutes earlier than normal

• If you don’t work out, go for a 5 minute walk

• Replace the donut at breakfast with a smoothie

• Get sparkling water with lunch instead of a soda

• A burger and fries turns into a burger and side salad

• Take one flight of stairs today instead of an elevator

• Turn off all electronics 30 minutes before bed

• Choose the furthest parking spot (more steps, less door dings)

All of these examples are “floor raisers” and they seem small because they are. They are doable. You could do them every day and you’ll likely say “that was easy.” And the compound effect will be huge.

And then after a week or two, you tweak them again. That 5 minute walk all of a sudden turns into 15 minutes. Your sleep is improving. Energy levels are increasing. People start commenting…you seem different.

So are goals bad?

Goals are awesome and you need them. They become easier to achieve when you get into the practice of raising your floor. The increase in confidence of raising your floor spills over into goals and your ceiling will start raising as a result. You become capable of achieving more.

Think of your floor as a foundation. As your floor goes up, it is supported by this foundation that is growing in size and strength. A strong foundation will help you during challenging times and also support your ceiling goes up.

Baby Steps - Try This

We set standards in 5 areas:

• Mindset

• Sleep

• Nutrition

• Fitness

• Hydration

Choose one area and write down your floor behavior for the area and determine how you can make a small improvement to raise your floor.

Do this for 1 week and reflect on the process. Keep going and keep reflecting. After a month, raise the floor again. Pick another area and follow the same process. Watch your life start to transform.

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