This is an episode of Crush It Mondays.  Each week, I’ll bring to you an inspiring message, habit, or contemplation to get your week off to a powerful start.  In this week’s episode, I wanted to talk about numbers and data.

In the information and web-based age that we live in, numbers are used in so many ways.  Hours of training, number of miles ridden, number of followers, number of likes, heart rate, power, HRV, number of emails left unanswered in a day, a race time, etc. I'm sure you can think of some ways that numbers are a part of your daily life. It can be really easy to fall into a trap or habit of assigning something as good or bad, as a success or failure based on a number.  Numbers are useful tools to help us measure what we are doing so we can improve and are necessary, but the importance of them can be overemphasized. They can affect our happiness.

I've created a couple of categories to help you (and of course, me) keep some perspective with numbers. The elements are purpose, quality, and comparison.

The first is asking "does looking at this number this much help me fulfill my purpose or my reason for doing this? I'll give you a couple examples in my life.  First is instagram.  Many years ago, I gained a lot of followers relatively quickly but in the last couple of years, the growth of my instagram account has been very slow.  This is a pretty common observation for most people.  I also used to be really focused and even addicted to checking to see how many likes a photo received. Part of it was to see what my audience enjoyed so I could do more of it, but to be honest, some of it was purely driven by ego of "People like me" not "people like my picture" and looking for validation from others.  When things with the platform started to shift and I was getting less followers and less likes on my photos a few years back, I felt bad about myself.   Why didn't people like me as much as they used to?  I realized some of it was out of my control, but I took a step back and asked myself truly WHY I am using social media.  The answer came easily: it helped me contribute to my purpose of wanting to connect with people and be a mentor, a motivator, and get more people out on their bikes.  I had to take a step back and remind myself that I wasn't doing this for likes, so I was going to stop checking them.  I could post something meaningful that could potentially change someone's life and not get thousands of likes.  And on the flip side, people post pictures that get thousands of likes, but aren't changing lives. Which one would I rather have?  There is a difference between "influencer" and "influential" and no doubt, those venn diagram circles overlap.  Each time I felt compelled to check how many followers I had lost or gained, or how many likes I had, I reminded myself that's not why I'm doing it.  It took time to rebuild the habit, but I only actually look at the number of likes or followers once or twice a day now. I'm way more focused on answering DMs, responding to comments, and also using the platform for enjoyment and motivation myself.

The second element is quality, and this can be more related to things like number of hours worked, number of hours spent training, etc. Again, I think it is good to have a goal or a standard to which you want to hold yourself.  However, it's realizing when it starts becoming an unhealthy or obsessive relationship. I would say that I probably struggle with this one more than social media followers!   I'm going to use training hours in a week as an example.  First, try to figure out why you are stuck on a number. For me, it's an identity or imposter issue- I feel like less of an athlete if i don't hit a certain number of hours in a week. I want to train 15 hours a week, but I honestly usu

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