My Grandfather liked using the saying, “Kill a snake when it’s small.” He’d walk into your house and notice a loose tile, or drawer that didn’t fully close, or some other minor issue, and the next day he’d arrive with his tools and it would be fixed.

Deal with it while it’s a small issue. This is a great strategy, but one that’s often ignored in the world of health and fitness. Maybe ‘ignored’ is too harsh of a word, it’s more like not taken seriously enough… the small snakes are not payed attention to until they get quite a bit bigger.

Sore shoulder? It doesn’t hurt too much, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and stop later if it really hurts.

Hernia pain is back? I don’t need to go to the doctor, I’ll just monitor it for a bit and see if it goes away.

10 pounds overweight? I’ll watch my diet for a week before I go back to my normal routine.

Too busy to work out? I’ll just work out more when things calm down.

We ignore pain until it’s too painful to ignore. We watch our weight when it’s already a big problem. We give ourselves a pass on taking care of ourselves when we are busy, only to be busy more and more frequently. We ignore the small snakes, and wait for them to be bigger than we ever hoped they’d get.

The snakes we ignore come back to bite us.