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Effort: How to Change Your View to Achieve Your Goals
Don’t be afraid of trying
Why is it that if you let life run away with itself, you find yourself firmly treading on old ground year after year? Each year we have ambitious goals. We get excited by the very prospect of writing them down.
- “to lose 14 pounds”
- “to write a book”
- “to cycle 200 miles”
Every January we pull out the pen and paper and ambitiously write down our 1/3/5 year goals. We listen to every bit of self-help we can get our hands on and conclude that we need to write down some S.M.A.R.T targets to get us through. On top of that, we need to visualise our goal state and really see the person we want to be. We plan our daily meditative practices along with our running schedule and we are set.
January 1st: We are raring to go. We can’t wait to get to the gym, start writing, to become the person we want to be. We hit it hard, we try, like really try.
January 2nd — January 4th: The novelty wears off and you are sitting in the gym thinking “why do I bother, this is never going to work”. You feel your mood and ambition fading, you’re probably not going to stick with this.
January 6th-12th: You skip the gym, snooze the alarm, you haven’t written anything…
