Well that was quite a week! I think that one of the toughest things to do character wise is to, as Jocko Willink may address it, "Get back on the path". It would be easy to just hit snooze and give myself just one more day, or maybe stay up late and watch just one more show or have another beer. The morning will slip by and the things I had promised myself that I would do won't get done. Nobody but me would know.
That is the struggle. That first step back to doing what nobody really wants to do. I certainly didn't feel like getting up this morning at 5 AM and working out. The quilts were definitely whispering in my ear about how comfortable it was in bed; how I could reset my alarm to 6 or 6:30. That's when the excuses to back those ideas up start coming in. My back does feel a little sore, maybe working out wouldn't be a good idea. I could use the extra sleep, it was a long week last week. I could just skip the creative writing and pick that up tomorrow...I could just start slow.
The hardest part to getting back from a disruption in the routine for me is the weaker side of my own mind advocating for easy. In my experience, this is where the mindset has to kick in. Robin Sharma actually says it well in one of his books. If you want to do what only the 5% get to do, you have to be willing to do what the 95% won't do. You don't get to breathe the rare air by taking the easy more travelled way in life. So I got up. I got back after it.
I didn't attack a workout like I would have in years past. I waded into one that wasn't going to make me hate getting up for tomorrows. All I needed this morning was to push on that rock to get it moving in the right direction. Once things get rolling, it's easier to keep them rolling. I believe that is one of the rules in physics...An object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force. The same hold true (at least for me) in actionable behaviour. If I didn't get up today, it would have been the equivalent of allowing more water in a leaky boat without bailing it out. Tomorrow, it would have been harder again to get up and get moving, and eventually that boat would sink and I would not be writing this blog, would not be getting up early, would not be getting any work done on creative writing; and would not be setting my day up for success with a jumpstart workout. Now the leak is plugged, and now the rock is rolling.
Now it will pick up more speed and will become easier again to get after it. This is the process that has helped me to become more productive. Trust me, this isn't the me that I have always been. It's taken a major paradigm shift for me to schedule this sort of thing. The truth is I really don't have to get up and do these things. That is precisely why it's difficult to do and so easy to quit. I am not what you would call a natural morning person. I could lay in bed till 8:30-9:00, make a coffee, then another, scroll on the phone for a bit, react to whatever I felt like doing and soon it would be noon without a thing accomplished. I reflected on that awhile ago. Isn't life supposed to be more than that? Aren't you supposed to live each day to the fullest? How is letting it pass by mindlessly doing that? Am I wasting it?
I'm not saying that rest and relax shouldn't happen. In fact, I think that I actually get lots of that...I just know now when I am going to get it. The schedule I make for myself ensures that things I promise to me get done. I promise myself that I will play a game of Xbox NHL with the boys; I promise myself that I will ask Kelly for a date night; I promise myself that I will run 3 times this week. What I have found with that is that when you keep those promises to yourself, it becomes easier to do things for others and it also becomes easier to honestly say no when you know that you can't get something done.
I'm no sage or guru, but I believe that I have found something that works. I didn't come up with the idea. It isn't new. It's a recipe that is tried and true by many successful individuals. A challenge then....Try today to invest in yourself. Look at the person in the mirror and make that person a promise to do something today. Do something that you really don't want to do but isn't that hard. Maybe it's as simple as making your bed. Make that promise to yourself, and then keep it. Unless I miss my guess, you will begin to feel a new found internal peace that you truly can and will do what you put your mind to. When you continue keeping the promise to you, the promise that nobody else knows about but you, you will forge a strength that will keep people wondering how you do what you do. It isn't "The Secret", where you just throw a wish to the universe that things will happen...you are making them happen for you. You become your biggest advocate. You become someone that you can trust. Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you.
I promised myself I would work on guitar scales after this blog so I'll end this here. I gotta keep my rock rolling...in a country music sort of way.