Life isn't a game! There is no respawning or buying back your friends; it all comes down to a marathon that has been given the name "life". On average, in the UK, people spend around 52 - 260 hours per year playing video games. Imagine if we all spent a fraction of the time we do playing video games working towards our dreams. It's great to have a break every now and again, although many self-improvement enthusiasts will say "no breaks because it's grind season," but that's just not how humans work.
When thinking about what we want to do and how amazing we would feel once we complete our goals and dreams, we want we feel amazing, but then fail to get there. This is what is known as goal-oriented thinking, and it's a common trap most people fall for. While it's not inherently bad to have a goal that you want, it can harm your progress if you only see the goal and not the process.
"Passion is the result of finding the joy in the process, not the goal"
What Is Stopping You?
When you ask people what's stopping them, they tend to hide behind their past as a large reason as to why they can't push themself to and while I respect that you have no control over the past and what it may have inflicted upon you (both the good and the bad) it is at the end of the day your responsibility.
"Your past defines who you were, not who you are now"
No matter what your past is or what mental conditions you may have, you must remind yourself that you are at your core a human. Why is that important, you ask? Because of the phenomenon known as the indomitable human spirit, humans have come back from anything thrown at us, from devastation to surviving in the wilderness. Humans' ability to learn new things is remarkable, there is no limit to what we can do. So the next time someone asks you what's stopping you, give them an honest answer that includes how you're planning to solve the issues that you've raised.
The Importance of Tracking Habits
I want you to be honest here: how many of you track your habits daily? People quite often can get lost in the strum of life, days can seem to blend into one another, and we can often feel like we aren't getting anywhere. One method that you can use to not only keep track of what you do but also to help you understand what you spend your time on.
Many people who do habit tracking only track the habits they want to do, but you should also track the habits that you want to stop. This way, you can track not only the habits that take your time away, but also the habits that you want to keep. This can also help you identify what led to those habits, and then you can implement things to help increase the friction towards the habits you don't want to do and decrease the friction for the habits you do want to do.
Find an Accountability Partner
Relying on just yourself to get everything done can not only be hard but exhausting, forcing yourself to do the tiny things that build up on a daily basis can become tiring, and that's why finding someone to just remind you why your doing things can be a great way to increase your chances of getting things done. An accountability partner is someone who takes it upon themselves to remind you that you have things to do, not in a mean way, they just simply remind you with questions like "I thought you were going to do [something] today?" It's these tiny questions that can help a person remember why they're doing something and what their working towards.
Remember to take it at Your Own Pace
If there's a common theme throughout the self-improvement industry, it's the "grind mindset". You have to just do everything because tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and it's not, but that doesn't mean that we should burn ourselves out doing everything a person online says because that defeats the purpose of "self"-improvement. When trying to discover yourself and implement and improve parts of your life, you should take it at your own pace, where all driving on the same motorway of life, just some of us are in the slow lane while others like to be in the fast lane. Remember that rest is also a part of the self-development cycle.
Understand The Value of Every Moment
What makes something valuable? It's a mixture of how useful something can be and how rare it is. Do you know how rare it is for you to be you? It's about 1 in 400 Trillion! Therefore, everyone has some inherent value, and that value is built upon our most crucial resource: time. Every single moment that you have every second of your day is something that may never happen again, with each moment leading to the next one in a web of possibility and probability. Make sure to cherish every moment, including the bad, as each moment has something to teach.
I hope that after reading this, you now have something that you wish to implement into your own life, whether it's to take life at your own pace or to start tracking your habits. Just remember to take it one step at a time and that you've got this.
Stay disciplined, stay strong, and I'll see you next time!
