…about my aspirations

What goal am I trying to achieve in my life? I don’t think enough people ask themselves that.  I bet if you ask 10 people who they look up to, who they aspire to be, only a couple would have an answer. 

Something happened to all of us as we grew older: we stopped dreaming of being rock stars, surgeons, lawyers, politicians, and CEOs. The vast majority of people are cruising through life, taking it day by day. No goals mean no failures. And no successes. I don’t want to be like that. I want to reach the absolute highest goals I can imagine. I don’t want to regret not having taken any chances.

But it’s hard to start. It’s really hard. You think about it one night, then next morning you concentrate all of your powers to try and stop time, just so you can get a few extra minutes of sleep. It all goes downhill from there. 

Why is it so hard? I was thinking about that for months. I would have enlightenments and want to jump out of my seat and get started. But I didn’t. I had work to do, or it was time for bed, or I didn’t feel like starting right that moment. “Really soon” I would promise myself, but that was quickly forgotten.

I have a plan this time.

You see, the best and the brightest people are only slightly above everyone else. Even the best basketball team is statistically only a few percentage points better than the 2nd best team. 

So why not try to be only marginally better each day?

Instead of trying to change everything, change 1 thing. If your goal is to be the President one day, ask yourself, “What can I do today to get myself one step closer to that goal?” It doesn’t have to be anything big. There might be 6 million steps between what you do today to your goal, but all you need to take is one step. One extra sales call, one extra read-through of a report, one extra hour at work. 

Surprisingly, even this is hard to do. Here’s a simple example: flossing. It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t take that much time. But we don’t do it. “Really soon I’ll start.” Sound familiar? And you know that once you start, it’s no big deal. So how can you convince yourself to take that step?

Convince yourself.

Just like others can convince you into thinking you actually like their idea, you can convince yourself that it’s worth doing right now. The easier way I’ve found is to not feel like you are making a commitment. You don’t want to floss because you don’t want to have to go through this headache all the time. 

But you just need to convince yourself to do it this once.

You aren’t deciding to do it everyday, you aren’t setting yourself up for a lifetime of flossing. You are doing it just this once.  That’s usually enough to convince myself to do it. Then I go through the same negotiations every day. The more it happens, the easier it gets. And it happens like magic. Our brains will embed patters and make them something you want to do, all without you making any decisions. And that momentum will make it easier and easier to succeed. 

I’ve tried to start on my life goals many times, but now’s the time to start. Not “really soon,” but right now. That’s why I’ve deleted my old blog and am starting fresh. I’m going to focus on my little journey to a better life. And I’m going to take it one day at a time. So I guess this makes my blog a journal of my adventures and my thoughts (hence the blog title).