THIS IS HARD
Tuesday Aug. 5, 2014
Focus has been the focus of much of my focusing lately …
Partly to stay task-focused, focused on new regimen. And focused on those things which are most important – which means all things which are not most important, are distractions. Focus can only exist when distractions are purged, ignored, set aside or eliminated. Easily said …
Reading something or hearing a lecture is easy – it flows in, some sticks, and then the rest leaks out into non-retention status at an alarming rate.
Holding an idea, a new idea – and especially one that turns your sensibilities, your sense of logic on its ear – is obviously not a simple challenge. The retention, the decline in the quality of the knowledge is understandably sharp. Precipitous. As if there is precipice my brain is falling off, in the canyon in search of the Road Runner.
Feeling a bit like Wile E. Coyote.
Feeling a bit feeble – that I can’t re-schedule everything to make everything work every time. I could call it middle-aged-malaise, but that isn’t it. It is more about applying everything I’ve learned recently to everything I’ve ever learned and every thing I’ve been doing for forty years. It doesn’t fit, not yet anyway, but it needs to fit. It needs to reconcile. It needs to square with itself, with me.
New habits are so easy to break in the early days – not because I am wrong, or lazy, but because they are not habits yet.
Habits.
Pick one.
Pick many.
Pick good ones. Pick better ones. Pick all the great ones. Discard all the bad ones.
Simple.
Like any good theory, putting to practice those things we theorize about is something the body and brain resist with significant force.
I am reminded of that rule, when things don’t fit – ‘don’t force it’.
But on these changes – if I’m going to have mastery over anything, over myself and my habits – I must autonomously keep to my purpose. Or change it. Until I decide to change, I need to do more than decide to do what I’m doing. I need to force it. Force it every hour of every day, otherwise it won’t stick and I won’t stick with it.
Change is hard.
Focus is hard.
Time for doing hard things.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 13C / 55F, clear sky but afternoon thunderstorms predicted – typical summer weather, steady breeze, Gusta invigorated by freshness, dampness, of early morning. Me too.
