STARTING NOW
Monday June 11, 2018
Choosing a ‘habit’ or best practice is part design. Part accident.
You have to wonder, with all those self-help DIY books out there, somebody must have found a simple formula. You know my meaning – an A-B-C process for life simplification. Clarity causing simplicity.
Could there be such an easy thing?
Perhaps not so easy, but why not simple and clear?
I may have ‘discovered it’.
Correction, ‘found it’, in words of someone else which I’m repeating. Tweaking a little. I offer it to you for your consideration. Whether or not you take it up, believe it or put your own spin is up to you.
You could dismiss it out of hand, but you would be wrong.
You could set it aside to consider another day, but you would be wrong.
You could pursue some other life-affirming mantra, but you would be wrong.
Yes, there is a simple formula for charting a course in life that we design, plan and execute. What is THAT formula, how can I do THAT thing well and consistently? If you’ve been perplexed, ever, in this pursuit, maybe there is a simple answer.
I didn’t invent this at all – just heard about and what you have here is my interpretation of what I learned:
You are what you repeatedly do.
Think that through.
What do you repeatedly do?
Doesn’t that define you?
Most likely does, so if you aren’t happy or feeling your life is going where/how you want it to be – maybe the way to shake things up, or to change things up, is to consider what it is that we repeatedly do. From minutiae of daily routines to big-arc thinking, take a few minutes (or days or weeks) to examine what you repeatedly do to reveal what others already see.
We ‘are’ somebody – and talking about what we repeatedly do probably defines the trajectory of our personal lives and careers more than and better than we might expect.
Pause a couple of minutes, close your eyes, consider your daily habits – those things you do over and over, every day, every week, every situation that repeats. Are those things you repeatedly do helping a little or hurting a little, are they forces for good in your life, for improvement, for excellence and mastery in your life? Or, are they things that get in the way of a happier, more effective and more satisfied you?
You know already, don’t you?
Yes, because we ARE what we repeatedly do.
This is not something new and original from my belly – it’s been triggered by a talk I heard recently which drove home this point. Yes, the words of a professor*, a drama coach – speaking to a conference of writers opened my mind to this thinking. It resonated with me very deeply. Not just about writing, with which I immediately identified, but in so many elements of my life/business/relationship world.
Just because some things are tough, or life is tough or someone is tough, doesn’t mean we should act, react and deal with it in our habit-riddled way. But just this pausing to ponder is valuable, ask what are you doing over and over – is it for good and great, or ingrained repetition of something not so great or not so good?
*Patrick Finn
