The year's almost over!!! This is not a drill! We've got three more months 'til the new year and I'd like to think that it's not yet too late to fulfill your resolutions. Unless they involve doing things for the months that have already passed, never say die until we really die, right? I am here to cheer you on in this last quarter of the year. Here are three things that I thought you should know:
Just because you haven't made the first step, doesn't mean you never will.
In chemistry, there is this concept we call the activation energy. In order for a reaction to occur, the activation energy needs to be overcome. The higher the activation energy, the greater the work that you have to put in to make the reaction happen. Let's borrow this concept and apply it to the completion of our daily tasks.
In order for us to do something, we have to put in work before we actually accomplish it. You may have noticed that there are some activities that require less work than others. For example, it doesn't require much effort to check notifications in your social media accounts as compared to finishing your chemistry homework. That's because the activation energy that you need to overcome in checking your notifications is lesser compared to the energy that you have to supply in doing your homework. If you've been wanting to learn a new skill this year and you haven't made that first step towards doing it yet, chances are, the activation energy that you have to overcome is high. We tend to do things that are easy, especially when we're not giving much thought to it. Luckily, you can do things that lessen the activation energy and one is by making systems that will enable you to do more of that said task. For example, you can set a science website of your choice as your browser's homepage so that you can directly search for information related to your assignment. Conversely, you can also increase the activation energy of the activities that you consider your distractions, browsing social media for example. You can log out of your profiles, switch the 'remember password' off, so that you'll have to manually log in every time, increasing the work that you have to do. Over time, you'll realize that it's not worth the hassle to manually log in to check your notifications, so you either direct your actions to more productive work or cheat the system you've created, giving in to the distraction. Either way, you have to put in work, you just have to choose which work is more beneficial for you in the long run.
Just because it isn't going the way you planned it to, doesn't mean you won't get to where you're going.
With 23 years of existence that I have under my belt, I have learned that what we get in life isn't always certain. Life doesn't work in the simple mechanism of wish-receive. Wishing for things to be yours and expecting it to land on your lap right after doesn't always happen. Most things take work, dedication and sometimes, luck. Luck, in this sense, is the uncontrollable force that enables things to be on your side even without your active participation. What I noticed is we can wish for something to happen, actively work towards achieving it, dedicate a huge portion of our time into it, but our desired outcome isn't a guarantee. For this, I have realized that it is necessary to understand the difference between your goal and your direction. For this post's sake, let's define goal as a definite state that you want to achieve. You can have a definite, realistic personal goal like losing 5 pounds or having a 24-in waist in a span of three months. Come your deadline and you realize that you're 3 pounds or 3 inches short of your goal, you've failed, in your goal's perspective. But, in a much wider sense, you were headed in the right direction. You were still going towards your goal.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that having a concrete goal isn't a good practice. What I'm saying is setting yourself in the right direction and making this the foundation to build your goals on will allow you to still move forward no matter what the setback. It's always frustrating to not achieve the goal you've set for yourself. Having a foundation set in the right direction allows you to pick yourself up much faster than if you didn't.
Just because everybody looks like they've already made it, doesn't mean you're not going anywhere with your life.
Competition is inevitable, it comes with the reality of our ever evolving standards. With competition follows comparison. Social media has made it a lot easier for us to see our peers' successes which lead us to question our mundane, boring lives. You compare yourself to their posts and you end up feeling bad about your slow progress. It happens to everyone, even in real life. But just because everyone looks put together online and offline, it doesn't make you the automatic loser. Their successes don't necessarily hinder your own success. I'd like to believe that everyone has a shot at winning at life - by becoming our best selves. No one is going to do a better job at being you than yourself. I stand by what I said in my post, "Defeat," that the only competition that should matter is the one that you have with your past self.
October's just started! It's not too late to own your year. Just in case you need the extra boost, this blog is here for you :) I try to post on every 10th, 20th and 30th of each month.
Always rooting for your improvement,
Gail
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