I don’t really feel like writing today.
Or, more to the point, despite a ton of good subjects to write about, none of them are truly motivating me at the moment to sit down and put up a blog post.
But I need to put up a post. It has been too long.
It matters to me that I continue to contribute to my blog at a somewhat regular pace, and it has been a few days since I last posted.
Sure, you might ask why I need to, and point in fact, I don’t. But I have goals I want to achieve and daily writing is a big step in the process of doing so.
Today I want to sit on my ass and do lazy stuff. I can feel it. I can feel resistance to every decision I make that could be even somewhat described as “work.”
We all get this way. It’s one of those fun little tests of adulthood you discover as you grow older. And how you handle them largely determines whether you are successful or not in life.
The topic this month in my mastermind group is grit, which is more or less the quality of having the perseverance to push through and complete tasks under less than ideal circumstances.
Grit requires you to not give in to the impulsive desire to lay down and rest. It demands that you keep your eye on the long term goal and force yourself to take that next step.
I can see the arguments against doing this.
Some will say that if you focus on the long term prize, you may lose heart at the sheer daunting size of it. And I get that thinking. I actually highly recommend that you only look upon that prize when you need a reminder of your why in the face of adverse conditions or mindset (i.e. when the going gets tough).
Others will say life can’t be all work and no play. You have to rest some time, and enjoy the gift you were given. True enough. But where is the line between a proper rest and reflection period, and outright sloth and indolence? At what point does your tendency to stop lead to you not starting again? Is that how you want your life to go, stagnant, fallow?
Still others will play it down. It’s only a little rest. I’ll start tomorrow. I have more important things to do today, so it can wait. You know where I am going with this. Tomorrow is a day which never gets here.
The arguments for putting aside your malaise and pushing forth anyway are simple and powerful. Not only do you take a step toward your goal, you meet and overcome resistance.
There is truly no obstacle more powerful than the ones we set up in our own minds. Some of them are the stories we tell ourselves about what we can and cannot do, and that’s a whole different discussion for another time. But usually the wall we face is one of our own construction, perfectly scalable, if only we had the will to take it on.
Overcoming that resistance in yourself, day after day, weeks, months, years, that is what determines what sort of life you will lead. It’s weight training for mental resiliency and discipline. When you defeat your own internal walls, you make yourself stronger. The next time it’s going to need to be a higher wall for you to fail to scale it.
Because you are now tougher, bigger, stronger. Grittier.
And so I push through, and I write the blog post I didn’t have much interest in writing. I overcame, and so can you.
I am going to go for a run now. I don’t want to do that either.