Be All You Can Be
With 2015 still in its infancy, I am very busy trying to prioritize all the things I want to accomplish this coming year. It is perfectly natural to want to better ourselves to achieve “more”. More friends, more money, more credit, more recognition, more, more, more! It stands to reason that if we are saying we want something better, but only exerting minimal effort to achieve it, we won’t actualize our dreams.
Personally speaking, I’ve gained (and lost) the same twenty pounds over the years. Somewhere
between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, my resolve to lose weight starts to waiver. By the time Easter is over, I am hiding Cadbury Eggs in back of the freezer “in case of an emergency”! Did you know that Marshmallow Peeps taste just as good when they are frozen hard or stale as they do fresh and squishy? True story. Face it, those twenty pounds will not disappear all by themselves just because I want them to!
Common sense is that basic understanding that comes into play when we acknowledge the wisest course of action to ensure a successful outcome to whatever we attempt to do. We need to continually challenge our attitudes and alter our behaviors to make realistic, sustainable improvements in our lives. The “dramas and traumas” that cause real or imagined stress in our lives will be around every corner to threaten our efforts and provide excuses for our failures, especially if our overall resolve is weak. If we succumb to negativity from within (self-talk) or absorb doubt and rejection from others (“You can’t/shouldn’t …”) we are guaranteed to sabotage ourselves and fail to reach our goals time and time again.
Maybe that’s why most resolutions don’t succeed! Perhaps, like me, there are habits you’d like to change or attitudes you would consider rethinking that are keeping you from doing what you want, or being where you want to be in life. No more excuses for me like ” I swear they put crack into chocolate just to mess with me!”
A long time ago Socrates wrote “The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on the fighting the old, but on building the new”. Mahatma Gandhi later added “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. These very smart fellows, without benefit of a Phd. or critical licensure knew that for any change to happen, a sustained resolve and committed action must take place. My Grandma used to say, “Those “potatoes” won’t peel themselves. Get up off your keister and go after what you want!” Her comment has nothing to do with spuds, mind you. Hoping and wishing” alone just won’t get us where we need to be. Starting the journey, one step at a time is the key.
In all humility (and I mean that), I admit that I have acquired some skills and enjoy an unusual life experience that has helped me write a few books and raise a couple of children. Until now, I have fought off suggestions to write a blog. Blogging, I assumed, was a self-promoting platform inferring “authority” of the topic being discussed. Obviously I don’t think that way any longer (but it took a few years for colleagues that I respect to convince me). I know a few things about a few things, but I am hardly an authority on anything!
What I do know, without doubt, is that most of us are reasonable people. We do not give ourselves enough credit for what we instinctively know. We rely on others that we think are smarter to do our thinking for us, and sometimes put more weight on how they say we should feel, rather than acknowledge our own innate abilities to do the right thing.
I believe with all my heart that the vast majority of people in this world have the inner strength (common sense) to achieve happiness and realize their personal potential if they keep “plugging away at it” as if improving ourselves was an inevitable life-long process, which, of course, it is. A few reminders now and again and a proverbial “kick in the keister” to get us back on track once in a while can’t hurt either.
We will make a million mistakes before we reach the simplest goal, but we will learn to “do better” by acknowledging and accepting failures before moving on and repeating the same faulty reasoning. This is me doing just that, “practicing what I preach”.
Bad habits and self-doubts do not disappear over-night. We’ve all got them. The thing to remember is that there are no limits or expiration dates on our efforts. We fall down as often as it takes to learn what we need to learn, and then we pull ourselves up and do things differently. Some days our combined efforts will make us “rock stars”, and some days we will screw up royally and be bums. The solution is to just keep “plugging away” at it.