Quote of the Week

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils."
- Woodrow Wilson



Monday, September 24, 2018

The Biggest Lie

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we are too busy. We love this excuse. It’s our out when our doubt and laziness want to control our lives.

The excuse is conveniently made whenever we feel challenged by what we want to accomplish. Losing weight. Sticking to a budget. Advancing our career or finding a better place to work. Volunteering for a cause we believe in. Simply stating “I’m too busy” is an easy out.

I’m too busy to go to the gym, or walk a mile in the neighborhood before work.
I’m too busy to cook from scratch meals that are more inexpensive and healthier.
I’m too busy to take that online course, attend that seminar or work on my resume.

When simply saying “I’m too busy” doesn’t cut it, we like to throw in some qualifiers.

I works a lot of hours.
I have two kids in sports.
I have a long commute.
My wife works.

You know who else faces the above daily? Successful people who are achieving more than you or I. People who don’t use life in general as an excuse to not do more with their lives. People who live life with focus and determination.

If we want to joins those people, we need to break the cycle of looking for excuses to continue to be unsuccessful, and put forth a plan to achieve our goals and succeed. We need to get on the path, and make sure to stay on the path.

We need to figure out where we want to go.
We need to set achievable goals that will get us there.
We need to break down those goals into task and start completing them.
We need to find the time for those tasks in order to complete them.

Finding the time is the where the rubber meets the road, and where we start putting up our own obstacles to prevent us from leaving our comfort zones to venture on the path to better. We humans have an inherited fear of change. Even if we don’t like where we are, we don’t want to move on out of fear things would be worse. So we stick with “the devil we know” out of fear of a devil we don’t even know if it’s real, but fear it will be worse.

The unknown is not the only thing we fear. We also fear failing. We don’t want to be rejected from the better opportunity. We don’t want to try to lose weight, only to remain out of shape after weeks of starving ourselves. Or still be broke at the end of the month, even though we had a plan with our money.

Put that fear in its place, and start finding the time that is there, but your fears of the unknown or of failure are keeping you from using to your advantage. A great way to find the time is to spend some time tracking where your time goes.

My challenge to you is log your “free time” on a piece of paper for at least one week. Be honest with yourself. Write down how much time you spend with your kids, eating out, cooking at home, running errands, watching TV, working out, surfing the web or scrolling though social media. Chances are, you will not be happy with the results. Although it might spark something in you to get better with your time management. I might give you the motivation to stop telling yourself and others the biggest lie.

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