JUST A THOUGHT: Success Is Never Owned; It's Rented


Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Success is never owned; it is rented and that rent is due every day.
All the good things we want in our lives?

They're about committing to lifelong processes and the daily efforts required to maintain them.



We're one week into the new year, and it's RESOLUTION TIME for a lot of people. Usually, after the gluttony of the holiday season, those resolutions often involve losing weight.

Around 80% of New Year’s resolutions will get abandoned [in the month of February].

Photo by Roberto Ourgant on Unsplash

Resolutions F-A-I-L.

Why?

Because real change happens through an internal shift, not an external cue.

People only change when the pain of their current situation is greater than the pain of making a change.

An internal shift means acknowledging to ourselves that they way we've been living in some aspect of our lives in no longer sustainable, and that although change will be uncomfortable, continuing to live the way we've been living is even more uncomfortable or even downright painful.

That acknowledgment might coincide with and external cue - like January 1st - but I like to say that real change happens on an idle Tuesday. A day which is not significant in any way other than that this is the day we decided that things were going to be different.

We all have to make a decision at some point; the decision for change.

Once we've made that decision, we need to remove anything that distracts us from the process and that includes thinking too much about our goal.

Say whaaat?

Yeah.

Change - REAL CHANGE - takes time.

So if we're sitting there staring at where we're trying to get to from wherever we are (e.g. in this case weighing ourselves daily or even multiple times a day) we get discouraged and give up.

Image Credit: Bored Panda

And that's where we need to take a look at our mindset: the more temporary we believe a change is, the more impatient we become with the process.

That's because we're not actually interested in making the change, we just want the result that we think making the change will give us.

But...

Success is never owned; it is rented and that rent is due every day.

We cannot "fix" our health or our weight because they're not static. They're states of being that change based on our daily inputs.

We can all have a greater effect on our health and weight if we make minor adjustments over time - the magic of compounding - rather than the shock and awe method that New Year's Resolutions demand.

The thing is shock and awe is S-E-X-Y.

Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!

But shock and awe isn't sustainable.

Small changes over time will have more of a long-term effect than using overwhelming force at the outset ever will.

Anytime we commit to shock and awe tactics, we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge the fact that we're not actually interested in making the change, we just want the result that we think making the change will give us.

But if we lose 10 pounds in 10 days, and then go back to eating the way we were eating, we will gain 10 pounds in 10 days.

And that's because:

Success is never owned; it is rented and that rent is due every day.

Comments

Popular Posts