As some of you may know, I post a daily status update on my Facebook page which is aimed at being inspirational, encouraging and a call to action. I was interested to see this week that one status update in particular was viewed more often than others, and so I’ve decided to expand upon it in today’s blog.
Here’s the update:
Or you can click through to it on Facebook here.
There are a few themes running through this update, so let’s take a look of them in turn. I’ve also included a link to earlier blog posts for each area which you can click for an alternative view or wider discussion.
Obstacles (also known as ‘Challenges’, thanks Kat Nicholson!)
Like it or not, we all face obstacles in our daily lives. Sometimes these are obvious like missing the train and being late for work, bad weather when we’d promised ourselves a workout or unsupportive ‘friends’ who seem to undermine our efforts. We also face internal obstacles, in the form of resistance to change.
‘The price of greatness is responsibility.’ Winston Churchill.
Anyone who ever achieved anything that was truly meaningful to them, paid the price in accepting personal responsibility for its success. This is why ‘it’s just too bad’ when the obstacles appear, because, somehow we will have to push through, get over or ignore them until later. Right now, the work we promised ourselves we would do towards our goal needs to get done. Furthermore, there’s only one person who can do it…you…
Motivation is almost eerie in its ability to come and go without reference to our needs! In this respect, it also can and frequently does become a barrier to our success. Finding a little seed of motivation sometimes seems impossible and in these instances we really just need to force ourselves to take a small step. Quite often this will be enough to get us moving, but, like a lumbering steam train, if you’re starting from a dead stop, accept that the first movements are going to be slow and potentially painful. However, in time and with repeated action, you will once again build momentum and the effort required will diminish.
Achieving a goal is a journey, not a single time event. In progressing on our journey we are going to find things that are not to our liking, things that make us miserable or cry and people who want to stop us (for our own good!). But, we’re also going to learn so much about ourselves which will include the abundance of strength we didn’t know we had at the outset.
Persistence is part of that strength, it’s the ability to take what life throws at us, deal with it and keep going. Every time we persist in the face of failure or hardship we will grow and be better equipped to deal with the next obstacle.
Remember, ‘change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end’ (Robin Sharma), so just keep going! Your dreams will come to fruition when you fully accept that ‘that’s just too bad’ and keep with the plan anyway!
Note – for those of you who may not be seeing my daily status updates, please check that you have my updates set as ‘show in newsfeed’ when you hover over the ‘Like’ button on my home page. Also, it’s important to ‘interact’ regularly with the page otherwise the Facebook boffins will assume you’re not interested and stop sending you my updates! To do this, you could visit occasionally, like a post, comment or share. All of these actions will keep the newsfeed coming through to you.
Thanks for your continued support!