I love when a new year starts out. No matter what calendar you astutely follow, the start of a new year often comes along with a lot of grit to be your best self yet, even though fleetingly so.
We get shiny new planners, write down our best of intentions, some even go the extra mile to set a timeline for these intentions. I won’t call them goals because few make it past 20 days and are forgotten so soon, or eternally postponed.
Don’t throw stones at me just yet, I am not going to call you lazy, or tag you a person who is not goal oriented. I won’t tag you and give you a category to fit in, because society does that already for you.
But this I will tell you; you can’t go about implementing these goals on your own.
After I read the 5AM Club by Robin Sharma for the first time, boy was I pumped and fired up. Set on implementing the 20/20/20 rule the very next day, which I did. I got the 20 minutes exercise pocket in, I got the 20 minutes meditation in and the 20 minutes learn and grow phase covered. I did this for about 3 days until one morning, just when I was about starting the 3rd pocket of my 20/20/20 new found routine, I got a call from a friend whom I cherish and we started talking. Actually, she started talking. It was no emergency, just the usual banalities of life before starting her day. It was not unusual for her to call me at that hour though, because when I received those calls a few months before then, I would have been entirely captivated by the conversation. This time around something was different, I was getting unsettled, irritated even. Unhealthy feelings really have a gnarly way of messing with your self-control. I started feeling a sudden heat rising in my chest and goosebumps on my arms. I kept telling myself “it’s already 10 minutes gone from my morning routine, why won’t she just cut the talk?” I am not very proud of that thought either. So we kept talking for about 45 minutes till she took her taxi to work. I lost my focus window and bubble of concentration. Eventually I got interrupted during my routine more times down the line. I finally abandoned this routine which I was really beginning to love because I hated the interruptions.
What’s the relevance of this story, you ask? Simply to let you know that you can’t implement such changes on your own. Your life is connected to many other people, such that your life, though you think it be yours actually belongs to your loved ones. These changes might seem small and affect only your personal life, but you need the help of people close to you. Reason why when you have a goal, share it with them. They will check in with you and work to help you go through with your routine. They won’t be the ones interrupting and will probably prevent others from interrupting as well.
Whatever the intentions you have, without support, you will be wasting so much time and untapped potential if you refuse to include your loved ones in the process. Fill them in on these intentions, ask for their help, remind them that shifting from a paradigm of intentions to a goal paradigm will help you be a better person not just for yourself, but for them as well.
Stop wasting the priceless resource called time and include your loved ones in the process. The results will be much better than when you try to do it on your own. Just so you know, you can’t even do this on your own!
I totally agree with you
Yes