A new month! A new quarter! A new opportunity to get back on track and do all the things!
What things?
1. Eat better
2. Drink H2O
3. Get in at least 10K steps/day
4. Lift weights
5. Meditate
6. Write every day
7. Finish the Pranayama course
8. Do some yoga every day
9. Keep to the ADHD cleaning schedule
10. Look at finances/track spending
That’s the list.
That’s pretty much always the list.
Every “new year.” Every “new month” Every “new quarter.” Every “Monday,” I start over, thinking this is the week, the month, the quarter, I will totally nail it!
But does it happen? No. Of course not. But do I stop making the list? Of course not. I launch headfirst into April, full of determination, optimism, and hope. This time I will do it. This time, things will be different. This time, I will make real progress. This time, I will make a positive change for the good.
That’s where my head is today. Full of optimism, full of excuses for why Q1 was such a disaster, but now that we’ve shed the snake energy, and it’s no longer 200 degrees below zero, and our brains have thawed enough to focus on things other than survival, let’s make that list and get after it!
But here are 30 Things I Know About Change
1. Change takes TIME.
2. Change takes consistency over TIME.
3. Change takes incremental change over TIME.
4. It takes TIME to turn the ship around.
5. While the ship is turning around, there is NO VISIBLE CHANGE.
6. Repetition is key. The first sled run down the slope doesn’t make much of a path.
7. The 100th run down the slope makes a deep groove.
8. Every day I do not run the sled down the slope, the snow fills in the groove.
9. That is why the sled must go down the slope every day.
10. It is impossible to run the sled down the slope EVERY DAY.
11. That’s because shit happens. BUT, as soon as the shit is over, the sled must go down the slope. If too much snow falls between runs, it will be very hard to re-establish the groove.
12. Every goal takes TIME.
13. Every goal takes more TIME than I think.
14. I must grow to love the PROCESS.
15. The PROCESS is the whole game.
16. There is nothing BUT the process.
17. I will never BE strong and fit.
18. Strong and fit is only something I can BECOME.
19. I am not a BEING. I am a BECOMING.
20. BECOMING takes place moment by moment.
21. Becoming takes place with every decision I make and ACT UPON.
22. Becoming will never happen just because I make a LIST.
23. Lists are not worthless, though.
24. Lists help me see what I want.
25. The things on the list that don’t get done are not the things I really want.
26. I do not believe this at all.
27. I believe everything on the list is what I really want.
28. I am SURE about this.
29. I am wrong.
30. Only the things I actually DO are the things I REALLY WANT.
Why is it that we know all these things philosophically, —that the process of living is what life is all about; that the path to the goal IS the goal, that lists don’t work, only actions work? Why do we set goals for Q2? Why do we point our ship in a particular direction?
In Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which road to take, and the Cat replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” When she says she doesn’t care, the Cat replies, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
I am not like Alice. It matters to me where the road goes. But once I’m sure I’m headed in the general direction of my dreams, I can turn my focus to the streams and the flowers and the sky. I can, as Kerouac says, “dig the ride.”
My list is my road. But it’s only that consistent effort, those daily footsteps along the path, those dedicated runs down the slope that give me the impression that my life might have some meaning.
Inspiration Location 