Too many good ideas turn into cliches that people then ignore.
Many, if taken to heart, explain how we should live.
Today I woke up, to be honest, ‘feeling’ a bit down. I know, I know, we’re the burden-bearers, we’re not supposed to feel down, it’s a useless way to feel, but holy hell is it a tough state to break.
When most feel down, depressed, their following actions compound those feelings, resulting in what’s usually a wasted day, one where the final feeling of the day is even worse than that initial bad one.
How do I know? I’ve done this too often, but just often enough that I’ve learned not to do this.
Instead, when those feelings crept into my brain which today were focusing completely on where I am in comparison to where I want to be (a HORRIBLE line of thinking), I knew I had one objective: to win today.
That is something that I could do. I could definitely win today. I had a pre-defined list of things I had to do that I made after the previous work day. I had to workout and work on 2 bigger projects that I had to complete by day’s end.
My thoughts went from pity, to power…
That ‘feeling’ of being down, of wanting more, of honestly wishing I was already there, never really left. It often doesn’t. We can do our best to shut it off, to think it out of existence because it’s never the correct way to look at life or work or anything, but it may linger for the day.
That, however, doesn’t mean that we can lose the day. Our actions have to differ from our feelings.
Feelings are, quite often, lies.
They betray reality, they do not magnify it.
First, I focused on health.
I got up, walked Teddy, and then went to the gym and got a great lift in.
After that I got back down to work and began working slowly to accomplish what I had to get done.
It wasn’t a great, motivated, inspired work day. It just wasn’t.
It was a laboring effort. The key is that the effort was constant.
It was a Sunday. I would’ve loved to just watch football and have a few beers. And I could have. No one was watching. No one knew about the stuff I had to get done.
I did.
When we let down ourselves we’re setting ourselves up to let down others. And when we let down ourselves constantly how can we have any pride or confidence or appreciation for how our life is and how it’s going.
I’m writing this at 7:15pm.
I felt like I had to, because I know other guys go through something similar, because I’ve gone through it hundreds of times. That feeling that was there at the beginning of the day is suffocated under a pile of accomplishment.
This article, and the podcast I’ll record to go with it are the cherry on top.
I felt like crap to start the day.
But I did the only thing I had the control to do, I won the day.
If you start heading down that path where you get discouraged or you start comparing where you are to where you want to be or even where you are to where someone else is, focus only on what you control: today.
If you win today, you’ll defeat that feeling, and if you do this enough, you’ll end up winning life.
That’s all we can do, but it’s also something that’s our duty to do, especially when our lives are not just about us, we’ve got others depending on us, others we want to provide for, even provide an example for.
Get up and get after it, no matter what those lies that are called ‘feelings’ want to tell you. Shut them up and win the day.
