Stop Avoiding what You Want Most

Time is a commodity we all think we don't have enough of. However, we have the same amount as everyone else. I know authors with forty, fifty, a hundred, or even two hundred books on the market and I still have only a handful. In what areas am I failing while they are wildly successful?

Yes, I have a full-time job. Yes, I’m working to build a Scentsy business as well as carve out time to write. Yes, I have a family. But doesn't everyone? We all have obligations. We all have lives and people we want to spend time with. Somehow, though, successful writers manage to accomplish scads more in the same 24 hours a day than I accomplish. What am I doing wrong that I can't find time to work on my books? I can't find time to edit and polish and format and market and network and stay abreast of trends and techniques in the industry that other authors are utilizing to create their books.

Apparently they’ve learned something I still struggle with. These people know how to utilize every moment while I fritter away my day. I legitimize much of what eats up my time because it’s stuff that must be done; like walking the dog and washing dishes and scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator (okay, I don’t do that one very often) and sweeping the floors and running errands and folding laundry. Productive people do the same things. They have dogs to walk and litter boxes to clean out and breakfast to cook and kids to get on the bus. They do these things and still achieve their goals. Where am I missing it?

That's the question, isn't it? That's what each of us has to figure out if we want to accomplish anything. For me, the key is deciding how important my goals are. If something is important, I will give it priority. If I have a doctor’s appointment at 1:45, I give that appointment priority and won’t let anything keep me from getting there on time. If I have a conference call at 9:15, I set an alarm and leave a post-it note on the bathroom mirror to make sure I'm on the line at the designated time.

Often, the things we say we want to do are hard or scary or uncomfortable, so we let other things take precedence. We put them off until we barely even think about them anymore. Recently I read this quote.

“In any area of your life that you want to change, adopt this rule. Just do the things that you don’t want to do.”
― Mel Robbins, Stop Saying You're Fine: Discover a More Powerful You

If I want to lose weight, I need to say no to the cheesecake. Of course I don’t want to. I love cheesecake. But I should love to fit into the new dress for my reunion more. I might want a beautiful landscaped front yard, but I keep putting off the work. If I want a beautiful front yard badly enough, I will do the thing I don’t want to do, which is getting down on my hands and knees and moving dirt.

What area in your life do you want to change? Now, what is the thing you need to do to change it, even though you don’t want to? You owe it to yourself to do it anyway. You may find passing on the cheesecake wasn’t that hard, especially when you see the changes in your body. You may find the beautiful yard was worth the sacrifice of getting your hands dirty.

Figure out what you want to change in your life, and then pinpoint what you’re putting off doing. My challenge for you this week is to do that thing anyway, no matter how much you dread it. Just once. Then stick with it, and each subsequent time will get easier. And probably more rewarding. Few things worth having come easy, and easy things seldom get us what we want most.