#69 Evening Questions

You only need to stick to one new habit to prove to yourself that you can change.

One habit. One small activity. One Teeny Tiny Trust Builder where you don’t give up, but stay on track.

Why would you make this hard on yourself?

Write one sentence a day.

Learn one word a day.

Meditate for 1 minute.

Make it ridiculously small if you want.

But stick with it.

Stick with it on day one. And the next day. And the next. And also on the day when the universe seems to conspire against you.

Stick with it, because that one silly little activity can be the start of a changed life.

When everything is urgent, how do we know what to do first?

One solution is adding more nuance:

What’s the most urgent?

What’s the most important?

Breathing is urgent.

A crying child is urgent.

A toilet visit can be urgent.

Sending that email out tonight right before bed instead of tomorrow, maybe not so much?

Here’s the important question:

If you’re going to prioritize the urgent matters anyway, why stress yourself out by calling everything urgent in the first place?

Making everything urgent devalues truly urgent matters.

Because when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent anymore.

You’re likely to encounter consistency challenges.

After all, nobody feels motivated every day.

Maybe you’ll have a day where you’re busy or not feeling great, and writing, running, or doing yoga, seems like the last thing you want to do.

Luckily, you don’t need to feel motivated to write one sentence.

You don’t even need to want to write to have words appear on the screen or paper.

You just need to be reminded that you want to be a writer.

And writers write, even if they don’t feel like it.

And so it goes for runners, yogis, meditators, athletes, crafstmen, lovers.