#109 Now is the time to put my heart on the line

On the days when I feel like everything I write is bad, I choose to be a writer.

On the days when I feel like the most inspired writer, I choose to be a writer.

On the days when I need to skip a day because life gets in the way, I choose to be a writer.

On the days when I don’t feel like a writer, I choose to be a writer.

And especially on the days when I don’t write, I choose to be a writer by trusting that soon enough, I’ll write again.

I choose to be a writer, not through pressuring myself into hardliner habits but through my daily commitment to the general direction I want my life to take.

Focus on making the majority of your actions and decisions align with who you want to be.

When you do that, you’ll always bounce back.

We all want to avoid doing things that make us miserable.

Yet avoiding them often takes the shape of prioritizing them.

“I’ll do this unpleasant thing first so that I can get to the fun stuff.”

Unfortunately, it seems to be a rule that the more unpleasant tasks you cross off your to-do list, the more unpleasant tasks appear on your to-do list.

Sometimes it makes sense to do the essential things first, even if that means you keep the unpleasant things on your to-do list.

This is not a free pass to avoid unpleasant things and only do something you like.

It’s about doing the things that matter, regardless of whether they’re pleasant.

It’s about coming to terms with the fact that you’ll probably always drown in chores and busy work to do, then doing the important stuff anyway.

Journaling question of the day:

Where are you prioritizing and attracting things that make you miserable instead of doing the work that matters?

A compelling vision of who I want to be doesn’t just guide my present actions and brings me toward a fulfilling future.

It also helps me deal with the suffering that’s part of living in a complex physical body with a complex mind in a complex society in a complex, uncontrollable world.

Because no matter how strong my vision or purpose is, and no matter what I do or say, inevitable hardship will happen anyway.

So if I know why I’m doing what I do, why I’m going where I go, and why I’m becoming who I want to be, then hopefully, when life gets rough, I’ll react in a better way.

I’ll trust myself to handle the unavoidable suffering.

I’ll trust myself to minimize how much I add to the suffering.

And that makes the future just a little bit brighter for me, everyone, and everything around me.