Originally posted on Facebook HERE
As I took this photo today, I couldn’t help but think – “man, there’s a bunch of stuff in the way today”… and right away that thought morphed into, “and that’s so often the way it is in life, isn’t it?”. We all have things we’d like to do, projects we’d like to start, people we’d like to see again, and… it keeps getting put off because there’s a bunch of stuff in the way. Like – daily living, you know? Jobs, housework, medical appointments, car maintenance, bill paying, grocery shopping, yard work, pet care, etc, etc, etc… never seems to be enough time in the day to get to everything much less start something new. And we all have our schedules and routines that we like to follow. No matter what’s going on in life, it’s always easier to stick with what you know rather than make a change. And when we have something new we’d like to start – well, often we look at how daunting the project seems instead of what we could do right now to move forward. So, we don’t move forward. For example, I’ve been wanting to write and record a solo bass guitar album for years now. Today I was going through my YouTube page and I found two videos from THREE YEARS AGO that were songs I had started working on back then with the solo album in mind. I really liked them, too – and had totally forgotten about them because after I wrote them, and did the videos… life got in the way. Never really looked at them again until today. I have many, many more videos I’ve done like that over the years that never made it to YouTube as well. But, the idea of writing and recording a solo album is daunting. Seems like a ton of work and involves many areas I don’t really have a good handle on – like how to record bass at home. I’ve got everything I need to do it I’m sure, I just lack the knowledge. So, there’s a learning curve. I have to write the songs, record them, do the overdubs, etc… and as a whole, it’s overwhelming, so… it just sits there as an idea for now because when I look at it as a whole it’s too much to think about. But… what if I just said to myself – “I’m going to spend 5 minutes a day working on my solo album”. Could I do that? If I really wanted to, I could easily find five minutes a day to do that. It doesn’t seem like a lot of work, and it would be fun, too! And this is often how we start to move life out of the way and get into new things. We forge new habits that are not overwhelming. We take baby steps. Wanna get more fit? Starting a gym membership, setting up three weekly one hour sessions with a personal trainer, changing your eating habits… too much to consider. What could you do in less than 5 minutes a day to move you toward that goal? Can you walk 5 minutes a day? Do 20 pushups a day? Go up and down the steps at your house 10 times a day as quickly as possible?… let’s say you decide to walk 5 minutes a day either outside or on a treadmill, or both. Once you get going, chances are you’ll get to that 5 minute limit and want to keep going some days. But if you had set the goal at 15 minutes a day, you wouldn’t have started, because – too much. Set real small goals and do them on a regular basis. This will start a new habit that can be built upon, and even if all you did was walk 5 minutes a day when you hadn’t been doing that before that’s 1,825 minutes of walking every year! Over 30 hours! Life will always be in the way. What’s that thing you really want to do, but it’s overwhelming? What can you do in under 5 minutes a day on a regular basis that will move you forward? Do that. And once you get going, it’ll snowball upon itself and form a new habit that will move you forward in the direction of whatever that dream is…
