One Lesson A Day Challenge #2— Leap Of Faith
“Thinking can turn toward itself in order to think about itself and skepticism can emerge. But this thinking about itself never accomplishes anything.”
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
- Mahatma Gandhi
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
- AristotleThe superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.
~ Confucius
How does someone know when they’re ready?
Ready to start living the life they want to live? Ready to step up and change who they are?
I tend to live in my own head. I tend to create fantasies where I can always succeed in whatever I aspire to achieve. I make excuses to tell myself why I am still stuck in the same position without moving forward every day.
“Maybe I’ll start on that book tomorrow… Maybe I’ll start writing every day tomorrow… Maybe I’ll start exercising next month…”
I’m always pushing the date in my head because I am not willing to acknowledge the hard truth — I could start right this minute if I wanted to.
If I really wanted what I said I wanted, I could drop the things that I already knew were wasting my time, start creating strategies, and plan for the future.
Many of us live with this notion in our head that our lives are permanent, that time is on our side and we have a lot of time to kill before really pursuing what we want to do. That’s why we’re able to make the same excuses, every single day, and run away from the things that scare us.
There is always time in the day to work on something that you claim you’d like to work on. You will always make time if you really wanted to.
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.”
― Lao Tzu
We’re all geniuses in our own heads. Everything goes according to plan and nothing can fail — even if something did fail in our imaginations, at least no one else saw us crumble and fall flat on our faces.
Today I saw through my excuses. I had a long day of work and came back home exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was to sit down, reflect on my day, and write down something that might be remotely legible.
I initially thought to myself, “Okay, today is an exception because it was a long day and I’m just really tired right now so I don’t think I can write anything that’s valuable or informative. I can always just start tomorrow when I’m feeling refreshed.”
But as I was laying there browsing through Youtube (the alternative activity I was going to do before going to bed when I clearly had the time to sit there and think about what to write and actually writing something), I felt a continuous prick in my mind.
“You said you were going to do this, but from the first day, you’re going to give in? Are you a man of your word? Will you take action or are you all talk? Your words mean nothing if you can’t ever back it up. If you can’t take your own promises seriously, how will you take other people’s promises seriously? How will they trust you if you can’t even do something as simple as writing a few words per day?”
It’s really hard sometimes to think that the things I write every day will produce any sort of value. But I don’t think what you produce is what is most important.
What’s important is the fact that you took action and you made a decision.
What’s important is that you did what you said you’d do and that confidence will translate into the next day where you will feel more empowered and disciplined to tackle another day of hardship and struggle.
What’s important is that, as you practice something that is important to you, you will become better than you were when you were only thinking about it.
What’s important is that action will change your life, not your thoughts. So every day will have to be a day of action and decision instead of mere reflection and introspection.
