⏰ Don’t Waste Any More Time. Go For Your Goals! (NOW)

STOP wasting time. Go for your goals – starting today!

It’s so easy to let time slip by (years even if you’re not careful!) without accomplishing what you want most in life.

In all that time that goes by you’re thinking about, wishing, wanting to, berating yourself for not taking action, planning to start… or start and quit over and over maybe.

A lot of emotion and thought (and sometimes even money) is spent on the goal, even when action hardly ever is – or isn’t at all.

We get caught up in “the dailies” instead – the endless list of stuff to do, routines and habits, things that come up – and before you know it another day is ending…

Then another week, another month… another year. 🤦‍♀️

It happens to all of us.

Maybe you’ve accomplished some things you’re really proud of along the way.

I have! 🙋‍♀️

But there’s always that ONE nagging thing you haven’t quite achieved (yet) that should be SO easy (if you just DID it) – but you keep putting it off, or slowing down and/or sabotaging your progress.

Am I right?

An interesting thing just happened…

I’ll share the story with you, because it really put things in perspective for me.

My entire life got put on hold for a couple of weeks. I spent 11 of those days in someone else’s home and everyday life, caught up in THEIR “dailies.”

In January I spent 48 hours with my parents, and that little mini-break from my own life had a profound effect on my mindset. I shared that here and talked about how stepping out of your own life (even for a single day) can give you SO much insight.

This much longer stay forced me to set aside everything that makes up my normal life, and pitch in to help them with theirs while my stepmother recovered from surgery. She’s my father’s full-time caretaker, but fortunately they were both easy patients. 🙂

A LOT of things went through my mind over the last couple of weeks, while staying in the hospital through Terri’s surgery, sitting with my father while she rested, bleaching towels, making broth, and basically living a totally different life – and being completely outside of my own.

I thought about all the things I would be doing, should be doing, should have gotten done, needed to do when I got home.

I thought about the things I thought I could get done, and planned to do, while I was there – that weren’t happening, that didn’t happen.

Mostly I just let it all go and focused on the task at hand: taking care of the parents. I knew everything would wait, and I could jump right back into my to-do list after I saw things through there.

Being fully present in my role there felt important.

Still, your mind will spin and churn and sort through thoughts and feelings all on it’s own, even more so without your usual distractions – like when you’re in the shower, going for a walk or driving down the road alone.

Mostly I just let the thoughts come and go (or: let them go) but when I had time I jotted down creative ideas for work projects or heavier bits that were on my mind.

This piece from my journal stands out:

“I don’t want to waste any more of my youth. I’m in the prime of my life, and in the prime of my career. I don’t want to waste any more time spinning my wheels, procrastinating, putting things off, coasting or avoiding or waiting – or being unhappy or having any (more) regrets.”

I’ll be 47 this year, btw. The term “youth” is relative I discovered. I used to think my youth was long gone, but I have a whole new appreciation for my age and my health. 😉

.. and I don’t want to waste another second of it! 💕

If that’s what you really want, then why aren’t you doing something about it?

Interestingly, all the things I had to put on hold for about two weeks… were things I had already been putting on hold for awhile.

At first I had some anxiety about not getting this done, or not being able to do that. And then I realized, you know what? I wasn’t getting this or that done before – when I *did* have the time and energy to do it! 🤔

Why not?

Good question.

One I’ve been asking myself a lot lately:

“Why are you wasting perfectly good time?”

If you’re going to be thinking about it, wanting it, wishing you could do this or do that, then you might as well just DO IT.

It takes about the same amount of brain space and energy anyway. And you’ll just continue having negative emotions and feelings about NOT doing it….

Who wants to stay on that emotional hamster wheel of negativity?!

So why not just MAKE IT HAPPEN then – whatever it is you most want.

That puts me in mind of the most profound four words that jumped out at me while reading Skinny, Fat, Perfect: Love Who You See In The Mirror by Laura Fenamore:

If not now – when?

Why haven’t you DONE it yet, made it happen yet, FINISHED already, turned your goal or idea into your reality – or started yet, even?

Most of us will answer TIME or MOTIVATION, or perhaps both.

Fairly so.

But so much can be accomplished in such little amounts of time!

You can write a book in 17 minutes a day (that’s been proven). You can do body weight exercises while the coffee brews.

As for your diet, that’s an easy one: you have to eat anyway, so it’s simply a matter of WHAT you eat – there’s no rocket science there. 😉

And of course we all know that motivation kicks in AFTER the commitment is made.

You have to decide to do something (because you REALLY want the results), force yourself to DO that something or take the necessary actions, THEN you get excited about it – and motivation to continue and to be consistent magically kicks in. 🦄

Commitment + Action = Motivation

So if you’re waiting on motivation to magically appear… it’s time to stop sitting on your hands, and go chase it down. 😉

 

On that note I recently read a great piece titled How To Be Consistent In Life. She covers some great points, such as:

“If your brain has already told you that you’ll fall off the wagon, you will.”

Plus how to overcome that negative thinking that holds you back, of course… and more. It’s a quick read, but very empowering!

I suppose the biggest insight I gleaned from this experience is how easy it is to waste the time and abilities you have… until you no longer have them.

I thought a lot about the choices I make on a daily basis, and how different it feels when you don’t have those choices and options. Which made me feel like I (we) should not take another single moment of life for granted…

Imagine your absolute best life, the IDEAL version of yourself.

From this moment forward, spend EVERY second living that life – or working toward that vision.

That’s what I’m going to do.

🌷💓

Best,
Lynn Terry,
aka @LowCarbTraveler

p.s. I’d love to hear YOUR story, what holds you back, what helps you most, and what seems to always stump you up… leave a comment & let’s discuss it! Every share inspires someone else, and every question helps others too. 💕

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