189: Your Real Competition Is Your Own Procrastination
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Procrastination is the only thing that will prevent you from reaching your goals. Procrastination is that little voice telling you that “it can wait. I got time.” It is that thing you do that puts off truly important efforts for things that are more pleasurable or comfortable.
If we truly want to be successful, we will do our best to take all the steps we need to take in order to reach our goals. Goals are sometimes difficult and a real challenge to complete. There will always be something that is competing for our time. Life is exciting that way. We will always find things that are more pleasurable or more comfortable to do than work on our future selves.
We should all have an ideal vision of our future selves. Use that as a goal post. Compare that to yourself as you are today and look for the things you need to change in your own life to make your ideal vision a reality. You have just set a goal and have an idea of the steps you need to take to get there. Procrastination is what steps in in the form of your inner voice that says I can do this later, or I have a million more important things to do. Usually we just end up-as Kyle says-sitting on the couch watching TV and eating a bag of potato chips.
The most important thing to understand is that the world is not preventing you from reaching your goals. The dishes aren’t preventing your from reaching your goals. Even the television is not responsible for you not reaching your goals. You are in direct competition with yourself for your own future outcome. The effort you put in today will determine what you have tomorrow. Do not let the story of your life say you had a goal but something always came up and prevented you from reaching it.
You can compare yourself to other people, but that is not an accurate way to grow yourself. Emulate the characteristics of successful people, sure. However, it is better for your own growth to compare yourself to you. Look at where you are at the time you set your goals. Write down your hopes and fears. Make your goal a reality by committing in writing to yourself. As your work towards your goal, understand that things will pop up and you will tell yourself that they are more important or that you will have time later. The problem is you pile up enough “tomorrows” you will look back one day on a whole lot of empty yesterdays.
Start with your journal. Then do some health checks daily to mark your progress. Know where you want to be, set goal posts that are set in stone and work towards them. Don’t let your lazy self prevent your successful self from reaching the ideal you.
