In its most basic form, life is simply a series of decisions. Get out of bed now or in 15 minutes? Healthy option for breakfast or bacon? Drive to work or get the train and have drinks after? Try harder at work or continue living a life of sub-optimal performance? So on and so forth. Based on each decision, your life then moves in a direction. Simple?
Simple but not easy. Some of us are instinctively very good at this. Little to no procrastination, logical and direct. Others, take too long, worry about making the wrong decision and then wonder “What if?” after they’ve committed. Luckily, it’s a skill that can be developed.
You are where you are as a result of the decisions you’ve made, combined with an element of fortune / timing. This is a fact. Can this change? Of course, through the series of decisions you make. Do all decisions lead to the outcome you predicted? No. You can make all the “right” decisions and still not end up where you thought you would. We can only control our own actions and what goes on in our head, and even then this is difficult to control.
I say this not to discourage but to remove the complexity and frustration we associate with getting what we think we want. Getting in shape is a possibility for all of us but it does require making good decisions and sticking to them. This is life, this is problem solving. If the decisions we are making are clearly not helping us to achieve our goal then we need to make different decisions.
We also have the habit of getting misguided by wishful thinking “Someday I will write a book or an album”. I’ve told myself this on countless occasions but the truth is that I will never do these things. These thoughts are the enemy of decision making because they let us believe we will make the right decisions in the future. This clouds our judgement, preventing us from accepting the reality of the decisions we are making now. I don’t put in the continued effort in either of these ventures to make it even a remote possibility and acknowledging that has free’d me. Will that ever change? Possibly, but we shouldn’t live a life based on possibility.
People will tell you “You can do it but don’t worry about not doing it right now because of x” because that’s what friends and family do, they support the idealised version of you. They have good intentions, but to make progress be honest with yourself with where you’re at right now. You might view this as pessimistic or “negative thinking” but it’s realistic.
The decisions that you make after reading this determine what route your life takes next.
You do it to yourself, you do
And that’s what really hurts
Is you do it to yourself, just you – Radiohead “Just”