Just start, pause, keep going
Desire will help you commit
I’d managed a 2 week streak of writing 300 words a day. Then, there came a day when I had other priorities and felt at peace not insisting on my daily routine. Today I continue. But inside, I feel some momentum has been lost. Could I trick my brain into not feeling dissappointed ? After all, my one-day break was just a break, not a failure — it allowed me to prepare for a get-together with friends, share good company and significant conversations that left me feeling satisfied. I have a similar feeling of satisfaction when I stick to my writing commitment. Yet for commitments to work for me, there must be an element of desire.
I remember getting a small notebook entitled “My commitments” from the conceivers of the 5-minute Journal. After a few weeks of uninspiring, dry commitments, I replaced the words “My commitments” with “My desires”.
A sense of duty without joy doesn’t spark a lasting commitment in me. Over the years, I’ve tried different notebooks and tools to measure my progress and stimulate me to action. Though I love experimenting with these techniques, they all have a common pitfall : they need desire to work.
Following a recorded Jim Rohn workshop, I listed many goals, both realistic ones and constraintless ones (“what would you do if time and money weren’t an object?”). Every few months I go over them and am amazed at how simply writing them down helped me to work on them, even though I had neither committed nor defined an action plan to get there.
Desire paved the way, and I followed it naturally.
What have you put aside that you would like to pick up again? Start with desire. Commitment will follow.
So back to my writing commitment. On the long run, I think I’ll follow through, because I don’t HAVE to write, I WANT to write. Even if I take a break now and then, my desire to write will be waiting for me when I pick up my pen. And the excitement of sheer potential will meet the blank page.
