(Read the overview for the basics of this 90 day push.)
Physician, heal thyself.
Me not taking my own advice is not as rare as I’d like it to be, but sooner or later I’ll spot my hypocrisy and move to stomp it out. The advice I was ignoring was “be alert to mistaking complex for complicated”. To me. if something feels complicated that translates to “I’m making too few decisions while paying attention to all possible decisions” – complication hints at ambiguity, and ambiguity is death to any goal.
If you ever heard somebody say “it’s complicated” when asked about a relationship, what they’re saying is one of the parties wants more options than the other is willing to commit to (there’s ambiguity). I’ve been experiencing something similar, my EGO made some decisions (about my goals) that my ID wasn’t on-board with. Lizard-brain actions are notoriously hard to spot, because they’re by definition a blind-spot. As far as I know, the only way to reliably check the ID is using goals with an empiric measure. We can delude ourselves into all kinds of silliness, but you can’t argue with the cold, unblinking mathematics of the weight scale.
Low self-esteem and Over-confidence present the same challenge when it comes to accomplishing goals – both tend to make you overlook the obvious. I tend to be a purveyor of over-confidence, and it takes a lot of reality to snap me out of it.
So, in short, I think I’ve broken this mini-failure streak with my weight loss goal, whether this is truth or more delusion, the proof will come in the following weeks. The goals have begun to be fun again, and this is a huge signal that I’m on the right track.
The 90 Day Goals
Black Nouveau Edits – Success
Jesus! The first draft of “Hard Knox” is in horrible shape – I’m still a novice enough writer that my initial drafts have a steep curve from horrible to good – I’m working out characters and plot points on the fly. When I wrote this goal at 25 pages a week, I’d forgotten how bad the book was. On the upside, it’s forcing me to blast through without getting too precious. The downside is draft three will require a lot of clean-up. Start page: 10 End page: 35
Weight Loss – Success
Lose a minimum of 1 pound per week. Week start: 282.0 Week end: 281.0
(Stickk goal: 281)
Blog posts – Success
Write and post a minimum of 3 posts per week.
Journal – 4/25/15: Tough Week, Hate and Dreams
Out of the Past: Movies 1980 (The Year of Disappointment)
90 Day Transition: Week 6 Report
Key Learnings:
- When in doubt – just do: When the ID monster gets control of me, I tend to go passive. Passivity breeds doubt, doubt breeds inaction. So, I need to be on alert!
- Achievement is fun: The only time I ever feel bad is when I’m not accomplishing something. I can delude myself that “thinking” is an action, but the fact is that thinking by itself never accomplishes anything.
Things to watch:
- Switch things up: I straight-up HATE my commute (and it’s a short commute). It dawned on me that with a little planning and execution (clothing is the big issue), I can switch over to my bicycle and have it be a wash time-wise. Stay tuned!
- Apply simplicity to the complex: As stated above, complex isn’t complicated, it just requires more focus to execute. I’m committing to purge even an inkling of “complicated” by assuring that I take a step-by-step approach to the complex schedule I’ve set out for myself.
In summary, beware of your lizard-brain, we are gloriously bizarre creatures, emotion-engines with a thin veneer of intellect. That intellect can be powerful and positive, but it has to work HARD to remain dominant whereas ID behaviors are autonomic.
“Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.” – Josh Billings