As part of the journey I’ve taken in self improvement, one of my mentors have a list of hard things to do. The concept is that if you force yourself to do hard things, when life throws curve balls at you, they will seem easy. You can’t do hard things once. It’s a workout, sometimes physical, more often mental. And just like going to the gym, you can’t go once a year for two weeks, and expect to have any long lasting results. You need to create a pattern, a habit, and follow that pattern again and again to see the growth.
There are quite a few hard challenges that involve exercise. Specifically running. Well, that’s out. No that I’m lazy. I used to enjoy running quite a bit. Until I blew out my ankle in a theater rigging accident. Can’t run now. On the exercise front, I have taken the challenge from exercising once to twice a week, to constantly exercising three times a week (I plan to eventually move to five days a week, but really need to build up more endurance to be able to do that. I’ve only been going to the gym consistently at all over the last four months).
One of the other challenges is to create a blog, and write in it at least once a week. I’m combining that with another challenge of writing at least 1,000 words a day for a year. So, sometimes I may post more than once in a day. Maybe I’ll prep several posts to happen in a week. Sometimes, the writing will be private correspondence. I do plan on achieving these two goals.
Another goal I’m looking at is starting a YouTube channel and make a video every day. Well, I already have a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/litemizer), though I haven’t done much with it. I’m obviously not afraid of getting in front of the camera. I’m just not sure what subjects I’d cover. Reading the posts in my blog would be pretty boring (both for the me and the audience). Hopefully, I can come up with some ideas for content, so I can follow up with that goal.
Many of these goals are intended to creating a rhythm of doing hard tasks. Some are to feel the elation when goals are completed. Several are both. I’m very interested in seeing where this goes.