Author: cbarney.45

“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated daily.” Think of the fable with the tortoise and the hare. The hare is a sprinter. This is the person who gets really into a gym routine for 2-months then you don’t see them again until their next New Years resolution. The tortoise is a metaphorical marathoner. Slow and steady effort allows him to not “burn out”…this is the key. If something is good for you, do it everyday. But do it so you don’t burn out or stress out – do it in moderation.

30-60 minutes of working out or being active daily is better in the long run than a 3-hour gym session done once or twice per week. What is more sustainable? Will your body, mind, and soul be able to keep up with your actions?

Take time to reflect on your short- and long-term goals. Then start taking regular action towards those goals. You’re not going to make huge strides towards your goals every day. It’s not possible. But if you are regularly making slow and steady progress towards achieving them, it will be more sustainable and less discouraging. It may seem that things are going too slowly for you, but ultimately slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

To be happy, you need to be excited about your life. You should have something to look forward to doing each day. That doesn’t mean that everyday is going to be full of sunshine and butterflies, but, for the most part, you should be energized when you wake up. You shouldn’t feel drained before you even get your day started.

People think that they should move on from something they dislike. That’s only half of the happiness equation though. Yes, you want to reduce the things that cause you pain or suffering, but eliminating those things will not completely fill your happiness tank. Being happy isn’t just about running away from what you hate, but instead running toward something that you love.

Remember to add energizing activities to your schedule, whether that’s hanging out with friends, working out, reading a good book, playing sports, volunteering, etc. It will be different for everyone, but it’s important that we all have hobbies that we can regularly enjoy.

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Life is all about your attitude. If you tell yourself that you’re not good at something, then guess what? You’ve given yourself permission to not try, to not give it an honest effort. You’ve planted the seed of doubt that you are unable to do something, so why give it your all? For if you give it everything you’ve got and somehow don’t succeed, you or others might view it as a failure.

Don’t think like that. First of all, you can do almost anything you want in the world, given enough focused time, money, and dedicated effort. There will be limitations on what you can do, but that is true for everyone. Why would you add self-imposed limitations (by telling yourself that you can’t do something, when it is a real possibility for you) to your real limitations (such as how tall you are). Instead, change your thinking. You can do this. It may be difficult, but this should be expected. If it were easy then everyone would do it. Embrace challenges. Embrace obstacles. Tell yourself that you can do something, develop a specific plan, take regular, focused action, and it will be so.

“If you think that hiring a $100/hour electrician is expensive, try hiring a $10/hour electrician.” The point here is that the amateur can cost you more money by damaging things or making it worse than if you would have just hired the qualified professional in the first place. Not only that, but you might hire the cheaper person first, pay them to do poor work, then still have to bring in a more expensive person to correct the mistakes from the first person (paying two contractors instead of one).

It’s ok to be frugal. I like being frugal. But don’t be cheap. Do things right the first time and don’t cut corners, otherwise you’ll eventually get burned.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The biggest or newest events in our lives will make us feel uncomfortable. If they seem unfamiliar to us, or if the outcome is uncertain, it can be challenging to continue moving forward. It can feel scary, uncomfortable, or even painful to continue. But you must keep pursuing the goal.

The most challenging decisions we make in life often move us forward the most. The first time you asked your significant other on a date (and if they said no the first time, maybe you asked them again), when you asked your father-in-law for his daughter’s hand in marriage, when you presented a big project, when you tried to figure out how to be a good parent…the list goes on and on. You were probably nervous or uncomfortable at some point leading up to those actions, but if you didn’t follow through, you wouldn’t be where you are today and you would be left wondering, “what if I had done _____…where would I be in life?”

Seeing results by staying in the discomfort zone can be applied to every aspect of your life. When you’re working out, if you’re not uncomfortable at some point then you’re probably not going to change your body much. With your finances, you not only need to live below your means to achieve certain financial goals, which can be uncomfortable, but sometimes you need to work overtime for months on end to get to where you want to be. The point is, the best things in life often come from a combination of hard work (discomfort) and luck. But as Samuel Goldwyn once said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” So go out there, work hard, and be comfortable being uncomfortable.