Whether we are at the starting point or at a turning point in our lives is yet to be determined. Either way, my reasons for this journal are unique to me. This means your reasons for following along are unique to you.
My reasons for this journal are to highlight my goals. In fact, my reason for this journal is no different from any other journal before this one. Each day, I come here to create a place for myself.
I come here to sit before my computer screen to create a vision.
I do this so that I can give myself something to look forward to. But also, I come here to keep from my demons and, essentially, I create an alternative action to quiet the unfriendly thinking that goes on in my head. But more, this is something that allows me to kickstart my daily goals on an incremental basis.
I come here to write my thoughts down and to straighten out the narrative in my head. I do this daily and for years now, I have done this as a way to create a better voice for myself.
As I narrate this journal entry to you, I allow myself to hear my voice.
As I type, this is me speaking out.
This is me reaching out to the world with all of my might because, above all things, I have learned along my journey that action is an enemy to depressive thinking. Action solves anxiety and action creates possibility which, in my mind, is the best answer to doubtful thinking.
I write this to you as a means of speaking to myself, which, although this might sound crazy to some people and yes, I am literally talking to a screen as I send this out to the atmosphere; perhaps, this is either sappy or stupid to others – but to me, this is the most brilliant idea that I’ve ever had.
This is lifesaving and transformational. For me, this is all part of a daily equation which has helped bring me to different levels of success.
There is something that I have seen throughout my life, which is the way we set ourselves up to fail or succeed. I have a theory on this.
This is what the entry is about.
I have seen people join self-help clubs and gyms or sign up for an exercise programs or assign themselves to an unrealistic routine. I have seen people do this to themselves, running as fast as they can, for as long as they can, or for what seems like a thousand miles an hour, until they grow tired.
Then what?
They explode?
Implode?
Or, perhaps they run themselves into the ground and never dare to get back up because self-propelled defeat is a painful idea to swallow.
This is when the failure sets in.
This is when the body recognizes that it can’t hold up to the mind’s commitment. Here’s where the internal judgment and rejection takes place. Not to mention, here’s where people start to quit on themselves and take on the dangerous narrative of self-talk that does nothing else but degrades a person into a lower setting.
This happens when an hour-long commitment is cut into 45 minutes because we couldn’t keep up; and then 45 minutes is cut into 25-30 minutes, which eventually shrivels into only a few minutes and eventually the commitment to “work out” every day and hitting the ground fast and hard, goes from moving as fast as we can to nothing at all.
I have seen what I call the “New Job” syndrome.
This happens when someone lands a new job and promises themselves, “I’m gonna get there at least an hour early,” which is great.
But eventually, the extra hour begins to take its toll and becomes 30 minutes, which then becomes 10 minutes and eventually, the person is only “on-time” before they’re late all the time.
There is a mentality that takes place and an internal math that slowly starts to subtract us from our pace. Also, there is a degradation that takes place and internally, we create a personal letdown which takes takes over. As we start to let ourselves down, perhaps subconsciously, we understand that we ”failed” ourselves. Since we failed ourselves, we might as well fail out loud and exceptionally because next, our thoughts connect with ideas of rejection and failure. Then after, almost consecutively, the new hire finds themselves in trouble and facing termination which is all due to a self-propelled defeat.
As I mentioned to you at the top of the page, whether we are at a starting point or at a turning point, either way, we have to be realistic about our goals.
We have to be honest about our abilities and fair to ourselves. We have to understand our abilities without overselling them.
We have to be honest with ourselves and rather than come up with an unrealistic, short-term goal, we have to create realistic goals and achieve them in basic increments. This is what moves us, one step at a time, so that eventually, we can reach our goal of long-term success.
I have met with people who swore they were going to get up at 4:30 in the morning, to get to the gym before 5. They were going to workout, work up a sweat, get showered, get dressed and get out the door and make it to work.
I have seen this commitment start out of the gate like a racehorse in the Kentucky Derby; only, like the last horse in the race, I saw how the stride was too much for the horse to keep up – and while rounding the corner of the final lap, the unsettled horse found itself dead-last.
As I see it . . .
people do this to themselves all the time.
This is what happens when we do not set a realistic pace. This is also what happens when we fail to hold ourselves accountable for our commitments. Either way, the internal translation is “I’m failing” and when the mind picks up on this, we tend to fail perfectly and expectedly.
I have been told that we cannot think better than our feelings and we can’t feel better than our thinking.
I believe this is true.
I have heard speakers say this. I have seen this opinion stated in videos on our psychology and I agree. I cannot think better than I feel and I cannot feel better than I think.
However, if I can think better, then I can feel better. So this would mean if I could feel better than I can think better as well. Therefore, if I can create a string of powerful and positive actions, I can improve my surroundings as well as my thinking.
I agree that success is a choice. I also agree that failure is only a mindset. I would say that we have far more successes than we tend to give ourselves credit for. Yet, we tend to overlook this.
I would say that we wake up to success each and every day. Whether we want to wake up or whether we’re happy or not, the fact that we woke up is automatically a success.
I had to learn to give myself a list of daily successes. I had to keep to this, which is how my journals started.
I had to find a way to keep to my commitments even when my inspiration was gone and especially when my motivation was leading me elsewhere. I had to defy this by any means necessary.
Otherwise, my mind would interpret this as failure; thus, my mind would take me on a trip around the world, quick, fast and in a hurry to show me my faults and flaws. Then internally and self-destructively, my mind would turn against me and the poorest representation of my internal narrative would take over.
Years back before the pandemic changed the globe, I was working on an early morning program which took place on Sundays at 8:30.
The program was called Breakfast with Benny. I was scheduled at this same time slot, every Sunday morning, for more than two years in a nearby county jail.
We started talking about failures. We started to discuss why people fail and what causes us to give up on ourselves. More times than not, we found that a majority of the time people fail to set realistic goals for themselves. Or they fail to trigger their reward system; as if the moves they chose to improve their life were simply not influential or meaningful enough to keep the reward system alive – and why did they give up?
Was this only a symptom of laziness?
Or was their laziness a symptom for something else?
Although this was not a room filled with innocent men, this did not mean that this was a room filled with hopeless people who could not or would not change their patterns.
I came up with an acronym: R.A.S.O.
I told them to find their R.A.S.O. which stands for a Realistic, Attainable, and Sustainable Outcome.
“This is how you set your goals.”
I explained that when we found our R.A.S.O., our minds can translate this into an understandable success which is different from coming to work on-time or making sure that we finish our daily projects.
Our R.A.S.O. is our realistic goal that we look to achieve on an incremental basis. We learn to win our best life by accumulating all of our tiny successes which lead us to create bigger and larger-than-life victories.
I gave them an assignment to create a list that consisted of simple, incremental goals that they can achieve on a daily basis. All goals needed to be realistic, attainable, and sustainable in order to create an obtainable outcome.
The list was to start with incremental goals which lead us to short-term goals that eventually lead to the success of long-term goals.
I saw this as an exercise for both the members of my group as well as myself. I say this because since they were living in an uncomfortable establishment and since many of them had pending cases or they had some other hard-life decisions or challenges to face.
To me, I saw this as an opportunity because if I could create a pattern of thinking in a place like a jail, then a system like this could be helpful in any situation. And it does too because I have created classes and presentations like this in corporate environments with a steady and substantial amount of success.
Whether we like our surroundings or if we are in good standing at work or if we want more, or if we simply want to improve ourselves and our situation, the process to achieve our goals has to begin incrementally.
Lastly, I am someone who used to own old, beat-up cars. I have learned that if you drive a car that’s old and beat-up with high mileage and if the car has needs that need to be addressed, it pays to do this when the problems arise.
I say this because there were times when one problem became two problems and next, two problems became four and eventually, the car I was in had the “Check Engine” light on all the time.
Guess what?
Eventually, the car ran into the ground because of one undeniable fact: maintenance is always a top priority. Just like a car, if we forget to maintain ourselves and if we allow one problem to multiply and become two or four, those problems begin to add up quickly and eventually, we drive ourselves into the ground, just like an old car, as if this was expected because “Hey, what do you expect?” and then we fail to something that was subconscious and self-fulfilled.
We can’t get to where we want to be without proper and personal maintenance. If we want to do a thousand pushups and we can hardly do four; it would not be realistic to expect this to happen in one month. So, we have to pace ourselves realistically and care for ourselves properly. Otherwise, we fail ourselves. More importantly, and this is what restores our sanity, we can’t become who we want to be unless we pace ourselves properly.
This way, and incrementally, we can achieve our daily, short-term and our long-term goals from now on from this day forward.
In the rebirth of sanity, we have to become our top priority.
This means maintenance. This means understanding our pace.
This means treating ourselves fairly and with the proper value.
Otherwise –
We set ourselves up for disappointment.
Or . . .
We lose to ourselves before we begin.
The Written Addiction 