Sometimes the struggle to do the things that are necessary when you just don’t feel like doing them is the most difficult thing in the world. Having the fortitude to push through and accomplish the things you want to do is quintessential for success. Just like the addict we all have that nagging little negative voice in our head telling us that it’s ‘OK’ to be lazy, procrastinate, or even not do something all together because it’s hard. As a recovering addict I know this voice all too well. While in an active cycle of addiction that voice is the loudest thing in the universe, it guides us in a million negative directions, and gets off on doing it. I’m fortunate or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it, enough to know the powers of this voice but it also gives me a powerful tool, an upper hand. For me to continue to achieve successful recovery I needed to develop the skills to be able to not give any power to the negative voice. Now I continue to not give those negative voices power but it’s not only to continue my sobriety, that struggle is caged up and quiet, but to go after the the things I want the most in my life and build a positive legacy for generations after.
Today I work diligently to continue to push forward and make changes in my life, regardless of what that inner voice is telling me. You can too, we don’t have to listen to it. I do the things that are necessary, like writing my morning entries, blog posts, photography, and photo processing. I don’t do them because they are easy or hard but because they bring value to my life and serve a purpose to the future. They give me a sense of peace and promote creativity; things that I strive to have by the fuck ton. It’s not always easy but it’s rarely ever overwhelming or extremely hard, with a little focus and the skill to ignore that voice in your head it is easy to move past the negative and continue to progress. That voice is the thing that holds us back, it gives our negative habits validation and encourages us to not do the things we need to do. It always favors on the side of instant gratification. We can’t solely be in it for instant gratification. I’m not in this for instant gratification, even though at times my endeavors provide that, I’m in this for the long run. The future. The big picture.
The things that I do now are extremely important for the goals and accomplishments I want to achieve in the long term. If I don’t accomplish the short term goals or duties, then the long term goals start to breakdown, degrade and rot. I no longer have the luxury of living in a world of instant gratification, it’s not healthy for me, it’s not healthy for anyone. The good news is that things have a tendency to not be as difficult or complex when you can picture the thing you are doing right now as a small piece in the proverbial puzzle that is life. We can picture how these pieces will effect the big picture as a whole then we can determine whether or not it is important for the end game or if it is simply a negative distraction.
That voice is often times trying to distract us with the things we can do right now or giving power to not doing what is suppose to be done, the instant gratification effect. The thing is though distractions are necessary, but in moderation, they allow us to decompress and shift focus from always working. Remember “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy” you wouldn’t want Jack to be a dull boy. We need play, play is important. Spending time with your favorite TV show, movie, video game, or favorite guilty pleasure is extremely important to decompress and step away from working all the time. However great the distractions are we can’t always be participating in them. If we ever hope to be successful in our pursuits we need to cut out the distractions as much as possible, however, they are necessary. We can solve this paradigm fairly easily, we can leave 1 day a week for the distractions, this has been my simplest solution. Distractions are a necessary process in the recharging of our brains, it gives us a tool to reduce the likelihood that we won’t snap or burn out. Whatever your distractions are embrace them but with restraint and precision. Figure out the best method in which to optimize your time for success and be able to incorporate distractions to release the pressure valve.
It’s easy to go for the distraction and the negative voice in your head is going to want to encourage that as often as possible, sometimes you will listen but if you work hard enough at it you will succeed time and time again. That little voice isn’t there to help us along, not in any positive sense by any means. It’s there to encourage the bare minimum, pure survival. The great news is we don’t just have one voice in our head we have two, maybe you have more I won’t judge. The second voice is the voice of encouragement, hope, and prosperity. There is a reason why in old cartoons the artists would often depict having an angel and a devil on the character’s shoulder, both feeding you information. I don’t think it is a schizophrenic break when we talk about having voices in our head, I think it is natural. That inner monologue is there to think through processes and make decisions on your own, it’s an evolutionary survival tool. It is an important part of being human. It shows us that we have an incredibly developed brain with the ability to reason, react, and choose based on cause and effect. I will be the first to admit that it’s natural to struggle with your thoughts and it shouldn’t always be easy. Making sure to be able to decipher the voices and figure out what is in our best interest is the part that can be as clear as mud. It’s a skill that requires development because sometimes that bad voice in our heads makes 100% sense, or we can at least rationalize it to make 100% sense. Developing this skill is essential for success in the future. If all we do is listen to the negative voice in our head we will continually put things off over and over again, we won’t be able to identify what is necessary for success. Taking the time to over analyze some of the thoughts you have is important, it’s the first step in realizing whether it is the good voice or the bad voice.