Paraphrase: When you doing something over and over, you can’t expect to get a different result. — Dave Ramsey, financial guru
I am a project junkie. I like doing a little bit of everything — painting, cleaning, drawing, etc. When I get bored or unsatisfied, I move on. My house is filled with such projects — the bathroom that’s painted by not cleaned and organized like I planned, the pages of to-do lists that only have one or two items crossed off.
But I have noticed that since I’ve been running on a sort of regular basis (247 miles logged in 2012), I’ve actually started to get some projects done. I finally tore out the carpet in the kids’ room. I’ve managed to wash all the clothes in the dirty clothes hamper and then some. I made a batch of cookies every week from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
I believe this is because when you start exercising and seeing results, you wonder what else you can accomplish. I don’t want to be just physically fit anymore, I want to be fiscally fit, mentally fit, etc. It just seems to make sense to take that “do or die” mentality to other aspects of my life.
My problem is/was that I tend to get so focused on accomplishing a goal that when I’m failing, I bring everyone down with me. I’m not getting “y” done the way I wanted, so everyone else suffers until I get it done or give up.
I still do this sometimes, but I’m getting better at not sweating it as much. If I don’t accomplish the big goal right way, I break it down to smaller goals.
I’m actually trying to improve my diet this year and use a real training program to gear up for a half marathon I hope to do in May.
I’ve already done a million things wrong. But unlike a few years ago, I haven’t given up already. I’ll try again tomorrow. This time I’ll make sure I don’t do the same things I did before.