My Biggest Win of 2018
As I look back on 2018, one of the accomplishments I am most proud of is that I continued to maintain my daily rituals. I hit the 5-year anniversary of my daily “Fitness First” practice and my Daily Recap journaling practice, I celebrated 3 years of daily meditation, and I hit the 1-year mark on daily blogging. I showed up for myself and others with unprecedented consistency.
I did all of this despite major life upheaval: selling my home of 13 years, living in a temporary situation that traumatized me with mold, mice, and crumbling ceilings, facing harassment in the workplace, and spending approximately 3 hours a day underground in the last quarter of the year.
It was not exactly the ideal conditions for productivity.
It would have been easy to drop any or all of these practices, to say that I had “too much going on” to hit the gym or publish a blog post, that I was “too busy” for meditation practice.
Many of my mentors have confessed lately to letting some of their core rituals fall through the cracks in the midst of life upheavals. I don’t think any less of them.
We are all human. Life happens. I can extend myself the same compassion and understanding.
I didn’t crush every workout. A lot of my blog posts are crappy.
But I didn’t drop any of these rituals. I showed up consistently.
I don’t want to imply that things didn’t fall through the cracks. To be clear, many things fell through the cracks.
Everyone has things that fall through the cracks, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Some of my cracks are like sinkholes. A lot has fallen into them. Like vacation plans. Like program launches. Some progress was slower than I would have liked.
Celebrating Consistency
Showing up for myself consistently reinforces my confidence in what I can do.
For me, the daily blogging is the biggest win of 2018. The others were already well-entrenched.
Despite everything that was thrown at me, I managed to publish every single day. This is something I once thought was beyond my capability.
It’s not a small feat. Pardon me while I unabashedly celebrate it.
How to Be Consistent With Your Daily Rituals
Repeatedly, people comment on my consistency. They ask me how I’ve managed to maintain my daily rituals throughout this time of craziness.
What’s the secret?
I have many secrets; enough that I created an entire program around this. But they all emanate from the same place: resolve.
If I just had set an “intention” to exercise daily, or meditate, or publish to my blog, then the past four months would have given me plenty of reasons why I couldn’t honor those intentions. It hasn’t been a “good time” in over a year.
When it’s 11 pm, and I’m riding my 10th subway of the day, and I’ve spent four hours underground and another couple of hours walking the streets, carrying 3 bags, and I’m exhausted, and I just want to go “home” but the place I’m living is infested with mice and has a distinct aroma of mold, intentions are the first thing to go.
Intentions are heavy, and there’s only so much energetic weight I can carry.
What keeps me on the subway to finish a blog post (and, yes, I have taken the subway extra stops late at night for the purpose of completing and publishing a blog post) is not intentions.
It’s also not discipline or willpower. I can assure you that my willpower at that moment is in short supply.
It is pure resolve.
Not a “resolution.”
Resolve.
Resolve is what keeps me accountable. It gets me out of bed the next day to go to the gym (or wherever I’m exercising that day), and it gets me to my meditation “cushion” (typically a foam roller).
Resolve is how I stopped biting my nails in college, after every other tactic failed me. It’s how I stay off of social media and out of my inbox in the morning during my peak creative time.
Resolve For Real
To resolve something means “to settle or find a solution to (a problem, dispute, or contentious matter).” It means to “decide firmly on a course of action.”
When you resolve something you decide for good. It’s final.
When you resolve, there’s no turning back.
Someone asked me yesterday if I’m a “resolutions person.”
I answered with an emphatic “no.”
I’m not a “resolutions person.”
I resolve for real.
What does this look like? I’ll share that in a separate post.
What will you “resolve for real” this year? Please share in the comments, or on social media with the hashtag #resolveforreal
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