Haphazard Observations

Be the person your dog thinks you are. I saw this on a T-shirt on a guy in the grocery store this week. At first I thought, “Aw, how sweet.. I thought of how my dog Recho stares lovingly at me, like I am his whole world, the best thing he has ever seen. The person he thinks I am is complete.

But who is the person WE think we are? Most of us think of ourselves as far from complete. We have countless flaws and imperfections we want to change. (Learning to see ourselves through the eyes of our Creator and feeling His 100% acceptance of us is a conversation for another day. Something I am still trying to grasp.) However, self improvement is not necessarily a bad thing, we should all be looking to create the versions of ourselves we envision.

So, what are you creating yourself to be? Are you creating? Or are you coasting, surviving, “going with the flow.” Simply trying to constantly course correct your life from one emergency to another, from one goal to another?

I’m disappointed to say I have spent the majority of my life doing all of those things OTHER than creating. Oh I thought I was creating, I am a deep analyzer by nature. Overthink most decisions. So every decision I have made I put great thought into. But I don’t know if that is the same as creating. There are times in life when we have to go with the flow, yes. Times of rebuild, when life kicks you in the gut, it will often take a breath or two (or twelve) to get back up. I’m talking about once you get back up. We must choose what we want, and then CREATE it. I can’t stress that word enough. It is so much more of a verb in my mind right now than I think it has been. Creating requires action, intentionality, commitment, steadfastness. You can’t just point in a direction and then assume you will go that way. You must do “the things” daily. If you are building a house, you can’t just buy a house plan and sit back. Everyday you have to put some lumber in place.

I think part of the issue is that creating the plan is exciting, and having the completed thing is exciting, but in the middle, the actual creating is often not exciting. It’s arduous, it’s tedious, it’s often hard. That is when it is easy to go “squirrel!” and shift your focus to something else. We then start a new plan, feel the excitement again, and once down that road a ways, feel the pain of creating and the process starts again.

I recently read this line by James Clear, “Can you handle the boredom of consistency?” I had never thought of consistency as boredom, but in the moment I thought, wow, yes, that is it. Consistency is BORING. My personality is not a fan of boredom. I like to problem solve, innovate, plan, strategize, implement plans. Once a plan is in place, I am looking for a new problem to solve. But if we constantly re-solve the same problem because we are bored, or don’t see immediate huge gains, we risk never making any headway at all.

So, we have to be comfortable with the uncomfortableness of consistency. Allow ourselves to be bored. Set a plan for where you want to be, do the small 1% improvement steps. Then do them – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and AGAIN, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc. Shift our perception of success away from the longer term goal and to the mundane repetition of consistency.

There must be balance, of course. I’m not saying we never have to readjust or course correct. But, is the current plan making ANY progress? Even only 1%? Then good. That’s progress. “If you get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” -James Clear One year’s time passes in a blink of an eye, the time is going to pass regardless of whether you are creating the person you want to be or not. Why not choose to be bored, and just be consistent for a year? Do not change course if you are making any progress at all. Embrace the bored. Set and forget.

So, here’s to a year of actively creating. Let’s look back in a year and see the person who your dog thinks you are. Let’s be able to look at ourselves and see a glimpse of that person as well. Who’s in to get bored? 🙂