Minute SHIFTS That Matter #32

The Saturday I wasn't supposed to work

Lisa went shopping with her daughter on a Saturday.

I don't usually work Saturdays.

I sat down anyway, because there were three things I should get done. Here's how it actually went, in my own words:

"But I worked till six o'clock that night. Like the whole day went by. But I was so into what I was doing and wanted to be into it that it wasn't have to, it wasn't I should. It started as I should. I should go to do these three things and turn into a whole day of whoa."

Nine hours. No discipline required.

Now compare that to a Tuesday where you white-knuckle forty minutes of the thing you swore you'd do daily, and then don't do it again until the following Monday.

Same person. Same willpower. Totally different day.

And when the daily thing falls off, look at what we reach for. More structure. A tighter calendar. Somebody to check in on us. I've watched this a hundred times... people go so far to the disciplined side, and then it all goes off the rails and explodes, and they can't understand why.

That's the cost nobody counts. Falling off the wagon is the small part. The expensive part is what you build on top of yourself afterward to make sure it never happens again.

Maybe you've hit the goal before, hit it square, and then quietly stopped doing the thing that got you there. One client put it better than I could: "I have met those goals before, and then I stopped doing them, which is really silly."

Maybe there's a block on your calendar you've rewritten four times this month and kept zero times.

Maybe you're paying for accountability on something you actually want to do.

Maybe it's this, which a client said to me word for word: "Every time I think that I'm ready to roll, it's like something else. I'll let it fall right on top of my head."

I used to be a driver. Driven, driven, driven. I'm not anymore, and the difference is in the energy underneath, not in the schedule on top.

One energy says, if I don't, I'm going to F it up. That's not a great energy. A great energy is, I'm excited to do these things.

And this catches people who think want-to means going soft. You'll actually work longer hours and harder once you have it. Want-to doesn't slow you down. It takes the cap off.

You already have proof of this. You've lived it.

Think of a stretch where you were dead consistent and nobody had to make you. Nothing was scheduled. Nothing was tracked. You just kept showing up because you wanted to be in it. That happened. That was you, with the want-to turned on. Same person you are today.

It's why I say I don't believe in accountability. I want to create the person who doesn't need accountability, that does the thing they want to do and do it naturally.

So this week, take the one habit that keeps falling off and ask a different question about it. Not how do I force this. Ask what would have to be true about me for this to be the obvious thing to do on a Tuesday.

Identity first. Then everything finally works.

See what's under the on-again, off-again

P.S. Say your habit out loud twice. Once as "I should." Once as "I want to." One of them tightens something in your chest. That's the whole diagnosis, and your body ran it faster than your head did.

Bill