I haven’t been on my blog since I started it, and that honestly felt a little bit like a failure to me. I was so excited to start blogging, there was a huge list of topics waiting for me to write about. But my blog remained untouched for over 5 months.
I ended up starting a new job right after I started my blog, and got comfortable quickly; I wanted (and still want of course!) to give my new job my full attention and effort, but at the same time I sacrificed a part of myself that is never worth sacrificing: my creative outlet. As people, it’s obvious that we can only focus on one thing at a time. But I realized yesterday that there’s a difference between focusing on only one thing at a time, and focusing on one thing all the time.
It’s always been a dream of mine to become an entrepreneur, but I have always been too afraid because I didn’t know where to start. I never thought of myself as someone afraid of failure, especially because when I do fail I’m not the type to get discouraged. I’m also the hard-working type, and I don’t shy away from hard work nor do I get overwhelmed when there’s a lot on my plate. But last night, I hit a breaking point when I realized that I’ve been focusing on one thing all the time, and that’s my new job.
Since starting this blog, I’ve wanted it to be a focus of mine and considered it a great step towards starting a company, but somehow my one focus kept taking up all of my attention. Last night I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend and I just looked back in my mind at the last several months and thought “Where has the time gone? Why haven’t I been working on my blog?”
I realized it was because I’ve been scared to give my ideas my full effort when I don’t know exactly what it is I’m doing or how to do it, and I know this is a feeling shared by many. I’ve had several glimpses of moments in life where I decide to just get started on whatever it is I want to do and all the details will be ironed out along the way, but those moments are few and far between, and they definitely don’t stick around long enough for me to get anything of substance done.
In the past few months, I’ve researched about motivation, and the biggest thing I’ve learned even though it’s so simple when you think about it is that motivation is fleeting. We can’t rely on motivation to accomplish what we want in life. So how can we accomplish what we want if 1. we don’t know how to do it exactly and 2. we don’t “feel” like it “right now?”
My boyfriend helped me with this dilemma and made it so easy and clear, and his advice helped give me the energy I needed to be able to write this post that I’m sharing with you (and motivation wasn’t even part of the equation).
I made a list of my goals for the week. I didn’t start with some crazy list of all my life goals, my 2020 goals or anything like that. Just a list of my goals for this week. Also, who cares that it’s already Thursday? Making that list of goals showed me that you don’t have to wait for anything to start accomplishing what you want. Having this list of goals put my week in perspective, it made me understand that I’m working towards something for myself, not for anyone else or a job, etc. And that was all the feeling that I needed to pick myself up and keep moving forward.
My goals for this week are to write 1 blog post, come up with 3 business ideas, and work out at least once. By making this blog post right now, I’ve already checked something off and it feels really empowering. If you feel that never-ending rollercoaster of “I can and will do it all!” and “I’m just going to do what I can to get by,” try making a weekly list of goals. Maybe it will evolve into a monthly and yearly list, and maybe you’ll have separate ones for weekly, monthly, and yearly – the list of available options (no pun intended) is endless. I know it’s working for me, and I love being able to share these things with you.
How do you find motivation, and what does it mean to you? I’d love to know in the comments. Until next time, xo.
