Stay in the Zone
People often complain about not having enough time. Whether it’s getting out of going to the gym or abandoning treasured dreams, it’s a popular excuse. I sympathise, even though they’re lying.
Time? You have plenty of time – more than you know what to do with. It’s easy enough to prove. How much do you know about the last season of reality TV? Or are video games more your speed? Are you going out with friends a little more often than you should?
You want to enjoy life, I get it. Well, sort of. Writing is part of my dream life and I enjoy it more than wasting time. I crave following my purpose more than I crave distractions from it. And, wow, look at all the time I find for it. If something is important to you, then you can do the same.
But if you say that you work all day and come home exhausted, so what’s wrong with a little TV? Now we’re getting closer to the truth. That’s not a shortage of time, though – it’s a shortage of energy. Why is it acceptable to say you don’t have time (“I’m bad at prioritising every day!”) but running out of energy (“I have biological limits!”) is taboo?
Forget taboos. We’re here to solve a problem. Add an hour to most people’s days and that’s another hour of TV. Ramp up their energy by 10%, though, and you have a whole different person.
The truth shall set you free.
I won’t tell you all the ways to increase your energy. You know the most effective ones – sleep well, eat better, exercise. (Don’t tell me you don’t have time to do these. There’s that word again. And you have enough energy for them because they create energy). Instead, let’s look at things from a hypnotist’s perspective.
In my quest to better fathom my body and mind, I’ve made mistakes. A recent one was when I threw my nutrient levels out of whack. I’ve corrected it since (and then some) but, for a while, I was lethargic, irritable and unmotivated.
I learned two things from this experience:
One is that even running on empty, I found the energy to write every day. It’s important to me so I made it happen. Mere biological reality wasn’t going to hold me back.
Two, even as out of balance as I was, hypnotising myself made me feel whole. I could stave off the aches and fatigue with nothing but my thoughts.
Mind over matter? That phrase doesn’t come close to capturing it. Mind owns matter.
Some days are a struggle but they don’t have to be. Remember your mission. Why do you want to succeed at whatever you chose? Or whatever chose you, perhaps? Your perfect future won’t find you from where you are. It takes commitment to even meet it halfway, to get within line of sight of it. I’m not telling you this to pump you up – if it’s your purpose, then the commitment is easy.
If you had asked me to write 500 words a day, seven days a week, I would have choked. How would I even come up with that many ideas? Yet here I am, sailing well past the 500-word mark without even thinking about it. It’s because I’m driven. So are you, for the things that matter.
Having a purpose is the ultimate lifestyle upgrade. It forces you to dig deeper, think deeper and live deeper. And it’s easy! That’s the shocking part – how natural discipline is when it aligns with what you truly want. What’s harder is getting started, though, so once you know what you want to do, work towards it every day. You’ll quickly find that breaks are harder than working.