Slipping Back Into What You’ve Always Done

The challenge you have when you decide to improve your results is not that there isn’t information available to you that would help your progress—and quickly. There is more than enough information, and everything you need to know is already known. If a lack of information was your obstacle, it would easily be overcome.

The results you want are not out of reach because you don’t have time to achieve them. All you have is time. What you do with that time is a decision that you make. It doesn’t matter where you are now or where you want to go. You have the time to accomplish much, more than you believe possible.

The distance between where you are now and the results that you want are also not likely the result of your inability to do what is necessary. It is almost an absolute certainty that you can do what you would need to do to have what you want. Even if you lacked the ability to achieve your goal in the same manner as someone else, your human creativity and resourcefulness would be enough to get you there some other way.

What prevents you from having what you want is an unwillingness to do what is necessary to have it. That unwillingness often comes from the strong desire to seek comfort over discomfort. Even if you have the information, the time, and the ability, the pull of what is comfortable drags you right back to doing what you’ve always done. It’s familiar, it’s easy, and it requires little effort—and all without the lack of the discomfort that goes hand in hand with growth.

What should make you uncomfortable is being comfortable. The real danger isn’t in failing, losing, or taking more time than you expected to produce the result you want. The real danger is slipping back into what is familiar, and in doing so, producing a result that is far less than you are capable of and living with the regret of not becoming the version of you that comes after this one.