Willpower Exercise Day Six

Break through today! Each day I've scheduled 3 things to start my day:

1. walk
2. journal
3. tacks

 But I've missed at least one from the list EVERY DAY. Today, I got all three done by 9a.m. and threw in a call to Toronto to talk with my book collaborator, Laura.

I sat at my desk to start my "tacky will-ups". My little squirrel brain tried to do so many things before I did my "will-ups" and I kept corralling my thoughts promising them, "I'll do that AFTER."Once I got started moving the tacks, I worried less about "perfect" and focused more on "doing."

Instead of worrying about the protocol around my tack task, I turned up the tunes, and counted each tack while saying "I will to will." The task was SOOOOOoooooooo much more enjoyable. I even chair danced! I also found that I've got 51 tacks in my box--wondering about the number had been something I'd brushed out of my consciousness as not as important as the DOING.
In my journal this morning I had written, "Just show up." It was one of the main life lessons I'd learned during my martial arts journey. I "just showed up" every night to class and after 5 years received a black belt in Aiki Ju Jitsu. Yes, it was hard work. Yes, I faced challenges, and got hurt, and sweated until my skin bubbled. But so long as I "just showed up" for class regardless of how healthy or inclined I felt, I'd overcome the hardest part of the journey and moved incrementally toward my goal.

Today, I was committed to the process regardless of what was happening in or around me. Today, I worried less about being perfect in my task, and focused more on feeling good while doing it--emphasis on doing it. But DOING IT was my commitment.

"Are you committed to your task, your goal, your desire? Are you in or are you out?" Simple and yet so hard. That's the key learning of my tack task today. Committing and acting in concert with your commitment are the key things. An attitude of contentment focuses you on the right mindset but can be hard to create. How you show up and what you get out of it changes every time you show up, and seems beyond the realm of influence at this point. For me at least. So, just showing up and doing gets you a loooong way. There's something else that's happening too, but I don't quite have my finger on it yet.

It's something around lifting the veil over who I really am vs. who I thought I was. But that's for another entry.