This morning I discovered the secret to getting something done.  And in the process I found a way (for a brief moment in time) to quell my slack, critical side and allow my higher side to have a valuable win.

You’ve probably seen the Warner Bros cartoon with either Tom (Tom’s the cat right?) or Daffy Duck under going a struggle between their evil and their angelic side. The evil side is going, ‘Come on! It’s not sooo bad, just do that little naughty thing…” and the angelic side is going,’ No don’t do it! That’s bad! we must be good!’ and the naughty side replies,’It’s so bad it MUST be good!’. I guess we’ve all had that happen to us sooner or later…

 

Lets rewind. The day before I decided to join my local gym. I actually had been thinking of joining my gym in Warwick – Adrenalin Gym for ohh…. 6 months now. And that day I came to the conclusion that despite the cost I just HAD to do it. And I actually had two big WHY’s to do so:

  1. I found out I actually HAD to join a local gym and do some personal training in a gym setting order to complete my Cert IV in Personal Training.
  2. I had a stupendously good price on Gym Membership which was $255 for a years GYM MEMBERSHIP (Off Peak Times)! I worked out it would cost me just under $5 to go to the gym – for a whole week! I rationalised you can’t go anywhere for $5 these days much less get fit and healthy. I couldn’t even gets decent second hand weight and gym set for the whole price of a year! And if I went TWICE a week that would effectively mean I only paid $2.50 for each session. The cheap skate in me won over.

As good as these reason were they had to beat two very painful obvious reasons as to NOT join the gym down the road.

Have you ever found yourself in the position where you went to just ‘look’ into joining a gym and an incredibly fit and lovely ‘consultant’ shows you around and then 15 mins later you found yourself signing up for a years worth of gym membership? Or is that just me…? 😛

Well, the last time I joined a gym (with good intentions) I ended up only really working out for 3-4 months. I would often pass the gym on the way to shopping and it was a painful reminder that I wasn’t working out….

So perhaps you’ve been there before: You’ve outlaid some hefty cash for some new fangled shiny thing to only lose interest in a few months or even weeks. Or you’ve broken a promise built mostly on good intentions and empty dreams.

So in the end, I walked straight up to the muscley guy at the front counter, handed over my card and wrote my details down. HOWEVER, THAT wasn’t the hard part. It just took me over 6 months to make a damn decision and about 5 visits later to ‘enquire’ into gym membership.

Tony Robbins always goes on about never leaving the scene after making big decision without taking some massive action.

So that night, I packed up my gym gear beside my bed. My gym shoes were also placed. My alarm was placed. Which only left me to do the night feed with Nalina and hopefully be ready to go to train in the morning. Nalina feeds well. My head hits the pillow and as the movies say, ‘Everything fades to black’.

BEEP! BEEP! Wake up to the alarm. In a panic I realise it’s too loud and it might wake up Nalina, and perhaps the neighborhood. My eyes focus on the time. 5.55am. And the talking in my head starts:

Really? Really?? You do realise it’s 5.55am. In the MORNING. Go to bed sleepy head.

OK.

No wait! You said you’d go to the gym this morn-

But you need sleep! What if you crash your car on the way there?? Sleeeep…. sleep…

What? Wait? Gym. It’s important!

Not as important as sleep!

Who cares!

I care!

Sleep….

Gym!

 

So on and so forth. Here’s the weird thing. The slanging match in my head was actually keeping me up awake. As I lay in my warm bed I came to four realisations:

  • I was (essentially) already awake. What was the harm in seeing the place that morning. I rationalised I could just stay there for 30 mins
  • EVERYTHING was already ready! I just had to slip on some shorts and some shoes and grab my stuff and walk out the door!
  • I HAD to go because I HAD to complete my Cert IV.
  • The pain of going was momentary compared to the longer pain of regretting another broken promise to myself.

So I went. I moved a few muscles. I lifted a few waits in some resemblance of a routine. I stretched and cooled down. I felt good. I felt so good I told my family this very story. And now I’m telling you.

The secret to getting something done is:

  1. Have a big enough WHY to do it.
  2. Structure and organise yourself so at the moment of ‘possible cop-out’ you’re ready
  3. Focus on a small concret step you can take at a time (The rest will follow)
  4. Rinse and repeat and (hopefully) it will get easier.

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