I’m going to admit something today.
I don’t like blogging.
I love talking to people. I love thinking about life, relationships, wisdom, etc. And I love sharing those things.
I even like the idea of having a blog, both to inspire others and maybe one day to provide lessons to my daughter after I’m gone. I have no shortage of lessons. I have a long list of topics and think of more things often that I am eager to express.
I also recognize the need to have an internet presence for marketing purposes, and to let people know I am still actively practicing my counseling. But my frequency of posting has dropped from weekly, to biweekly and now I struggle to post monthly.
Simply put, the idea of sitting down to write seems like drudgery. It is something I want done, but not something I want to do.
And often counseling involves helping people address those sorts of struggles. We want to be better. We often know what we need to do, but we struggle with the actual doing.
I totally get that.
My one sentence definition of adulthood is: Doing things we don’t want for the things we do want.
But here I am writing this blog, so obviously something must have tipped the scales for me today, and I thought I would share what helped in case it might help others.
Most of the time when we struggle with decisions, we are struggling with short term and long term thinking. Sometimes all we have to do to change our decisions is simply go from thinking about our momentary happiness to just our daily happiness.
If I was doing what would make me happy right now, I would be taking a nap.
But I asked myself, what will make me happy at the end of the day. Having this task completed will make me happier at the end of the day than if I had taken a nap. Or, looking at it another way, I decided to make a sacrifice to benefit future me. And I’m sure future Me will be grateful. I’m kind of happy now just because I’m doing this nice thing for myself.
Now, admittedly, I asked myself a similar question this morning when I was going to workout, but it was raining outside. I decided going back to bed for 30 minutes while listening to the rain would be more rewarding than exercising and losing half a pound. And it was so very nice and I firmly stand by my decision.
Anyway, it’s a simple point. Don’t just do what feels good now, or avoids pain now. Start thinking, “what will bring me the most joy overall, or the least pain in the long run,” and see if that doesn’t help tip the scales when you’re struggling to get up and do that thing you know you should.
Future You will thank you.