A Moment in My Life – Tuesday, November 3, 2020
This one comment, “It’s too soon, baby,” is more fitting today than ever before. You may think I’m referring to the Pandemic with the Covid-19 numbers rising again as the counties advance toward reopening more businesses, but no, that’s not what I’m referring to, really. I won’t lie. That situation is on my mind. It weighs heavily on my heart. What can I do about it? Nothing, except do my part to remain vigilant and pray that others would do their part, too.
In a way, the Covid-19 status does fit my topic for today because it’s like one step forward and two steps backward. It’s continuously been that way, and I think it’s because it gives us false security that we are heading towards the right direction with each foot forward. Thinking that way, we instinctively relax from our vigilant practices. After all, we’re tired of the current situation and crave returning to life as we remembered. It doesn’t take much to relax and drop our guards. It doesn’t take much for the numbers to go back up, either. All it takes is a little slip up for a setback to happen.
I’m a walking example of that philosophy. This fact brings me to today’s column. Today marks day three after the end of daylight savings time. As I mentioned yesterday, day one was a huge success in my productivity with the extra hour gift of time. Day two, however, wasn’t as smooth sailing because everything didn’t fall into place as smoothly as day one did. Again, this was the ‘one step forward, two steps backward’ philosophy because it seemed so simple that I expected day two to be similar to day one. I felt a false sense of security and relaxed—dropping my guard too soon. I am learning as I go, and the lesson I learned yesterday was that all new habits require discipline, patience, and staying the course until it becomes second nature, which means it’s too soon to relax.
Success comes before work appears in one place and one place only, and that’s in the dictionary. Anywhere else, work comes before success, and successful work usually requires a game plan. A plan is only useful if it is worked. Do you see the domino effect here? Like with the Pandemic, I’m tired of working the course. I want to see the solution, the success of our labor. Each day, I am reminded that that’s not going to happen until we do the work to make it happen.
I’ve been striving to improve my wellness, which covers many areas such as sleep, diet, exercise, and stress relief. We want results, but who wants to work. I sure don’t. People see me as super disciplined, but believe me, I’m as lazy as anybody else. Each time I begin to see success, like say, a pound less on my scale, I relax and end up eating the wrong foods and sabotaging my one day’s success. When I step on the scale, and the number went up, it reminded me that it was too soon for me to relax. The hard work wasn’t over, and after decades of failure, I think I finally get it now.
With any game plan that I execute, especially with those hard-to-do personal goals like my wellness, I need to recognize that regardless if there are small improvements or successes in view, it’s too soon to relax. I must work the plan, stay the course, and don’t relax because, as soon as I do, I have sabotaged my real success, so I must remember this, “It’s too soon, baby!”
