Plateau-tudes

Welcome to today's issue of The Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine. The e-zine of Motivateme: Breaking the Procrastination Habit. http://www.motivateme.info. Have you signed up for your daily dose yet?
----------------------------------------------------------
I hope this finds you well and enjoying everything the day has to offer you. I would also like to welcome all the new subscribers to the Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine. I hope you find the information contained in these daily ramblings of interest and use.
 
Today I want to talk about plateaus, peaks and troughs. Have you noticed that when you get fired up about a project you input huge amounts of energy into getting them started. You think you know what you want and you rush headlong into the doing, usually without much in the way of prior planning. And then what happens? Well a couple of things. First of all other things crop up and take your energy and time. What seemed like a good idea when you began the project becomes a nagging guilt that you should be doing something, anything to keep it moving. But you find yourself with less and less enthusiasm, and more often than not, when the "other" item fizzles out or gets completed, you simply don't know where you had gotten to and so you have to start all over again to pick up the thought threads.
 
However, that's not all that happens. In most cases, because we haven't taken the time to plan ahead, we don't actually know what "it" will look like when it's finished so we lose any sort of enthusiasm we may have had in the first place. We stop rushing to do things, and more often than not we struggle to find the energy and motivation to pick up the sword and keep fighting. What used to excite us has become mundane, a drudgery. So we stop and we rest for a while. We kid ourselves that we will get back on track in a minute, but hey the view's pretty good from here, we decide that we really don't need to put on the climbing shoes and climb all the way to the top - here is good enough.
 
The problem with a plateau is, is that it is a treachorous place to spend any time. We are in danger from falling objects - we forget that we should be doing something and we get knocked off the ledge, only to find ourselves scrambling through the dust and the debris to get back to the ledge we were sitting on. The energy we had to expend ruins any chance of making much in the way of additional progress.
 
However there are some more problems with plateaus, and that is, that it is so easy not to notice that we have begun to slide back down the mountainside. We hardly notice the view is changing until it is too late.
 
Have you ever been on a diet? Have you noticed that it is so easy to put weight on, yet it seems almost impossible to get it off again. So you start the see-saw of losing a couple of pounds, getting bored when you sit on the ledge for a little too long, and then forget the resolve "to be good" and find ourselves in the valley looking up at the side of the mountain, wondering how on earth you could find yourselves back there again so soon. Have you noticed how hard the climb is the second time around, because now you weigh more, it's harder on the knees and this time, you hardly make it out of base camp before you're having to sit down.
 
How can you tell if you are on that perilous ledge? Well - have you done anything towards your goals today? What about this week? Have you begun to put off taking the daily steps you need to take in order to achieve whatever it is you said you wanted? But there are other things to think about - when was the last time you did something a little bit differently? Think about it, you don't have to keep climbing upwards all the time to make progress, you can go sideways for a while if you don't like what is directly in front of you. The bonus of moving sideways is that you will find that tackling that enormous rocky boulder becomes a little easier when you look at it from a different angle. Who knows there might be some hidden passageway that you didn't notice from where you were sitting before, and that passageway might take you directly to the top of your particular mountain.
 
The old adage is true, if you keep on doing the same things in the same way, then chances are better than good, that you will get the same results. So challenge your thinking, challenge your actions. Try something a little different. To kickstart that exercise plan - borrow someone's dog, go rollerblading, volunteer in a soup kitchen, you don't have to pump weights to get fit and healthy.
 
To kickstart your writing project, work out what you want the document to look like, and what message you want to convey. Get out those nice big fat crayons and get creative. And if you don't have any then borrow your kids, better still get them involved. This is especially good if they have a project and they don't know how to start it or what they want to say....
 
And finally for today, know what the end product is going to look like when you finish...I don't mean - knowing every word in advance, but what is the book going to look like, how many chapters, how many pages to each chapter, what message do you want to convey in each chapter? What are you going to look like when you've lost all that size and weight? What outfit are you going to wear? What is your house going to look like when it's built? What colour walls, what sorts of lights and tiles? What flowers are you going to plant in the garden. Think about it this way, imagine you were driving your car - before getting into the seat it's important to know what you were getting in the car for.

And what of Plateau-tudes - well you may have hit a plateau, but it is your attitude that will determine whether or not you allow it to defeat your plans, projects and goals.
--------------------------------------------------------
No Spamming or List Sharing - We do not share, nor give out, our subscription list to third parties.

The contents of this E-zine may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author's name and contact information are included. Example: Reproduced with permission from the Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine E-Zine. The newsletter of Motivateme: Breaking the Procrastination Habit - http://www.motivateme.info.

All contents Copyright (c) 2006 Motivateme.info except where indicated otherwise. All rights reserved worldwide.