RUNNING WITHOUT ARRIVING - LOH 296

I have for a long time worn exhaustion as a badge of honor. While I was occupied, I felt guilty.

Once my calendar was filled out and my results weren't.
I was always up to something.
Replying to messages.
Watching another tutorial.
Planning another project.
Starting another idea.

Spending time running from one thing to another.
I would finally come in home and go to bed, satisfied because I'd been busy.
The curious thing about being busy and being productive is that they aren't the same thing.
I think that's the biggest thing I've given up in the first half of this year.

At some point I had come to believe that I was achieving success with the more things that I had going on the better I was going to be.

When someone would ask me how I was doing I would reply "I've been so busy.

It seemed to be a step forward.
In fact, it was quite a bit of moving around.
Then I realized, after some weeks, that it was simply a case of asking myself a simple question:
What have I accomplished?

This question was much harder to come up with an answer to than I had anticipated.
I had begun a lot of things but I did not pay much attention to those that are most important to me.
My energy was so thinly spread there was not enough to get anything done.
It was from that point on that I started to change my thinking.

I began to ask myself what it is that I wanted to do it all for, instead of doing it all.
It wasn't easy.
I am an enthusiastic about new ideas type of person. It could be writing, teaching forex, learning about cyber-security or even planning a business, there's always another opportunity that's calling me.

But I've come to understand that if I don't pursue everything at once, then opportunities don't just go away. it's better to simply say, "Not now and that small change has had an impact on my life!
Now I sit to write, I write.

When I'm learning something new I try to immerse myself in the learning without worrying about the next project or task or notifications.

Kinda ironic how I've been able to get more done with less at the same time.
I'm still ambitious.
I still dream big.
There are still many things on my bucket list but the difference is that I don't mistake the activity for progress.

I have learned that growth is sometimes smoother than we think it will be.
It can sometimes be more of a consistency than excitement.
It seems to be completing one task but not five.

And sometimes it feels like you are allowed to take a break, never feel like you're falling behind.
I'm still picking things up here every day.

There are times I catch myself going back to old routines, that I say yes to so many and think that having a busy schedule is having progress, it's happening.

Simply, when this occurs my mind goes back to a mantra I've developed:
People with lots of stuff to do are impressive. Productive people transform their life in the process.
There's one thing I'm happy I've left behind this year: thinking that I'm really doing it if I'm really tired.
It isn't.
Progress is.
That's the sort of life I want to live now.

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