Will Work for Love in 2018

Happy New Year!

As is the norm at the demise of a calendar year, there is something about the months of December and January that triggers in most of us a sudden urge to evaluate certain aspects of our statuses. This is usually in the realms of health, family, finances, education, spirituality, and what one does for a living, especially the employed.

Restlessness, just like nervousness and stage fright, are gems that nature has nurtured in us to keep us alive to our circumstances as well as sharpen our situational awareness. Tapered insecurity is a natural guard against complacency. Are you restless in your current occupation and loathe waking up to your current job? Is there an incessant thirst in you to do something else or pursue a particular goal? It has been psychologically proven that ignoring these positive nags makes one increasingly restless and in some instances irritable, meaning a pain to be around.

Truth is if you have to work 40 or more hours a week, you should at least be doing something you enjoy. Passions are often muted by the daily trench-life and grind, thereby blurring our goals over time. Contrary to our infantile beliefs, there is no external magic in turning a new year that makes our dreams come true overnight. Which is why the required sacrifices make most of us give up on these noble dreams and resolutions within the first quarter of the year.

But why is it so tough to change course, drop bad habits and pick good ones, to keep energized and feed our psyche along the course? Because in many ways, we are our habits; nearly half of our actions are habitual. Yet habit change really is a small deal: the tinier the habit, the easier it is to establish. It simply creeps up on you. Weather a positive or negative habit, its entrenchment method is the same; bit by bit.

You know that feeling by now; the bigger a project seems, the less likely we are to complete it, since it seems like too much effort. If we are to make an honest effort in getting better at big picture things like becoming more productive or creative, we need to make the change as small as possible.

Research shows that habits don't start feeling "automatic" until we've done them repeatedly for roughly 66 days straight, meaning January to beginning of March if using a calendar year. And before they become automatic, we have to engage willpower to initiate the task; yet willpower just like a muscle, can get fatigued. Just to reiterate, the bigger a project seems, the less likely we are to complete it, since it seems like too much effort.

How then do we find a strategy that lets us lay the foundation of a productive habit while minimizing the upfront workload which is the drag against us kick-starting on a new path?

By going byte-size. Doing one push-up daily; flossing one tooth daily.

See, it’s easy to cajole yourself into action by saying that you’re going to do one tooth then do them all. Just floss one. Do it every day. And watch what happens. The spoiler alert is that one day, about three weeks in, you will get an itch for completion. You will want, nay, need to floss them all. You won’t even be particularly aware of the change, which will seem natural and unconscious. And thereafter you won’t be able to resist flossing. Mission accomplished.

Taking my own personal example of how I started training for and running half-marathons, a colleague of mine suggested that we go lumber in a nearby recreational park rather than spend time in evening rush hour traffic. While he did three laps of the park that evening I did a single sluggish one and felt proud of myself for just that. After 2 different evenings of a single lap I was raring to do two laps, then a month later three laps consistently, till I mysteriously found myself doing six laps with ease a couple of months down the road, much to my own amazement and that of my running mate. And thereafter I couldn’t resist heading to that park every other evening. To date. In jogging just one lap, I guess I avoided biting off more behavioral change than I could chew. But once I started running just one lap every other evening, I worked up an appetite to run more laps. Soon after, the habit became automatic. It integrated into my routine such that I never ever needed a reminder to pack my running kit the night before a park session evening, the weather be damned.

The "floss one tooth" example is a classic of productivity from lazy-smart habit formation. Since the habit is so tiny, you'll feel ridiculous for not getting it into your day. Then, over time, that minuscule becomes a part of your day, rather than no part at all. You could think of that absurdly tiny habit as a skeleton for an extension of your routine - once it becomes "normal" to your routine, you'll glide right into it.

The tiny habit hack can be applied across areas: To eat healthier, eat one extra vegetable. To become more mindful, sit for five minutes of meditation. To get more knowledgeable, savor two pages of reading. And to get more active, you could challenge yourself to doing one push-up per day. At the onset you won’t do a 30-minute workout naturally because of willpower challenges. But you could do just one push-up and with time segue into a 30-minute workout because it only requires a tiny amount of willpower to start, after which your body and mind stop resisting the idea.

So if the secret to learning new skills is to do them every day, then the secret to beginning that process is to start small. Like tiny-habit small.

So When?

Procrastination is the mugger of dreams, and can leave you bitter in later years. If we want to do something we truly enjoy we need to start today. We are capable of anything we set our minds to, and the mind is such a terrible thing to waste. With the right amount of time, energy, and pure determination we can do anything our hearts desire.

Perhaps you are doing something you hate simply because you do not know what you would really enjoy doing. Now is as good a time as any to reflect on what makes you happy. Make a list of professions you would like to try or activities that you enjoy doing.

At what point did you abandon your dreams and embrace a dour reality of existence? Was it your guardian or teacher who reprimanded you to ‘be real’? Think back to your childhood and what games you liked to play. Think about who you pretended to be and what you loved to do. Ask yourself “What do I want to achieve in my work?” Is it only individual success, or do you have hopes of changing the world? 

You may want to consider visiting the local library or looking online for career resources, classes, or even a life advisor. This is the first step in doing what you love. Once you have decided on the path, just go for it and implement your plan. There is plenty of time along the way to build skills, and acquire new knowledge to achieve those dreams which have been pushed to the sidelines. Doing what you love will bring fulfillment and satisfaction in your life that is unmatched by any other endeavor.

It is inspiring the way other mere mortals defied society’s perception of them to rise to the pinnacle of their chosen fields. Who would have imagined that Richard Branson was dyslexic? Or that at 23 Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first reporting job? If the great Stephen King was working as a janitor and living in a trailer at 24, or that Harrison Ford was a carpenter at age 30, who cares where or when you start? In terms of initial callings, one Vincent Van Gogh failed as a missionary while aged 27 and decided to enroll in art school. And in matters age, isn’t it amazing that Samuel L. Jackson didn’t get his first major movie role until he was 46, or Morgan Freeman even older at 52?

Most of life’s missed chances are recoverable, age is nothing but a digit, and you will never know if you are good enough until you try.

To balance out with your trench-life or treadmill existence, find your 3 hobbies – one to make you money, another to keep you in shape, and the third to keep your mind creative.

Purpose to do what you love. Especially if it goes against the norm in terms of culture, gender, race, tribe, age, education, and other man-made discriminatory labels.

Why not begin your new life today?