It's Not That Important

Why is it that so many of us fail at achieving our New Year's resolutions? Well, because if we were to be honest, those resolutions aren't that important to us. Yes, we know that they are important -- but they are just not important to US. 

How do you know if something is important? Imagine this. You had money set aside to pay your rent. Now, you can't find that money! What would you do? You would tear up your apartment trying to find that money, while promising to God that you'll change your life if you could only find that rent money. 

Have you ever lost something so valuable that you'd do almost anything to find it? If you have, then you know what importance feels like. 

So, keeping that feeling in mind, how important are those other goals that you want to achieve? Are they so important that you'd do almost anything to achieve them? Would you rearrange your schedule to achieve them? Would you pursue those goals until your circumstances force you to stop? If not, then those goals aren't that important to you.

Now, when you set those goals, they were very important to you. But what happened? Why aren't they all that important now? Because you allowed other things to come in and distract you. The more distractions you bring into your life, the less important your other goals become. Then eventually, you'd stop pursuing your goals until the next New Year's. Then the cycle would begin all over again: you'd set a goal, you'd do what you could to achieve it, distractions would come in, and you'd stop pursuing those goals.

Several times have I seen people attend my fitness classes faithfully, then they would drop off the face of the earth. Then suddenly, they would miraculously reappear as if resurrected from the dead, and they would be noticeably overweight. What happened?? They got distracted with life. The goal that was once important to them became non-important, while the non-important things became important. 

Remember that if something is truly important to you, then you would pursue it until your circumstances FORCE you to stop. But usually, that's not the case, right? We always have circumstances that come up, but they don't usually force us to stop pursuing our goals. Instead, we ALLOW the circumstances to stop us.

One time long ago, I was working one-on-one with a client online. I only required her to do 10 minutes of exercises a day. Just 10 minutes. She gave me an excuse why she hadn't been doing her exercises. What was the excuse? Her mother broke her foot, so she had to attend to her mother. Seriously? Yes, that's bad for your mother, but do you have to attend to her every, single minute of the day? Of course not. A broken foot is not life-threatening and she'll be back to walking around in no time. Why couldn't she squeeze 10 minutes of exercises during the day? Because she allowed the circumstances to stand in her way.

As insensitive as this may sound...

• Sick kids will get better
• Broken bones will heal
• Your car can get fixed
• You and your spouse's disagreement will resolve
• You will eventually find a better job
• Your sniffles will go away

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Everything will somehow work out for you. Everyday, you will come across something that appears to be bad. You can't allow everything to pull your focus away from your goals. Otherwise, don't bother setting goals, because you'll never achieve them as long as you let circumstances take over.

If your goal is very important now, then there is no reason why it won't be important later. Your goal is ALWAYS very important. The distractions of your life simply convince you that they aren't important anymore.Those distractions would follow you wherever you go, and whenever you have a goal, they would tell you, "Nah, that's not really important." Eventually, you'd find yourself living a life of default: you just do whatever the distractions tell you to do. And you know what kind of a life that would be? A very miserable one.

Set a goal and finish it. If it was important when you set it, then it would still be important while you pursue.