Building A Better You

 Do Something Hard How comfortable is your life? Your day to day life, I mean. For many of us, I’d say our lives are rather comfortable: We wake up and get ready for the day, we go to work and put in our time, come home and have dinner, then settle in for an evening of reading, or binging a show before falling asleep to do it all over again tomorrow. Often, it feels like deciding what to eat for dinner is the hardest thing I do all day. Some people develop grit when they’re young and they struggle through things in school. I was fortunate enough to have a rather easy time in school. Things came easily to me. I rarely needed to study. It was great, until I got older and was faced with actual challenges. Rather than dive into them, I did my best to avoid them. If I wasn’t good at it initially, I had no interest in continuing to do it. That’s fine for some things. We don’t have to do  everything  that comes our way. I’m not great at organic chemistry? Fine, it’s honestly som...

  Better to Stumble Forward Than to Stand Still My first article took years to write. It’s something I had thought about for a long time. I read books on writing. I watched YouTube videos made my writers. I researched the best things to write about, and the best places to write about them. Where did all that planning and research get me? Nowhere. At the end of it all, I still wasn’t actually writing anything, and therefore, not actually a writer. Maybe I could be called a researcher, or planner, or dreamer, but not a writer. The day I became a writer didn’t come until I was fed up with the way my life was progressing. Looking around, I realized I wasn’t doing the things I really wanted to do. I also realized that nobody was going to come along and say, “Kevin, it’s time to start now.” That was entirely up to me. What was holding me back? This was the question I had to ask myself. There were several answers that came to me: I was afraid of failing. I didn’t feel prepared. I was afra...

The Only Thing Holding You Back, Is You It’s easy to fall back into old habits. When I run into difficulties, or obstacles, there’s a big part of me that wants to say, “Well, looks like the end!” I’m not even talking about major obstacles. It can be as simple as not growing as quickly as I thought I would, or wanted to. This is usually the result of me comparing myself to others. Also, setting expectations, which I have generally found to be a trap. Sometimes, it’s not knowing what to write about. I feel like I need to have everything planned out and know what I’m going to say from start to finish. Even though, time and time again I have proven this to be false. I manage to convince myself that all the great writers, all the people I enjoy reading, they have it all figured out and it’s effortless for them. Somehow, I have learned to equate effort with some sort of failure on my part. As in: If I’m actually good at this, it should flow freely and easily. Kinda messed up, huh? I’m certai...

I loved the path of least resistance. It made me feel smart. It made me feel accomplished. Why not? I was getting things done! Checking them off and moving on to the next thing. I thought people who didn’t were being foolish. Why work harder than you need to? Or, maybe they weren’t very good at what they were doing, and should move on to something that they  were  good at. That’s what I did. I had enough money, and I changed jobs frequently so it kept things interesting. It worked great for a long time. Until it didn’t. At some point, I paused long enough to look honestly at my life and take stock of what I had accomplished. I was a well respected worker at my last 10 or so jobs. But, I never stuck around long enough to really be promoted, or accomplish anything of significance. Having dabbled in numerous hobbies, I had passing familiarity with a variety of things: music, whittling, making chainmail, crochet, gardening, sewing, etc. Along with that knowledge, I also had heaps ...