I start most days with a really brisk 10-15 minute run. But for the last three weeks or so I’d gotten completely out of the habit of running. I felt foggy and tired so couldn’t be bothered to run. This meant that instead of feeling energised, I felt stressed and not at my best for large chunks of the day. And this meant I was getting less work done and feeling less and less at my best.
“I’ll get back on track tomorrow”, my brain kept telling me.
“Well, today I have an 8am conference call, so I’ll run tomorrow”.
“Well, I have a little bit of a cold coming on, so I’ll get healthy again this week and start running next week”.
“Run? In THAT rain?!”.
And then earlier this week I forced myself to get back in the groove. The running isn’t hard. After all, it’s only 15 minutes and this time last year I was in training for the London Marathon! But what’s hard is the putting your trainers on in the morning and breaking the impasse. That’s the hard bit.
But once I did? Well, you probably know the answer, because you have your own version of running. The last two days I’ve felt a much greater sense of clarity. I’ve got loads more done, I’ve switched off from work much better. When it comes to momentum, you’re never static, you’re either on a positive spiral or a negative one.
And it just goes to show that even when we KNOW what’s good for us – even when we know that it would be plain ridiculous to procrastinate and deny ourselves what we need – we’re still human, and we still screw it up.
Knowing what’s good for us isn’t enough.
But sometimes the clever and motivated part of us has to work really hard to defeat the dumb and lazy part of us. Sometimes we need to get beyond the ‘knowing’ and just start ‘doing’ instead. The running’s the easy bit – but the hard part is to put on your running shoes and getting started.
Criticism is easy. Creation is hard. Without creation, there could be no criticism. Critics would do well to remember this.