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Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!
tl;dr We all have hope for what we want our futures to look like. We secretly wish our future selves could do something our present selves can’t. But to become that future version of ourselves who can do more, we have to build confidence and character in incremental steps, since change so rarely happens in one fell swoop.
We’ve all heard the quote:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words;
watch your words, they become your actions;
watch your actions, they become your habits;
watch your habits, they become your character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
But have you considered that the inverse is also true? And as a result, we can reverse-engineer our destinies.
Most of us can probably describe what our ideal futures look like. We know generally where we’d like to be, who we’d like to be with, and what we’d like to be doing.
We might have various ideas for different milestones: what that ideal looks like five years from now, 15 years from now, and beyond. We have a nicely crafted storyline but, less often, a detailed plan for how to get there.
If we use the quote as a blueprint to create our destiny, we must develop our character by leveraging our habits, take conscious action, choose our words, and be mindful of our thoughts. So if we want to create that ideal life we can visualize in our mind, we must start with the building blocks.
It seems almost ridiculous to believe that changing our futures starts with how we think. But everything in our lives thus far is a result of how we think (ie what we believe we are capable of, the work we are willing to do, and the value of our work). We can’t achieve something unless we believe it is possible.
And not only must we believe it’s possible (like ending up in our dream life situation), but we have to truly believe that we are capable of accomplishing that. We probably won’t put ourselves in a situation which we think is impossible. So training our mindset can help us develop our belief in ourselves, speaking the possibility into reality, and developing our character to be the people who can have the dreams lives we want.
In order to work on our thoughts, we have to consume material that stretches our capacity: reading books, listening to podcasts, talking with people who challenge us. But it’s hard to really change how we think, it takes a concerted effort, practiced over and over again.
This is why most people fail: the need to practice over and over again, even when we fail, even when we feel uncomfortable, even when we slip into our old ways. Everyone (at least a whole lot more people) would change if it took one massive effort. Like when people say they’ll never drink again after being extremely hungover or when a huge financial stressor hits and people swear to be better with their money. But these big promises are much harder to keep when old habits creep in and the sacrifice requires sustained effort.
You might be nodding along saying yea this all makes sense: change is hard but if we want our dream destiny, we have to put in the work on ourselves, rebuilding from the ground up. But what are you going to do about it?
For this reason, I am starting a challenge October 18th for the last 75 days of the year. Many of you may be familiar with the 75 hard challenge (and if you’re not don’t worry about it because we’ll have a different set of rules here).
The goal is to finish the last 75 days of the year with momentum going into the new year instead of letting the holidays derail everything wellness and starting over January 1st. I am keeping it simple: five to ten minutes per day of a simple action (walking, stretching, journaling, etc) that helps us restructure our thoughts. It will create the confidence and integrity needed to create that new way of thinking so we can develop into the character we want to become next year and work towards that ideal destiny.
For more information, you can email “I’m in” back to shannon@walshwellness.org or reach out on social media where I’ll have the daily prompts.
We can work towards creating that ideal future for ourselves, but it all starts with our mindsets and spending five minutes per day going into the new year I think will be the most valuable way to help everyone work towards that. Consider if you’ve tried the big overhaul (disguised as a new year’s resolution in the past) and how that’s worked out for you. Here’s the opportunity to try something different this time around.
If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM.
This week, my podcast recommendation is from Shankar Vedantam’s Hidden Brain, “Why Conversations Go Wrong.”
With that, make it a great week.
Until next time,
Shannon
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