Self Motivation The Search for Perfect Timing

I’ve been promising myself for months now that I’d get back to writing here. I told myself that I shouldn’t leave this blog, that it needed the most… and I’d also telling myself that as soon as the time is right, or as soon as I decide on the perfect subject to write about, I’d get right back on the blogging.

What I realized after weeks of this same mental conversation is that there is no “right time.” The search for perfect timing is as useless with so many distractions to keep you from your goal— outlaws to control in one case, books to read and work to accomplish in the other—you eventually forget what it was you set out to do. You put it off and you put it off and one day you find yourself dried out, with no energy left to fulfill that goal you once believed was yours.

It might be a bit too deep to image by applying to a blog writing, I’ll admit to that. But I don’t just mean blogging. I mean think about it. How many of us tell ourselves (and anyone who’ll listen), “I’ll have a six-pack by August,” or “I’m definitely going to do some traveling this year,” or even something as simple as, “Today, I’ll go to the bank,” and yet never do any of it?

I’m a Nike and Guess  fan so it may sound unfair, but it’s also true: the best way to start doing something is to stop talking about it and just do it. Take that class, write that novel (another thing I’ve been putting off for years, actually), run that race. Do it before your mind gets the chance to talk itself out of the task with its million and one reasons for delay… because while it’s easier to put off than to motivate, it’s a lot less fulfilling as well.

Where’d I get all of this? Why, a movies that i watched, of course (and certain personal experiences of late, but I’d rather talk about the movie). It’s a relatively old one and already out on film, one starring Leo diCaprio—I’d heard a lot of people say it sucked, but that the original novel version didn’t.    


   
             
The Beach by Alex Garland: a story about a British backpacker who finds himself on a hidden paradise in Thailand with a community of other travelers (not tourists, note the difference). I haven’t finished the movie yet, but so far it’s inspired me to take that trip to Anywhere that I’ve been, again, telling myself I’d go on this year. The line that got me was this:

"If I’d learn one thing from traveling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket,  pack a bag, and it just happens."

That’s a good bit of advice if there ever was one for us lazy bums out there. If it’s too long to tattoo on your arm as a reminder, it's simpler and easier to remember: Do or do not. There is no try.