Motivation gets you started, discipline keeps you going, irritation helps you plow through.  This is just a little reminder about perspective.  I have a tendency to stop and start things over and over again and then get really annoyed or even disheartened with myself.  Like we spoke about yesterday, I will realize that I’m repeating patterns that keep me stuck instead of working toward the goal, and then I get annoyed with myself and struggle to get back on track.  There is an additional purpose to irritation that we didn’t discuss yesterday: that is the fortitude to push.  The truth is there are times we simply need the brute force and the demand to pull ourselves back on track.  I have a ton of motivation to start projects.  The creative energy flows and I want to do everything all at once.  I had/have a bad habit of actually starting a ton of things at once and not being able to make heads or tails of what needs to be done next.  That is where discipline comes in.  We need to be able to determine the actions that will move the needle and follow through on them. Now back to irritation.

Sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves for falling off track again doesn’t help anything.  We need to give ourselves a reality check and cut the crap.  Sometimes it’s hardest to be honest with ourselves and look at what we are doing and the impact it has on our goals.  The only thing stopping us from living the life we want to live and doing the things we want to do is ourselves.  It’s human nature to get off track every now and then.  We need to learn that doesn’t make us a victim, it makes us a creature of habit, perhaps a bit of an addict to the way things are/a certain feeling.  That is something we can take control of.  We can learn to set up our environment for success (I wrote a piece on that a few weeks ago) so that way we are making decisions in line with the goal.  Eliminate the distraction, keep the determination, and have the humility to see when we need to direct some irritation at ourselves.  It’s great to start things, it’s fantastic to have creative energy, but it’s even more rewarding to follow through and see the results of our dreams.  Keep going, keep directing, and keep correcting.  Eventually we will get there.