This is my 30th post in 30 days. For those of you keeping track (and I would be surprised if any of you are) I started this journey on May 31 with the story of Abner Townsend. When I first took that photo and then sat down to write about it I had no idea the impact that Abner would have on me. 30 days later and at this time I must give thanks to Abner for his guiding motivation that has stayed with me.
The day after Abner's post I received an invitation for a 30-day writing challenge from the team of Seth Godin. The goal was to write a post a day based on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Every day I would receive an e-mail with a passage from Emerson's “Self Reliance” essay with a prompt to write about the quote. The running theme was about looking inward and questioning your thoughts and writing them down. As I did the 30 days of writing I was not especially good at being influenced by the daily prompt. I went my own way. But the prompts were the first e-mail that I would read daily. Thank you to the Godin team for providing this daily prompt of accountability.
The discipline: this daily task has been a life lesson for me that I hope that I will carry on. Many slight changes in body, mind and spirit started happening with this goal in mind. I read a lot of books to spur my thoughts. I took a lot of walks to give my mind time to process. I even wore a hole into the bottom of my shoes on last night's walk. Kind of appropriate that this would happen at the end of the 30 days. I exercised faithfully for 30 days, nothing extreme, but faithfully. I have a pull-up bar in my backyard, it's attached to my daughter's swingset. A couple of times of a day I would go out to the pull-up bar and do as many as I could then I would do a set of push-ups after that. That was my workout for the past 30 days...push-ups and pull-ups, 3 times a day. No sets or reps or even big master plan, just exercises a couple of times of day.
What have I taken away from this this journey?
I can write a page a day. This means a lot to me. I have no grand ideas of writing a novel but now I feel that I have the discipline to achieve something more. No idea what that may be but I am not afraid to do the work. As for the walking and exercise, I feel great and my pants fit better. My wife and daughter are tired of me showing of my new rip “ish” biceps ( I’m not ready for muscle beach). Doing exercise daily, even in small amounts, has created a noticeable change (if I do say so myself).
Today's e-mail prompt asked me to imagine my future self 10 years from now. What would that future me tell the me of today?
Do the work, daily ~ small discipline goals, daily...create big results.
Now I have to go take some photos... & buy some shoes.
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