So, you’ve decided that NOW is the time to change.
You have taken the time to decide what you really want. You’ve written down your goal and you are excited, “juiced”, inspired and elevated. You simply can’t wait to start doing whatever you need to do to make something different in your life.
You take the first step. Easy.
Step two is a little harder but you stick to your guns. Good.
But when it’s time for step three, you’re a little distracted. You press snooze on the alarm and decide that you’ve been so good at going jogging every morning that surely a sleep in won’t do you any harm.
You’ve managed to go two weeks without so much as a nibble of chocolate, so why can’t you reward yourself with a curry and half a tub of ice cream?
Or perhaps you have done some research on making money on the internet, bought an ebook or two and maybe even been on a seminar. But it all looks a little daunting, and besides, you don’t really have anything interesting to say anyway…
What you need at this stage is a way to stay motivated. And one of the keys to staying motivated is understanding the nature of momentum.
Let’s go play!
Imagine for a moment that you are in a children’s playground. Have you ever seen one of those small roundabouts, where a child can stand or sit on top, hold on to the bars and get spun around till they either fall off, get bored or throw up? Well, these roundabouts are not easy to get started. You have to push quite hard, especially if its a little rusty, to get it moving. Both hands, often running around in a circle to get it up to speed. Even then, it’s a little slow, right? “Faster!” cry the kids as they cling easily to the bars.
So you push even harder. The spinning gets faster. The kids start screaming and their knuckles get whiter as they grip the bars tightly.
Suddenly, you find you can stop running. You can even stop pushing. You can stand still, catch your breath and just admire your efforts. As long as you give it the occasional nudge, sometimes just with a finger, the momentum of the roundabout takes care of things for you.
The point is, if you are looking to change something in your life, whether it is your financial situation, your love life or your health, you have to start with a HUGE push. It may be tiring, it may seem like a long time, but if you push hard enough and for long enough, sure enough, the change you are wanting to shift into or away from your experience eventually takes on a life of its own. You still have to poke at it with a regular nudge or two, just to keep yourself on track. But the really hard work has been done.
Don’t go looking for the easy way.
Do you really get the fastest results in the shortest possible time with the least amount of effort?
Of course not. That is where the myth of the “quick-fix” lies.
But now that you understand the momentum of the playground, start thinking of your own personal challenges in the same way. Don’t be afraid of the effort you have to put in at the beginning just to get things moving. The hours you spend setting up a website or writing content. The weeks it takes just to lose a few pounds. The months you spend focusing on other people’s needs instead of your own.
The books you have to read. The truths you must face about yourself. The people you need to get out and meet….
It’s all about making an effort. And if you get bored, or lazy and sit back and stop before the momentum of the roundabout is ready to take over from you, it can be more exhausting than ever just to get it started again.
The key is to enjoy the effort. Don’t think of it as a chore, like a wall to be knocked over and demolished. You’ll be more aligned with what you want when your effort is positive and optimistic and full of anticipation of the momentum you are creating. If you are pursuing change in favour of what you are passionate about, then I guarantee that you will LOVE, even miss, the pushing part.
(This doesn’t mean you can eventually sit back and do nothing though – we all know that if you stop pushing a roundabout, eventually it slows down and stops altogether.)
Just start using momentum to your advantage. Visualise the roundabout when the going gets tough, when you are tempted to sit down and stop too soon.
Use it to manage the way you look at change, and just keep pushing with anticipation and joy and always with a huge smile on your face, until your problem literally flies out of your hands.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sharing ‘the secret’. The roundabout is a good mental image because you can keep going for a long time if you put in the work to overcome inertia and start the momentum.
Exactly – all that energy that we put into ourselves – AND serving other people – comes back to us exponentially. It “fuels” the momentum for far longer than it took to get up to speed! Thanks Rex, lucky to have you here. Welcome!