Am I building muscles of commitment or muscles of making excuses?

A few weeks back, I’d decided I wanted to commit to writing more often and using this platform more actively. I’d decided that I’d write something to post every other day. And it was going pretty well this last week, alhamdulillah.

But yesterday was meant to be my writing day, and I just couldn’t find the energy to begin writing something. I told myself this was my reward for having written the whole past week. Plus we were going for a mini family trip today morning which meant it would be difficult to find a time to post something.

They seemed like legit reasons to miss writing for this weekend. Not excuses at all.

A realisation on the trip

But today, on the way to Lake District (our mini family trip), as we were cruising past beautiful scenery of rolling green hills, we were listening to Ryan Holiday on the latest podcast episode of Dairy Of A CEO. They were discussing the importance of keeping the small commitments and promises we make to ourselves. And Ryan said something that made me feel so guilty in the moment that I couldn’t help but pick up my phone and decide to write today too.

This is what he said -

So simple. And I couldn’t think of anything play out more truly in my life.

Strengthening your muscle

Every time I sleep the night with the promise to do something the next day, for eg. wake up at a certain time, then i wake up and make an excuse to stay in bed, it becomes. easier to make an excuse the next time, the time after and the time after that. I just strengthened that muscle of excuse.

And on the other hand, every time i decide to do something, like and I stick to it, like writing every other day, it becomes easier and easier to stick to it next time too. I just strengthened that muscle of commitment.

And as I fail to commit to one small thing, like waking up on time, it becomes easier to make excuses about other commitments too, from food to exercise to work.

So here I am, refusing to let my muscles of making excuses become any stronger than they already are.

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If you reached till the end of this reflection, thank you my friend. I appreciate it!

I hope we get to meet each other in my next post too. Until then, I’d love to know, what is a lesson you learnt this year on your birthday? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to start a conversation!

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Until next time,

Thasneema 🌻