Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Negotiate with yourself

There’s a certain difficult action you must take to move your life forward. But you can’t bring yourself to go through with the whole thing.

So what do you do? You negotiate with yourself until you find some portion of the effort that you can do and will do right now.

You’re not ready to walk five miles every day but perhaps you’d be willing to walk around the block. You don’t want to commit to a full-blown advanced degree program but maybe you could take an introductory course online.

Steady, incremental improvement can take you anywhere you choose to go. Find an increment that’s just the right size to tackle right away.

If it turns out to be more overwhelming than you anticipated, adjust to a smaller increment. When you discover you’re ready for more, step up to a more challenging increment.

Negotiate in good faith with yourself and arrive at something you’ll actually do. Then keep going where your good efforts take you, and they will absolutely take you far.

— Ralph Marston

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