“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn.
Climb that goddamn mountain.”
~ Jack Kerouac
New Year’s resolutions.
People love to make them. They spend hours planning, agonizing over, and pounding out each tiny detail. And then, they typically abandon their good intentions within a few weeks to months.
This year, take Jack’s advice and climb the goddamn mountain. Whatever your mountain is, climb it!
How do you climb a mountain?
One step at a time.
I don’t say that to be glib. It’s simply the truth.
The rest of your life isn’t going to go away. The office will be there. Dirty clothes will still need washing. At best, those things might pause or be passed off to someone else temporarily if you go all-out to conquer your resolutions. But day-to-day life will always return.
On your deathbed, you’re not going to tell stories about your day-to-day life.
You’re going to talk about the experiences that you made time for, fought for, and carved out despite the day-to-day. You’ll laugh at mistakes, feel pride in accomplishments, and relish the connections you have with the people who shared the crazy ride with you.
You’ll be content that despite anything else in life, you climbed some mountains.
Resolution failure isn’t because people don’t know what to do. It’s because they stop taking action. They make resolutions, put one foot in front of the other for a while, but…
Instead
Create a story with you as the main character. Whatever mountain your character wants to climb, find a way to do it. Every story has conflicts, unexpected twists and turns, moments that seem regular until you later realize they were pivotal scenes. Times when you’re not sure how the desired outcome will ever be possible. In stories, things happen that you don’t expect but the character adapts and moves forward anyway.
Your character is like that, too.
Don’t type your story or record it. Live it. Bring it to life. Climb your mountain. When all hope seems lost, find a way. This is your story, your rules, and your life.
There are plenty of other posts on my site that go into the details of creating goals and following through. (Gorilla Glue Your Good Habits, Why Is Change Taking So Long?, Your Easy ‘Next Step’ To Success, and How To Build A Base For Abundance In Your Life)
All of them have important and useful information. But maybe, even if it’s just a wild idea you try in 2017, what would happen if you forget about resolutions this year and purposefully write a bit of your mountain-climbing story every day?
You’ve got this.
Happy climbing!