I came across this riddle the other day and for some reason it has stayed with me:
5 frogs are sitting on a log, four decide to jump off...how many are left?
Answer: 5. Why? Because there is a difference between deciding and doing!
I am not sure why this has resonated so deeply with me, except that perhaps it is a pretty accurate description of one of my biggest failings....lack of follow through. I am often deciding to do things....catch up with old friends over dinner, make a call to someone that I have been putting off, cleaning out the garage, posting to this blog regularly...the list seems endless when it comes to things I decide to do....follow through however, is another thing.
To be sure our lives are busy, and what we often think is a good idea at the start of the day or week can end up being something we just don't think we have the energy for at the end of the week. The conundrum is that doing the very things we don't think we have energy for can often energize simply by doing them. Looking through my list above, I have never caught up with old friends, made a call, completed a chore, or posted to this blog and NOT ended up feeling good about what I had done!
So how do we overcome this inertia? Well that my friends is indeed the question. If you have things that work for you, I would love to hear about it...As for me...I am going to start small. I didn't clean out the garage, but I did recycle some electronics that had been sitting in the garage collecting dust for a couple of years....and today I am posting to my blog - not a long post, but posting none the less. Perhaps if the tasks are less all encompassing they will be more achievable?
Time will tell, but for now I am going to focus more on doing and less on deciding. And to think that if I had really paid attention to Star Wars, I could have learned this lesson years ago. It was put so eloquently by Yoda: Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
