Road to Self-Improvement: First Step
Several of my articles on self-improvement have been about writing to make your intentions clear to yourself. This time, however, there will be far less writing and far more doing. People who are unsure of what they want to do will take the first step and do the six-month trial.
This is where you try many different interests as if you were going to pursue them, and you do it for six months at a time. Even for those who already have a path, the process will force you to act and figure out what is truly worth doing in your eyes. While it might be difficult, the struggle can be overcome.
The First Step
The first step is not always forward progress, but it will be your first foot forward. Before you can start chasing the golden dream, you need to know what it consists of. That’s why we begin with the end in mind.
Afterward, we must proceed in some direction, and the path to success is not going to be a straight line. That is why people should use an ideal or their idol as a waypoint.
Often, the path on our journey will go this way, and then the other way. Backward, to the left, out in the field. Amble through a bush. That’s the way it works. It’s hard to push through at this stage because, despite the effort put in, it looks like you aren’t going forward. That is the heart of the six-month trial.
The six-month trial is this:
- Go to your list.
- Select the thing at the top of the list.
- Do it for six months.
- Finish.
- Go to the next one.
- Do it again.
This ends when, after six months, the thing you’ve been doing has been fulfilling enough that you could see yourself spending the next fifty years of your life doing that thing for eight hours a day, five days a week.
What you’re doing is searching for that which gives your life meaning. Okay, so maybe you already know what you want to do. That’s wonderful. Are you sure it’s everything you think it is, though?
Commit Yourself to your Goal
The number one problem that is likely to arise with that argument is many people think they want to do something. However, they have not actually committed themselves to the act and taken the first step. For everyone, whether you know what you want to do or are doing the trail method, you MUST treat this like it is your job.
You don’t go to work for 40 minutes a day. You don’t choose not to do it sometimes because you’re tired. You should be doing the thing for 3-6 hours a day, or as your current lifestyle permits.
When you don’t feel like doing the thing, you should get off your ass, walk to wherever you do your work, and start doing the thing. You should do research and be sure you are committing yourself to all aspects of the thing. Treat it as if you are a professional being paid $30-$50 an hour to do what you’re doing.
If you want to waste your time, then feel free to half-ass the whole process. That is a sure-fire way to end up at a job you hate for 30 years before realizing you really don’t like where you are in life.
Trail Running your Passion is NOT a Waste of Time
Now, I can see many people saying, “but spending six months doing something I might not like is just a waste of time.” To which I say PAH! Everything is a waste of time then. The whole point of this is to find something that isn’t more of a waste of time than everything else. If you’ve put something on your list that you think would be a waste of time, then it is your own fault for adding that to the list.
When you do something only to find out you don’t like it, you haven’t wasted your time. If you are adamant that the time is wasted, then relish in the fact that you only wasted six months rather than sixteen years because you didn’t know how bad it would be to take it seriously.
Fight Past the Lack of Motivation
Now that I’ve plowed past the obvious and laughable, I will address what is a serious matter. During the process, you will undoubtedly feel discouraged or unmotivated.
This is normal.
There is no career that you could pursue in which you would enjoy every single aspect of it. If that is the case, then everything you do will have some parts you aren’t fond of. If they outweigh the parts that fulfill you, then maybe it is not the task for you. However, you can’t know whether you will genuinely enjoy doing the thing until you have actually done it.
Just because someone likes drawing does not mean they will like selling their art and having it critiqued. Vise versa, just because the editing process of writing is painful doesn’t mean a person can’t find enjoyment in it or think it worth the effort.
In the end, the six-month trial is not so rigid as it seems. If you know for sure something is not for you after only a month, drop it and move on. The point is, give it a solid try and do everything you can to treat it seriously as if you are getting paid. Your journey will likely go sideways for a while as you try to find what you want to do, but as long as there is a genuine effort, the results will be worth it. Remember to focus, not on the outcome, but the process of improving yourself and learning what does and does not work for you.
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