Faded Jeans Living

It’s interesting how one sentence from a previous blog inspires a whole new entry.

I’ve been hearing more and more about this concept of slowing down, do the work, put in the time, and if then and only then will the progress come. In the last week I picked up on it from Dave Ramsey to GaryVee. I hadn’t put to much thought to it, but after listening it goes against everything we’ve been taught in these times. Here in the States we want things fast and easy. Give me that McMansion home, BMW, and oh yah let’s add I want be an entrepreneur straight out of college making over a million…And I want it NOW! This is just part of our crazy Facebook perfect collective conscious beaming consumerism media machines. That was a mouth full.

You may be asking what does any of that have to do with us? I’m taking the liberty of saying us because I feel we all are much the same. Who out of all of you wouldn’t want to go to a few counseling sessions and poof all your depression is cured? We know it doesn’t work that way, but every time it comes we beat ourselves up and treat ourselves as failures if it sticks around for days or weeks. How about instead of taking years to finally get sober we could pop a pill and the next day we’re dancing on the pink cloud. While we’re at let’s get on the latest diet, join the gym, and within 30 days drop 100 pounds and be crushing it!

Sounds pretty darn silly, but I can admit I’ve subjected myself to this unrealistic thinking at times. I see others who make it look so simple that I feel like a loser. The thing is most success doesn’t come without putting in hard work consistently for a very very very long time. Nobody wants to wait for two years to get down to a certain size and healthy lifestyle that has turned into a habit. Nobody wants to grind it out for 7 years to be that successful business owner. And nobody wants to wait many years, like 10, before buying their first house like their parents did. We’d rather apply for credit, buy the house, and go instantly into debt for the rest of our life and never have any options of leaving the rat race.

It takes years for us to realize our own bullshit. It’s been fed to us daily that we no longer question it. What if…what if we took a step back, slowed down, and got real with ourselves? How much work/actions have we taken to fight our particular dragon? Did we fight real hard for 30 days and then after our first failure we just said ah well that’s just the way it is for me?

What if we picked just one of our dragons be it alcohol, depression, health, debt, or whatever and came up with an action plan to move forward just a tiny bit everyday? Instead of getting discouraged we just move slower, get up each time after failures, and know we are making progress. Wouldn’t this be a much kinder realistic approach for ourselves? These dragons can’t be slayed easily. No way around it.

Do the work! We need to do the work each day slowly and consistently. Also, and this is very important, be kind to yourself always.

I forget this sometimes and I know you do to. We are all beautiful capable souls that are intended to shine.

Shine!

Dwight