Habit and Focus

Two things have been on the forefront of my mind recently. One is the formation of habits and the other is what we should focus on in regards to our goals. When I was listening to an episode of The Strength to Endure Podcast a few days ago, Eric brought up a time when he didn’t even realize he didn’t want to train that day until he was at the gym. That exact same thing has happened to me. I got out of class and headed right to the gym. It hit me halfway on my walk there, that heck, I didn’t want to train. But I was already in the motions too, so I kept with it, got to the gym, and had a good session. I wouldn’t have trained that day, if I didn’t have the habit to always go after class. All of the people I look up to in life have a common view on motivation: you can’t rely on it. Motivation comes and goes, but habit is always there. 

I have some big goals in life and you should as well, but I realized I was too focused on the end of the goal. I was thinking too much about the moment when I will achieve whatever it is I set out to do. The problem with this is it is only a moment and a moment that hasn’t even happened yet. I’ve shifted my focus to the journey. I’m going to run a marathon later this year, for instance, and most of what I could think about was me at the finish line on race day. That’s simply going to be the icing on the cake. The process is going to take SOO much longer than just my 4 hour race. The process should be something that I look forward to, put pride in, and enjoy. The process is where I’m going to spend countless miles (okay well, my Garmin watch makes things pretty quantifiable) enjoying what I see around me, hitting PR’s, and putting in hard work.