A lot of people start enthusiastically running a marathon and are very happy and proud to see other people watching them while running. However, the number of runners who manage to finish the marathon that they start is very small in comparison to the original number of runners that started the difficult journey. If we take this and wonder whether we can learn something from this case, the immediate response that should pop up into our heads is: Yes, we have started countless marathons in our own lives and never finished them.
You might think that this cannot be true, as you do not recall that you registered for running in a marathon before. That might be true, but in the last sentence of the first paragraph, I was not referring to the type of marathon that you used to watch in your television. Rather, I was talking about a lot of things that you have started to do in the past, but have never finished them. It is reasonable to say that it is not necessary to finish everything that we start, because there are things that do not deserve that type of commitment. However, this should not stop us from completing the tasks that we start, which deserve to get done completely.
Let’s do a little exercise that might help you do what you regret you did not do it. Take a piece of paper or open your favorite text editor and write down all the things that you once had a big desire to do, but then gave up. It is probably safe to assume that it will be a long list. Do not spend too much time on formatting your words, just try to dump all the memories that come back from your head. Then take that list and select only one task that would have the biggest impact in the improvement of the quality of your life. After you have done that, try to add some urgency to that task and change your mindset about doing it: Instead of seeing it as something that you must do, see it as something that you are blessed to do.
Then try to deconstruct that task into smaller chunks that you would be motivated to do. If you do not feel that you are ready to start doing it, it is probably because you have not deconstructed it into subtasks that would be easy for you to do them, or as Leo Babuta says, “So easy you can’t say no”. After that, try to put these small tasks into your calendar and commit to act on them.
Your task might be related to finish a book that you found interesting in the beginning and did not want to give up reading, but you just did have other priorities at that time; watch all the lectures of the course that you signed up for; write your first novel that you started when you were a child; finish reading that helpful article that you found on that blog, etc.
If you are able to complete that task and see a considerable impact in your life, then you might want to repeat the same exercise once again. It is normal that sometimes you might not be able to consistently act on that task, but do not consider that as a disaster. All of us slip here and then sometimes, but it is important to try your best to act again and not let that task be part of only your past memories.
