Being motivated alone is not enough, endurance is key!
"Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare. " Angela Duckworth
Are you often enthusiastic about a goal, but lack endurance? We are often motivated, but somehow this motivation fades away.
Why, if we are so motivated, even enthusiastic about “the new thing that will change our lives”, why aren’t we following through with those things?
Because motivation doesn’t last!! Enthusiasm is a short accelerator that helps us getting a few actions in place but it fades away!!
So afterwards comes endurance and endurance is not very attractive.
Why do we not “endure”?
There are a few possibilities and here are 2.
1. We are actually quite happy without doing the big change (or feeling that the pain of change outweighs it’s benefits).
“The big change” sounds exciting at first but most humans have a desire to keep the status quo. We tend to go for the known and the new makes us uncomfortable. If we want a big change we need to understand that we might be uncomfortable for quite a long time. That's not for everyone!
(This often occurs when we come across a new thing - like cutting out sugar, the benefits of learning a new language, becoming to a zero waste household - when in reality we like the idea of those, but there wasn't enough pain in our lives to really change those for the cost of dropping something else.)
So you might just accept that this big thing is maybe not worth the effort and you just live happily ever after. Be careful not to make this one mistake: being upset about it. Decide if you think that whatever he "big change" is, will make the difference that you want in your life and start doing it (we tell you below how to do it), otherwise, MOVE ON! Don't ruminate or be upset, there is no point in that.
But the there is this other reason why we think the "big change" is not happening for us.
2. We don’t trust ourselves that we can do this, it's just feels like such a stretch!
That’s the tragic one. We really want to make this change, achieve the goal, but don’t think we have it in us. We don’t want to try because we feel foolish and are afraid of failure.
If you fall into that camp, try this.
Imagine you are someone who has already achieved the big thing. Think you are them on their first day of achieving “the big thing”. How did they start?
Start there. With the very smallest first step, then take the next and so on.
Repeat this a few thousand times and this, my friends is called endurance!
Also, as life usually comes in the way, you might have to adjust your goals. You might have trained for a marathon, you have done all those little steps and then a close relative falls ill and they need you. That sucks. But hey, you know have endurance and you will re-schedule the marathon if that's what's going to improve your quality of life!