Accomplishing Your Goals in 5 Minutes
Every single journey begins with that first step.
We’ve all heard this quote in one form or other:
“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” — Jerzy Gregorek
However, a hard choice doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a hard change. A hard choice could be equivalent to a small change.
A small change of 5 minutes to your day
It’s daunting to begin working on any untrained skill. If you break it down into small, daily increments of 5 minutes, you can accomplish anything!
It’s a blessing and curse that we are creatures of habits — small actions and decisions we do every day.
- The blessing is humans are exceptionally adaptable and can pick up new and productive habits.
- The curse is that it’s too easy to grow accustomed to old and comfortable habits.
Think about your comfortable habits. For example, when you can’t stop binge watching that show or play that video game far too long. These are both mine by the way: Terrace House on Netflix and Apex Legends on Playstation 😅
It’s hard to change up your routine, but take that first step!
The 5 minute rule
Start changing your life routine by adding 5 minutes.
If you’re doing something for 5 minutes a day and you want to get better at it, I promise that something will internally change if you keep at it. You’ll end up doing at least 5 minutes of it (most days).
The first step is always the hardest part. Remember, set yourself up for success! If you want to do a task daily, you need to set it up to be done daily e.g. set a daily reminder on your phone, have the task out and ready.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! — Benjamin Franklin
If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.
Reward yourself
Appreciate all the big wins in life, but don’t forget the little wins.
Not all of us have the sheer willpower to accomplish all of our goals like in the movies (it would help if we had an epic soundtrack in the background).
Pace yourself. Life is a marathon.
Also don’t overlook the reward of looking over a checked-off list! Which leads me into my next point…
Journal!
For those who haven’t felt inspired by yourself, I challenge you to take up journaling. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but the case for journaling lives up to its stature.
Check out this great article by Mike Sturm for tips on journaling.
Journaling grants you the good fortune of looking back on your growth and all of your accomplishments. “That’s pretty satisfying.”
“It’s nice for me to look back in a month of training and see what was working because with any kind of real training process, the process is so gradual. Basically you’re always trying just as hard as you were before, but your numbers start to improve over a month or over several months, and so if you don’t have it written down, you basically feel like you’re not improving because you’re always trying super hard, but then you look back you’re like, oh I’m actually using twice as much weight as I was when I started. You’re like, that’s pretty satisfying. It’s all about taking notes.” — Alex Honnold on GQ Sports
We’ve all heard of people wanting to create a life that inspires others, but I argue that it’s just as important to inspire yourself.
- Start your new life by taking 5 minutes to work on whatever you want. It could honestly be taking 5 minutes to do absolutely nothing and taking a 5 minute breather outside!
- Reward yourself for sticking to your daily goal and making progress!
- Journal it down so you can have the reward of seeing how far you’ll go!
Gift yourself the enjoyment of the process to become the human you want to be.
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart
You may also enjoy reading:
