"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm"How true that quote is. We all have things we need to do in our lives and some are more exciting than others. As you go through your day you can work under a 'checkbox' mentality where you do the task and check the box, doing nothing more, nothing less and doing it exactly as it's stated or you can accel beyond the task and create.
To acquire and skill at all, to become proficient at any art, to do anything worth while one must be enthusiastic about it. May you are not excited about the individual task at hand but look beyond your nose and see the wider impact you are making from completing that one task. Painting thousands of lines for grass is daunting, but when you are painting a meadow, each line is just as important as the next. When you are writing thousands of lines of code that check, re-check, and double check data flowing through a web transaction it ensures the company continues to make money and beat their competition. Being at your fullest potential cannot happen unless your level of enthusiasm is maxed out. A lethargic interest is no interest at all.
Mind over matter. Don't think of your writing, blogging, reporting, meetings, programming, sales calls as work. If you do then in your mind those tasks are no different than scrubbing your toilets at home, which is work. Your hate doing it but it needs to be done.
How do you get fired up? How do you re-spark your interests and love for your job, hobby, or art? You need to stay out of the rut of complacency and status quo. Don't allow yourself to do just enough to feel productive. Beleiving you are doing the very best you can is not enough. You need to break through these mental barriers and set your goals beyond what you consider your best. Better yet, have someone else push you and set your goals for you. Subconciously you will set your goals to be in your reach.
Hitting those out of reach targets that you think you couldn't is how you stay engaged. It's how you get fired up to keep moving, to keep writing, to keep painting, to keep shooting photography, to keep striving for bigger work projects. Your own achievements will in turn feed your enthusiasm for more.
When you are training for a 5k and you have never ran one before your goal is to finish it without stopping. Your next goal maybe will be get a better time. AS you do more races your inner goals will become easier and easier. A few minutes off here and there? Why are not working to win the race? Set the goal beyond your self-inflicted barriers what are within reach but not far enough out to push yourself to greatness?
It's OK to set personal goals you don't meet. Goals are targets, in life you don't hit all the targets you shoot for and that's just fine as long as you know you pushed yourself beyond where you know you can achieve. When you put it just out of reach you will turn inward and find you are far more capable than you know.
That's how you can look back and not just say that you hit that goal but say Wow, I did that!
Time to turn the page
@GeekToAuthor
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