Living Lives That Just Happen To Us

Have you ever had an idea and when you went to retrieve it, it was gone? This morning I had an idea for a blog post and then I spent the rest of the day trying to remember what that idea was.

Uh-oh. I’m leaving for Dallas in the morning and really wanted to write this post tonight. Memory failed me on that one. So, lacking a topic I decided to go to my quotes file and see what resonated with me tonight.

And out jumps the quote,

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

– Arthur Ashe

And, just like that, I remembered what I was going to talk about.

I was talking with two friends this morning.  We were figuring out how our friend was finally going to drop AOL email and join the rest of the world.  But she had cold feet mostly because she’s not technically savvy and didn’t know where to start. New email, exporting a database, backing up old email, etc.

That’s where we came in with the advice. Problem pretty much solved.

Then my friend said,

“OK, I’ll get this done over the next month.”

Next month? …. I write (a lot) about taking action. Doing something today. I told my friend she should just set aside a couple of hours and get it done. Knowing my other friend would support me in this, I enlisted her agreement.

“Don’t you agree?”, I asked my friend.

And she said,

“Yeah, just take one little bite out of it each day until you get it done.” (I’d hardly call that agreeing.)

So now we’re back to a month… or longer. Here’s the thing… baby steps can turn into some day. And… nothing gets done today.

And then we end up living lives that just happened to us.

Worth thinking about. And, then again – maybe my friend will get it done in a time that’s comfortable to her. But, I have to wonder how long she’s been thinking about doing this already.

Tagged as: Business Psychology, Setting Goals, Taking action