TANSTAAFL

February 11, 2015 in motivational

For readers familiar with Robert Heinlein, the title of this article will make immediate sense.  For everyone else, it is short hand for “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” – and there really isn’t.  You pay for everything you get one way or another and the coin is frequently counted in blood, sweat and tears not money.  The important thing to focus on is whether what you are paying for is what you actually want.

Many times, we have only a fuzzy, general idea of what we want out of life. And even then, things could generally work out, if we were able to maintain our focus on even that fuzzy idea of what we want. However, what happens in many cases is that the focus of attention shifts from what we want to what we fear.  Then one gets trapped in the negative sum game where the limited energy resources we use to pay for what we want get channeled instead into creating what we fear.  This common pattern helps to define the two areas where we need to invest our energy that are crucial to achieving our goals.

First, visualize pretty clearly where you want to end up.  It is fine to start with a general direction such as “I want to be prosperous and happy” but some details will need to be defined.  What does prosperous mean to you? Does it mean having just enough to pay the bills, enough to put a little in savings and take a vacation?  What will it look like to be happy?  A detailed road map of how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to be is not needed at this point, just a clear picture of how your destination will look and feel.  Once that picture is set, you have a base point to which you can return anytime your thoughts turn dark or negative.

How you proceed next will depend on current position, available resources, and your ultimate goal.  Regardless of these variables, the expenditure of a significant amount of energy over an extended period of time will be required to achieve your ends.  This is the time period where the second crucial area of investment comes into play. 

When goals are not achieved quickly, people lose steam. They stop expending energy to achieve their goal, stop focusing on the goal and start focusing on less profitable things like feeling discouraged, fearful, or angry and on looking for some outside source to blame for their lack of success.  Energy is still being expended but it is now going into things other than the stated goal.  Something is being bought, just not what was wanted.

Training yourself to spot when your motivational train derails so that you can counter it by redirecting your attention as quickly as possible is largely a matter of practice.  Learning to pay attention to your inner dialogue and your external behaviors is the most fundamental skill you can learnt that will help you be the master of your life.  There are plenty of books out there that can help for those who are the self-study type.  For others, working with a trained professional can help the process go more smoothly. 

The important thing to remember is that you are pouring your energy into buying your future every day and it definitely behooves you to be sure that you are buying what you actually want.