I Just Don’t Feel Like It

It happens to us all, even the highest of achievers that you know. There are moments where we do not feel like doing what we know we should be doing.

 

There is this dialogue in our heads as we hear the alarm clock going off. Should we get out of bed and start our day in this early hour as we planned to do, or do we hit the snooze button and turn back towards our pillow?

 

Having a disciplined lifestyle is not easy. It is hard work. 

 

There are several walls we have to climb over to get to a mental space where we begin to follow through with our own promises to ourselves, and one of those walls is overcoming our emotions.

 

When we set off to conquer the world, we begin with great excitement and determination.

 

We are doing so well on day one to follow through with our new exercise plan and actually putting up the laundry all clean and folded. Then day two goes fairly well. We accidentally slept past our alarm and still somehow managed to do all we set out to do.

 

Then the third day comes, or for some of the lucky ones this day doesn’t come until a week or so later, but that “day” does come.

 

We wake up and we do not feel like keeping to our commitment of a disciplined life. And then the days following that awful day of defeat are followed by days of continual surrender to our own comfort and human desires.

 

Let me encourage you with something. 

 

If you have a “I just don’t feel like it..” day, then allow that day to come and go, but refuse to let it derail you from what you really want to do and be. 

 

Our emotions get the best of us at times and that is totally normal, we are human.

 

The key is whether or not we allow that emotionally driven day to conquer all our days afterwards. Many people give up on creating discipline in their lives because they have an all or nothing mentality.

 

You cannot live in that sort of mindset. Perfectionists do this all the time to themselves. They tell themselves if their choices are not perfect and they slip up, then it is over. They should just throw in the towel of defeat and give up on creating healthy habits in their lives.

 

No one is perfect.

 

When I have a day where I give into my emotions and do less than I would like to have done for that day, I choose to reset my mind and let the next new day be the day I get back on the horse.

 

I allow myself grace for the days I do not make the best choices and I forgive myself. I do not allow my thoughts to fall into a pit of failure, and I definitely refuse to identify myself with failure.

 

And when the disciplined behavior is a new one for us, our emotions will fight against this change hard. So to combat our emotions, we must become more determined in our own will to do what we set out to do. We must allow our will to override how we feel in the moment of doing the action.

 

There are tricks we can come up with to help us override our emotions. We can decide to place our alarm outside of our bedroom so we won’t be so quick to hit the snooze button, for example.

 

Tell yourself that you will more than likely not feel like doing what you really want to do. I know, it seems strange. We have a free will, but we also have our brain and body. We have to learn, by our determined will, to ignore the protest cries of our emotional thoughts and feelings and do what we must.

 

Once we get past this wall, knowing our emotions will fight against us, we will find ourselves not so easily distracted and move on with our preferred disciplined action. In short, learn to ignore your emotions when they try and get in the way of what you have already decided by your will to do.