Yes, it is still in my mind how to write an inspiring post. And I still don’t know how to do that, as it is quite late and I don’t feel like writing. But of course that is none of your business as an inspiring post should inspire you, and knowing about my current feeling or status is probably not that inspiring. Or is it?
As I just finished installing Caesar IV on the PC of a friend of mine. And over the day that started to worry me, as it was one of the few things on my planning list for today. And it was supposed to be a pretty straightforward thing as I had done it before on one of our own PC’s here. So I knew a bit what to expect, except the PC of my friend runs Windows 8 where our own PC I installed Caesar IV on runs Windows 7. But as the game, a pretty old game not made for newer versions of Windows, ran on Windows 7 without too many problems, I expected the installation a bit similar to the one before, not really straightforward, but doable within a few hours and without too much effort. How wrong I was, as the installation of .NET 3.X is quite different on Windows 8 compared to Windows 7. And it needed to download something, which didn’t work and that didn’t make much sense to me.
Anyhow, I did manage to install the game, and that is kind of the inspiring part of this post. As I used quite some of the Principles of Success to get this task done today. At first I used the principle of decision, as I decided quite a while ago that I will finish my daily to do list, no matter what. And I have become pretty good at that, as it is very rare that I fail to finish all the items on the list that I have marked as ‘definite’. So with this list I have developed the habit of planning things and finishing them at the time specified. And keep in mind that this is not particularly difficult, as when I started with this habit I started with just one little thing per day. So I was 99% sure I could finish that thing. And I did that for quite a while, weeks, if not months, to get started with this.
And still, recently I didn’t feel like doing a lot of things. And I have been on a short holiday. So for the last weeks, months, my daily planning has been pretty empty, like many days where I planned nothing. And over time I learned to specify things more specific, like adding the word ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’ or stating something like ‘if pushes through’. As I noticed that for some things you depend on other people and as I don’t think it is healthy to force other people to follow your planning I am very careful making statements about that (thanks Mike, for pointing out to me how this works).
So also today I thought I had a pretty simple list that could easily be finished. How wrong I was, as somewhere during the evening I really started to believe that this game installation might not work out today. However, for those things the principle of persistence comes in handy, together with the earlier mentioned decision. As those two things just made me push through where other people, or I myself before I learned all this, would stop, would declare defeat or failure. But I didn’t, as somehow I have developed to just go further, a lot further, than I used to before. And finally it did work out, although in this case it might not have worked out today. But it did.
And most important what I learned, what I can confirm also from what Napoleon Hill and many other famous ‘self help’ writers state, is that it doesn’t really take a lot of effort or energy. As it is just a habit I developed. It is just ‘something I do’.
So well, even though it is later than I wanted, expected, and even though I feel a bit tired and didn’t really feel to write a post, I think I managed to write something useful which even might be inspiring. So maybe I am also slowly developing the habit of writing, writing inspiring posts. How successful is that?
And what about you? Do you finish things? Have you developed habits that help you finish things? And yes, looking back it is all worth the effort. As with all these things I have changed, where the major change has been that I have an awful lot more self confidence, which I think is a big thing.