In almost every endeavor, there is a immense progress, a pain period, mastery (or maximum personal performance) and then maintenance.
Think about every thing that’s of great value to people. Being rich is no easy task, but what happens when you finally become rich? It’s easy to maintain. You have a lot of money to invest and make more and even the money in your bank will give you greater returns on your interest.
How about working out and building muscle? It’s such a hard thing to actually build a ton of muscle, but it’s really easy to maintain it. You can cut your workout in half and eat a little more at dinner to maintain it.
Even putting together a schedule is difficult sometimes. Once you get down your bed time, gym time, wake up time, etc, everything will move a lot easier. Now, the hard part is over, the grueling part of trial and error, getting to work late, etc is all over. Once you’ve figured out your schedule, all you have to do is follow it habitually every day. It is now easy to maintain.
As you can see, the principle of maintenance is pretty universal. It’s important to think about any goal as progressive. If you ever feel overwhelmed or find yourself struggling with a specific failure point, just step back and think.
See if you can approach your problem in a different way. Most of the time, a step is either missing or not well defined. Just remember, there is gold at the end of the rainbow. Maintenance is the easy part, but the road does have bumps and you WILL hit them.
Starting is the Hardest Part
You need a plan and small starting steps to get that fire under your ass. Looking at whatever project as a whole is an overwhelming vision. Just remember that starting anything is the hardest part. Before you build a house, you need a blueprint and material. The construction part is difficult, but the end result is worth it and now the house is easy to maintain. Way easier that building it.
When you create a plan, you make the project smaller because a plan has steps, it starts somewhere. That makes starting a lot easier.
Ending is the Easiest Part
Of course ending is the easiest part because unlike running on the hamster wheel, (working a repetitive job) most goals end with something greater and easier to maintain.
Work your hardest to get to your maintenence mode, then sit back and maintain enjoy the results. Sometime you can even automate your maintenence. Cleaning your house for example can be outsources. Once you arrange everything the way you like it and clean up the house, you can now hire someone to come once a week, for maybe an hour to just make sure everything is in order.
If the house needs dusting or vacuuming, it’s addressed immidiately and taken care of before it becomes a larger task. Best of all, this is outsourced!
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