As I often talk about, life is a roller coaster. We have good days, bad days, good weeks, bad weeks, good years, and bad years. Sometimes we achieve our goals and sometimes we fall short.
I have talked extensively on this blog about how to deal with the bad days and bad feelings, so if you want to read a post about that, then go here. However, today’s post is going to talk about how to deal with the good days and good feelings.
We’ve all had those days where we just feel unstoppable. We are on cloud nine and nothing could bring us down. Maybe we had a really good day at work, it was payday, we had a great day with friends or family, we got some really good news, or all the hard work we put in has finally paid off.
That's all fine and dandy, but here’s where most people go wrong: they feel content. They feel satisfied. They feel like the work they’ve been putting in has paid off and now they can finally take a break.
Here’s a simple example off the top of my head from my own life that maybe you can relate to. Last February I was training for my first half marathon—of course, Jeremy is talking about running again. Sorry, not sorry.
Anyways, I really wanted to beat a certain time, so I trained really hard and was laser-focused for about four months. I never missed a training session, my diet was on point, and my mind was locked in. Come race day, I crushed my goal time.
Now, it was time to celebrate, take a break from running, and enjoy the victory for a little bit. Which I did. I pigged out on all the junk food I missed out on over the last few months, I didn’t run for a few weeks, and I was just flat-out lazy. I felt content with achieving my goal. After all that hard work I put in, I felt I deserved some downtime.
After enjoying sedentariness for a little while and knowing I had another half marathon coming up in just a few weeks, I decided I should probably start training again. However, after not running for a while and eating like total crap, it was tough getting back into it. I felt slow, heavy, unfocused, and I ended up missing my goal time for the next race. Poor me.
As silly as this example was, we can apply it to anything in life. When things are going well, we achieve our goal, and our hard work pays off, we should never feel content.
Content means we are satisfied.
Content means we slow down.
Content means we lose our hunger for more.
Feel grateful, yes, but never content.
The goals that we set should never be the end-game. They should merely be stepping stones to bigger and better things. There's always going to be another peak that needs to be summited. When we achieve a goal, we should acknowledge it, be grateful for it, and then keep fucking going.
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