Life is full of choices. Every day we are faced with some 35,000 choices! Researchers at Cornell University found more than 225 of those were about food alone. We also make choices about what to wear, which toothpaste to buy, or whether to watch another episode of that show.
We decide if we’re going to honk at the driver that cut us off…or is that an unconscious choice? 😏
Most of our choices are unconscious. We wear deodorant every day without thinking about it. We can drive to work on autopilot. We know how to make our coffee just right, and we listen to the same radio station on our commute.
When it comes to reaching your goals, however, there are only two choices: make it happen or make excuses!
Don’t get me wrong— I’m not talking about legitimate reasons that keep us from our goals. There may be a medical reason why you can’t run a marathon. That’s something that’s out of our control.
But most things are in our control and the choice is binary.
We get to decide if we’re going to sit back and let the world happen around us, or if we’re going to be an active participant in shaping our own future.
It’s funny why we make excuses about something we actually want. Usually this is the result of fear. We’re afraid that someone will think our goals are silly, or worse, that we may not be able to succeed. Ironically, the fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if we let it.
I had a typing teacher in high-school—yes, I’m old enough that we learned on actual typewriters! She would lay out the lesson plan for the day and end by saying, “Alright, let’s make it happen.”
There was no doubt in her voice, no room for failure. To her, it was as simple as those unconscious decisions. We were going to type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” at a speed of 55 words a minute with no errors!
Even though “let’s make it happen” became somewhat of an inside joke with me and my classmates, the simple optimism of my typing teacher has stuck with me for 30+ years.
The choice is ours. We get to decide if we’re going to make it happen and that’s an encouraging thought! So whatever decision you’re facing today about your goals, “let’s make it happen, alright?”