Every person has to fight with inertia on numerous occasions in daily life. Suppose your car needs cleaning this weekend and somehow you just don’t feel up to it and put it off by giving some excuse, or your wife asks you to clean up your desk or book shelf or mow the lawn but you either procrastinate or give an excuse of having a backache or something else just to put it off for as long as possible.
The funny thing is that finally when you do start doing the particular chore or activity you were avoiding, you actually begin to enjoy it and most of the times complete the task in the best possible way. If you start cleaning your car, you find there’s loads of dirt on the carpet and then you clean it up inside out, similarly if you do begin to start mowing down the grass in your lawn, as soon as you see some part of it after it’s been trimmed a little and feel the difference, it egg’s you on to do the whole thing in the best possible way.
In every area of your life, be it some household chore, a professional task, a new sales call, or any other thing that takes you out of your comfort zone, the main obstacle is overcoming inertia. You have to overcome it and it sure does take some doing to do something you don’t feel like doing. No sooner do you start working on the task or chore; the invisible weight on your shoulder holding you down seems to vanish into thin air.
This very discipline that enables a person to do those things that takes him/her out of his/her comfort zone or that makes one feel uncomfortable, (this discomfort is mostly inside of the mind though), is what gives a person the edge over all the others who either procrastinate or give in to the excuses the mind makes up and push these tasks to another day.
These are the people who finally make up the 20% who lead, manage, employ and become examples to emulate for the other 80%. These are the successful people who don’t crib about skipping the Sunday noon siesta or the soccer match of their favorite team and by sacrificing these little things that do not matter in the long haul, these people go so far ahead of their competitors that it becomes impossible to catch up with them.
Some of the things these successful people do every single day, every week, through the month and the year are mostly avoided by others who are not so successful.
Some of the things I have noticed which successful people do and others don’t:
• These people get out of bed as soon as they are awake, mostly early in the morning;
• They always complete the job in hand before jumping to another;
• They usually do the most important things first; They don’t allow things to be left pending;
• They never hesitate to say no to the things they don’t believe in doing or cannot do justice to or which are not in line with their goals,
• They put off the embers before it turns into a raging fire;
• They go to the doctor early and don’t wait for the disease to grow out of proportion;
• They exercise regularly;
• They choose the food they eat and countless such things that people of lesser discipline and will power avoid doing.
Without will power and self discipline these things are tough to do. It’s difficult to wake up early in the morning after a tough day but winners and successful people do it anyway; its tough to skip an afternoon nap that one gets a chance to enjoy once in a fortnight, successful people do it anyway; it’s difficult to avoid eating your favorite food when it’s in front of you, these people avoid it anyway; its difficult saying no sometimes when someone asks for help, if they have scheduled something important these people say no anyway.
This very habit of beating inertia and starting to do the little things that can so easily be avoided is the difference between a fit and an obese person; a rich person and an average earner; a successful sales person and average sales person; a winner and a looser.
Inertia is a small word which throws a lot of weight around; especially when your vision is not clear enough and your desire to achieve true success is not strong enough.
Think about it.
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