Monday, April 30, 2012

A to Z Challenge: Zero Excuses

Whoooooo! I finally made the last post. ^_^

Thank you to all of you who read my post. I hope you enjoyed my challenge offerings.

Today's post is a bit of a kick-start, I hope.

See, I was once in a place where I was pretty much miserable, but living with the misery. Because while I hated where I was, it was familiar. And familiar was comfortable.

I made every excuse I could to stay in my comfort zone. "It's my own fault I'm so miserable", "Give it a few years and I'll do what I want", "but there are so many perks to this", "I'll never get a chance like this again", "I have no resources to change my situation" and on and on and on.

The thing is, excuses never make me feel less miserable. They just sort of give me a reason not to move. And that's so dangerous. Why?

Because these are answers and counter-questions that I discovered when I seriously considered taking charge of my life:
Credit

"It's my own fault I'm so miserable" => "Yep. Because you're allowing myself to wallow in a situation you hate."
"Give it a few years and I'll do what I want" => "If you die today, what will you have shown for your time?"
"But there are so many perks to this" => "Yep, and you'll probably blow your brains out in one of them."
"I'll never get a chance like this again" => "Assuming the above doesn't happen, am you going to come to the end of your life, thinking: 'Was that it? Why did I waste so much time?'"
"I have no resources to change my situation" => "Crap. You're perfectly equipped to take charge of your life. You're just being lazy."

Did I ever mention that God pulls no punches when I honestly ask for answers?

Any way... He had an excellent point. And while some of the answers were really harsh, they really cut through years of nonsense that I told myself. Those answers changed my life.

So if you've read through my posts and still think that taking charge of your life isn't worth the effort, even when you feel discontented and miserable, I want to ask you to do a couple of things for me.

Firstly, please ask yourself: Why can't I just try taking charge of my life?
Then write down all of the reasons why and ask God to address those questions for you. Maybe He'll treat you with kid gloves, maybe He won't. But I promise you that it will change your life if you listen to Him.
After that... the choice is yours.

Let me know how it goes?

4 comments:

RHYTHM AND RHYME said...

I have really enjoyed your posts and congrats on completing the challenge.

Yvonne.

Claudia Moser said...

Congratulations for reaching the end, well done!

kate n said...

Hey Misha, I made a concerted effort to change my life this year - but ended up delaying everything, but then I seemed to turn a corner and life has been different but fun but I feel exposed. I never thought I was secretive before but I can see now that I was and being less secretive had made life very different, even if I do feel vulnerable. There is still so much more that I need to do, ironically career wise (my blog inspiration), needs the most attention. I can relate so much to your blogposts. So thank you.

Peaches Ledwidge said...

I'm trying to be a better person.

Congratulations for completing the challenge.