Just Do It

Reading Time - 4 Minutes

 

Let me start off by stating that I do not represent or work for Nike (Nike employees, feel free to send me free stuff!) But I love the power in that simple phrase that they managed to coin and make their own – Just Do It.

There seems to be a dangerous predisposition toward excuses rather than action. I am first to hold my hand up and say that yes, my initial response, that little voice that chirps up in my head when the going gets tough, is to give up. It’s normal. We are, for the most part, lazy. We don’t want to take the hard road. We want things handed to us on a plate, or else we just can’t be bothered with it.

This seems to be wholly accepted in the main part. We now have ‘participation medals’ in schools and rewards for what is, when you get right down to it, nothing more than mediocrity. When people give up at things, we pat them on the back and say, ‘not to worry, it just wasn’t for you.’ It’s as though we enjoy people reverting back to that ‘mean’ of laziness. They step out for a while, a chick taking a step out of the comforts of the nest, but we don’t encourage, instead we wait to usher them back inside.

Our excuses are endless, repetitive chirrups in our heads, nothing more than a soothing hand to pat ourselves on the back and help us believe that ‘better luck next time,’ is a mantra to live our lives by.

And that one phrase gets down to the root of the issue and blows away all the bullsh** in three simple syllables – Just Do It.

There are an infinite number of excuses in the world. People look to self-help books to ‘fix’ the problem, they go to seminars and search desperately through a litany of information in search of that ‘fix’, because the searching is easier than admitting that they already know the problem and how to fix it.

The problem is that they are being lazy.

 

The solution is to – Just Do It.

We’re approaching January at an alarming rate, the time of year when people set themselves resolutions, when they did into the depths of their brain and pull out the things they really want to achieve but have been hiding from themselves in a mountain of excuses for most of the year.

The January resolutions tend to be the big ones, the goals that people really want. We plan how we are going to do it, we promise ourselves that this year is it, we’re going to smash through the obstacles and get to where we want to be.

And come January of the next year, we are one year closer to our goals, correct?

No.

The most likely outcome is that we follow through with our resolution until around mid-February.

Let that sink in.

The goals we set ourselves in January, the ones we really want to achieve, we spend less than 60 days working toward before we throw in the towel.

Then it’s back to self-help books. It’s back to the sofa where we say it was just too cold to go for that run; our back was too stiff to go to the gym; you didn’t want to give up smoking this year anyway; you’ll start saving next year; learning a foreign language just wasn’t for you.

You give up. You revert back to the mean of laziness. You want that quick fix.

Well the quick fix is right in front of you –

Just Do It.

Whatever it is that you want, it’s on the other side of your excuses. You don’t turn your alarm clock off in the morning and ignore the hour of study you were going to do before work because you haven’t read the right self-help book yet. You do it because you have allowed the voice in your head that makes excuses to win. The only way to avoid it, to stop it from happening, to climb out of the nest of comfort you have built around yourself is to –

Just Do It.

Choose not to let excuses and mediocrity control the majority of your life. If you slip and turn that alarm off one morning, understand that it was your fault and your choice. It wasn’t too hard, it wasn’t something you just couldn’t do, it was that negative, lazy side of yourself winning out that morning. Accept it and then the next day get back on track instead of letting it snowball.

Whenever you find yourself making mistakes or wandering away from the road that leads to your goals, the ones you really want to work toward and achieve, realise that you always have the power to turn yourself around and point yourself in the right direction again.

Just Do It.

I hope you’re all having a great week!

James Orr