Remembering What We Want

"Discipline is remembering what you want."   ~ David Campbell 

So how can we forget what it is that we want?  I mean, if we want it, how can we lose sight of it?  I remember watching a very (VERY!) funny video of Bill Cosby several years ago entitled "Cosby at 49."  In one of the segments in this comedy video, he talked about how our mind plays tricks on us and he wondered how our brain can tell our body to do something without us knowing it.

When it comes to remembering, or not remembering, what it is that we want, I don't think the issue is that our brain is playing tricks on us.  I think we just get distracted.

Sometimes we get distracted by the tyranny of the urgent and forget what it is that we really want.  Life is busy and often stressful, and it's easy to get into a mode where we are just reacting to what's around us instead of creating what we want.  If we're reacting, it's hard to take a long view to remember, and focus, on what we want.

Sometimes the pull of immediate gratification shifts our attention.  If we aren't intentionally fixing our eyes on what it is that we really want, we will readily go for the next thing that comes our way.

Remembering what we want means we first have to be clear about what that is.  A vague desire to "drop some weight" probably won't be a compelling reason to keep us going over the long run, but remembering that we want to live an optimally healthy life and having a vision of what that will look like is something to remember, then act on.

Once we remember what it is that we want, we will make the choices necessary to move us in that direction.  We make those secondary choices, things we might not want to do (exercise, stay on 5&1, etc.), because they are the means to help us get what we really want.  The key is to remember, then choose wisely :-)