Most of us live every day with some sort of expected list in our heads, and while it’s not the same list for all of us, it serves the same purpose for all of us. The list is what we measure the day against, and it’s how we determine the answer to the question, “Did I win today?”
I used to push back on this truth, thinking that only tightly wound Type A people had mental lists, but this isn’t limited to only the organized among us. If you’re breathing, you’ve got an expectation about what you should be doing based on what you think successful people do.
So, when you do those things, you’re happy, and when you don’t do those things, you’re not happy. String enough of those “not doing” days together, and you can find yourself under a pile of unrealized expectations feeling powerless to get out.
But what if there was a way to win every day? There is. You’ve got to replace that list based on what you think you should do with a list tailored around what you can do.
Inevitably, this will shrink the list down to smaller, bite-sized, and achievable things.
Maybe you think you should clean the house because normal people have clean houses. But what can you do? You can make your bed, or load the dishwasher, or pick up the socks that you were going to step over…again. And when your list includes those things, and you do them, you’ve won. Anything else you do in the house is icing on the cake because you’ve already won today. The checklist doesn’t include “clean the house,” but “clean.”
Maybe you think you should run 10 miles because that’s what super athletic people do. But what can you do? You can get off the couch and walk to the end of your driveway and back. The checklist item isn’t “run 10 miles,” but “move.”
Smaller, bite-sized, and achievable. And when you do that, it doesn’t matter what you should have done. What matters is what you did, and that is how to win in some way every day.
