Saturday, February 7, 2015

Genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration - Thomas Edison

I LOVE to live in the inspiration side of genius.  I can spend hours dreaming of places I want to go, things I want to do, feats I want to accomplish.  Looking at Thomas Edison's quote I can't help but WISH that what he MEANT was that "Genius is 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration."

But alas, it is NOT what he said, and the truth of what he DID say tends to gobsmack me every time I truly ponder the words.

We have all sorts of intentions, don't we?  I know I do!  And I tend to speak my hopes out loud.  For example, we have a room in our house that has fallen in to deep disorder.  I mean DEEP.  Disorder.

Every time I pass by that room I get a pang of guilt that it has fallen into such disarray.  So, I do what any "I'm too busy right now maybe another day" mom would do, I simply close the door.  Sometimes the door gets opened again because I actually NEED something from that room, and then the cycle repeats.

Once a week or so I have the inspiring thought that maybe I'll actually try to tackle it "today".  I fully "intend" to tackle it for about the first 3 hours of said day.  Soon, the day happens "upon" me (as opposed to ME happening on the DAY) and I "find" that quite inexplicably the room has not, in fact, been tidied.

Big surprise there.

The same is sometimes true with my health goals.  Some days I have great "intention" of staying on my plan today.  I have even greater "intention" of getting some healthy motion (read exercise) in as well!  A few hours later, the exercise piece gets pushed to the side, and I'm left with my "intention" of staying on my eating plan.  A few hours after that, once again, I let the day happen TO me instead of me happening on the DAY, and viola my best intentions and inspiration for the day have evaporated.

Oh, Thomas, why can't I seem to remember your words every day?

Truly our best intentions and hopes must be followed by ACTION.  Perspiration he calls it.  Work.  Labor.  Sweat.  Doing.

Today I am going about things a little differently.  I have opened the door to "that room" and I have DECIDED to follow up my intentions with ACTIONS.  I have decided to put a DATE on my goal of getting that room clean and organized.  That day is TODAY.

With my health journey I have also put a DATE on my intentions.  Last year I ran the Paris Marathon because I put a training plan down on paper, with dates, and followed it up with the DAILY action, the "perspiration" to get the job done, to have my goal realized.  I've just set some new health goals this week, with dates, and today I will be setting my training plan down on my whiteboard, and will follow those "intentions" with daily action, the "perspiration" to get the job done. 








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