It is your daily action not one defining moment

When we start to improve and chase our dreams, it is easy to get caught up daydreaming about rewards. It is more fun to think about success than thinking of the work required. It is a natural motivator to convince us to do something difficult to change for the better.

But for most people this doesn’t translate into lasting motivation. Instead it creates a mindset of daydreaming. Then we start to want the rewards more and more but aren’t willing to do what is necessary to reach our goal.

The reason is simple. Reaching our goal requires hard work on a regular basis. Whatever it is that we want, we have to do things each day to work towards our goal. Often these aren’t the most pleasurable actions. Instead they tend to be doing things that we dread doing.

Take exercise for example. If we want to exercise, we can daydream about the compliments from friends when we get skinny. But that doesn’t always translate into a desire to jump on the treadmill today.

Focusing too much on the end result actually hurts our ability to keep working on a daily basis. We start out by realizing how far away we are. This hurts our motivation because we realize that success is faraway.

Instead we should shift our focus. We should stop making the future result the main driver of our behavior. We should shift to focus on the very small steps we take over and over.

We can start to tweak our behaviors and then focus on being consistent. This helps because it shifts our focus to be on what we have to do not what we want to get.

Then our motivation changes. We want to keep going and keep the trend going. We don't get as caught up in the idea that we have a major defining moment to take us to the finish line.

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear says, “It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.”

He goes on to say, “Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable – sometimes it isn’t even noticeable – but can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding.”

If we shift our focus to make small improvements and make sure we consistently do them, we can reach our goal. We overcome many of the obstacles that arise when we use extreme effort and motivation to create that one defining moment.

Instead we start to focus on the process. We care more about the steps we took today than on what we hope to achieve in a year.

The systems and habits approach to improvement is available to everyone. It isn't about setting a goal and then hoping motivation takes us to the finish line. It is about transforming our life through daily actions. We keep our focus on getting better. We learn to stick with positive behaviors to help us reach new heights instead of wishing and hoping.