Motivation

What To Do If You Have Been Slacking

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If you committed to an endeavor for the long haul but have recently been slacking don’t get down on yourself and definitely don’t come up with a plausible rationalization for why you haven’t been keeping at it. Just recommit and then do something today to put you back on track, something to prove to yourself that it’s not just words, that you really are still committed. that your recent slacking period is a blip on the radar not an enduring pattern of behavior.

Your beliefs about yourself, others, the present, and the future really do affect outcomes, not in a philosophical sense but in a practical sense since as a human being your tangible behaviors are in large part the result of your psychological processes, both conscious and unconscious. What you believe will happen often does end up happening not by luck or by some sort of magical process but because you make your behaviors and the behaviors of those around you align with your beliefs about the present and the future.

In the context of this article you can choose to view your recent slacking period as a small bump in the road while fully recommitting right now to your endeavor, in which case a small bump in the road is exactly what your recent slacking period will end up being when you look back on it a few months from now. Or you can come up with a plausible rationalization for why you haven’t been able to keep at it, some excuse to let you off the hook, and the quality of your recent slacking period will change. It won’t be a bump in the road but the end of the road, the turning point where you abandon your endeavor for good.

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