If I want a different life, how can I expect to create it if I can’t even dedicate 20 minutes to building it?! I want to be a writer, yet I won’t take responsibility to write daily, for 20 minutes?!

We go to therapy and we hope it’ll change us. We want different and we complain it’s all the same, but we won’t take responsibility.

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Not really.

You’ll say, I did go to the gym and it didn’t help! I did meditate and it didn’t do anything!

But did you go daily, for at least 30 minutes, for at least a month? Or 3 times a week for an hour for at least a month? Did you meditate daily for at least 20 minutes?

No.

You tried.

Like a petulant child you did it three times and you quit. You did it for a week and you quit.

Like petulant children we want quick results and we give up when we don’t get them. We make up so many excuses that we could have written a book with them! Yes, yes, your kids are also your excuses!

I know mine are.

Don’t get me wrong, I have three of them. So I have three really good, really loud male excuses for me not to write (or for you to work out or learn how to meditate or get a new career going or whatever it is you say you can’t do). And I can let them remain as my excuses and then later, subtly resent them for not letting me have what I want in life. And if you think you’re not going to consciously or subconsciously resent whoever it is you use as an excuse, think twice.

And I get it. I too am allergic to the word “responsibility”. Responsibility is crammed down our throats since childhood in the form of homework, dishes, and taking out the trash. Later, from helping our parents, we have shifted responsibility onto helping our bosses or our children.

And there is nothing wrong with that. But when we haven’t spend the time to look inward to see what makes you – you, what keeps your fire going, or ignites it for that matter, what makes you come alive, what makes you feel more like yourself – then the word “responsibility” becomes a punitive, dead word, carrying more things for more people, doing for others, taking FROM you.

Today, I ask you to ask yourself – not your coach, not an expert, not a friend, not your parent, not your spouse, or even your therapist- but yourself: “what have I been wanting to do, secretly or openly, that ignites my fire and gives me life, that I’ve found many excuses to not do?”, and then ask yourself “am I willing to live the rest of my life saying “I wish I’d done that!..”.

So, my friend and fellow human travelers, today I vow to you this: no matter the day, no matter the mood, no matter the chaos – I will write. I will find 20, if not -10 minutes and I will write.

And maybe you’ll be hearing about whatever is getting in the way of my “real” writing while

I’m writing, but I’ll be writing!

What goal can you commit to? What have you wanted badly, for months, or even years, that you’ve delayed, excused away, tucked for a better day?