• About
  • Workout Routines

Daily Ramblings…

~ Thoughts on Productivity, Health, Writing, Job Hunting, and many other topics…

Daily Ramblings…

Tag Archives: The Journey

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Mondays – Failure is Not a Waste of Time

09 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Motivation Monday

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Defeat, failure, Keep going, Learning, Setting Goals, Stretch Goals, The Journey

It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Bill Gates

As we wind down 2019, I wanted to use that time to address failure.

Failure is a teacher. It is not something to get upset about or worry about. Failure shows you how not to do something. It teaches us where we went wrong. If we pay attention. If you fail and learn nothing, the true failure is failing to learn something.

I set some stretch goals at the beginning of the year. Did I meet all of them? No. Was I planning to miss the mark? No. That’s what stretch goals are about. You stretch beyond what you did previously to see if you can pull it off. I’ll get into detail in a later post when I do my end-of-year evaluation and reset for next year, but when you achieve more, feel great! When you fail to achieve what you set out to do, learn from it. Did you stretch too far? Did you miss some principle or lack the technique or ability to do more? This is where the true wins are. You can fail over and over and over again. The key is to keep going.

Here’s my weekly schedule:

  • Blog daily
  • Work on my Story Beats daily
  • Exercise daily
  • Meditate daily
  • Socialize daily
  • Journal daily
  • Learn daily
  • Code daily
  • Share articles and quotes daily

When you set your goals for next year (hopefully sometime this month), keep in mind that you may fail to achieve some of them. That’s OK. Goals are meant to stretch us. Sometimes you can’t stretch enough to achieve them. The real benefit of this exercise is to continue to do better than you did yesterday.

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

42.941645 -82.551603

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – The Journey is More Important than the Destination

14 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Motivation Monday

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Achievements, Consistency, Goals, motivation, rituals, Systems, The Journey

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Zig Ziglar

I have always been motivated by goals and achievements. In the last few years, I have evolved. After reading books like Mini-Habits and Atomic Habits, I am now more focused on the systems that support achievement. These systems or rituals are more important in my opinion.

For example, I set a goal in the Goodreads’ reading challenge to 48 books this year. I achieved and moved beyond this goal last month. How? By reading 1 chapter a day. That’s it. Simple, right? My system of reading 1 chapter a day helped me hit my goal, which occurred without even thinking about it. If they system supports your goal, you’ll achieve it. You cannot do anything else but succeed.

 

Systems or rituals can be used to achieve all of your goals. If you select the right things to do, you’ll achieve your goals unconsciously. It’s just that simple. It’s the rituals and systems that are more important because they build habits or patterns in your daily life that should be beneficial. Reading, writing, exercise, meditation, connecting with friends and family, are all important and beneficial things. Create systems that allow you to touch the things that are important to you every day and your life will be rich and fulfilling. On to my weekly schedule.

Weekly Schedule:

  • Read a chapter daily
  • Write a section of my book daily
  • Code daily
  • Meditate daily
  • Blog daily
  • Exercise daily
  • Spend time with friends and family daily
  • Run a monthly book discussion (today)

I’ve also started a habit of getting out and about daily. This could be a meal at a restaurant, visiting a library, or setting down at a coffee shop. I also go to the gym and run errands. I try to interact with different people each time I go out. It’s great fun!

Happy Monday! I hope all of you have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

42.997350 -82.507366

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Arthur Ashe

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Wisdom Wednesday

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arthur Ashe, Learning, Making Mistakes, moving forward, Perfecting, Self-doubt, The Journey, wisdom

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

I don’t know about you, but I am always doubting what I do. Is it good enough? Is it right? Will people like it?

When I was younger, I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. If you are not familiar with the game, it allows players to create their own fantasy worlds where players go on adventures, rescue damsels in distress, fight dragons, and other creatures commonly found in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. For the game to work, you need a Dungeon Master (DM) who creates a world, the adventures the players will embark on, and acts like a judge when game play needs an outside advocate. I enjoyed writing the stories and creating these worlds. It was great fun getting the feedback from the players that were part of my game and watching them enjoy spending time in my world.

Jump ahead 30 years and I am in a doctoral program specializing in Information Technology. In the 13 years I was in the program I was writing 10-25 page papers every week. Needless to say, writing has been something I figured I would be good at, since I finished my doctoral program with a 4.0 grade average. I also realize that at some point I will be too old to work any type of job that requires manual labor or something as physically taxing as my service in the military. So, here I am, writing on this blog, working on books, and starting to figure out how to publish various essays I come up with to Medium.

The point I am trying to make is that regardless of what or who you want to be, what goals you want to achieve, or where you want to go in life, you have to start somewhere. Like the quote says, you have to begin with whatever you have at the time. This is wise advice because you will never be good at anything you try until you begin doing it. If you pay attention, you will run across people who will give you feedback. You will learn from other people who have already done what you are trying to do.

So you start doing and learning and doing some more. Then one day you figure out that you really don’t want to pay the price that this “thing” requires of you. That’s ok. Set your sails for a different shore. Try something else. It is the doing in life that brings rewards, not just the winning. Once you’ve won, it’s over. Once you accomplish a goal, it’s done. Now it’s off to the next adventure.

Every person you can think of that has made a big dent in this world, started somewhere. They either didn’t know what to do or doubted themselves. They started. They committed. They gave it their best shot. If you never start or take a risk you will never accomplish anything worth accomplishing. Keep plodding forward. It will be worth every step.

Until next time…

Dave

42.997350 -82.507366

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017

Categories

  • Accomplishment
  • Announcement
  • Annual Goals Posting
  • Birthday
  • Bonus Content
  • Book Review
  • change
  • Christmas
  • Easter
  • Father's Day
  • Four Dimensions of Life
  • Fourth of July
  • Funny Friday
  • Goal Setting
  • Halloween
  • Happiness
  • Happy New Year
  • Helpful Articles
  • Holidays
  • Illness
  • Independence Day
  • Insight Mars Lander
  • Journaling Series
  • Labor Day
  • Las Vegas
  • Life Happens
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • Memorial Day
  • Merry Christmas
  • Milestone
  • Mother's Day
  • Motivation Monday
  • Online Course Review
  • Politics
  • Procrastination
  • Productivity
  • Quotes
  • rituals
  • self-improvement
  • Series Sunday
  • Service
  • Spiritual
  • Spiritual Saturday
  • Spread Your Wings
  • St. Patrick's Day
  • Success
  • Super Bowl
  • Ted Talk
  • Thank you
  • Thankful Thursdays
  • Thanksgiving
  • Thinking Thursdays
  • Thinking Tuesday
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Valentine's Day
  • Veteran's Day
  • Visualization
  • Weekly Review
  • Wisdom Wednesday
  • Workout Routine
  • Writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy