Getting Ready for Tomorrow

 

The last thing I do before closing my eyes to sleep is to mentally prepare myself for the fight tomorrow.

How easy it is, congratulating yourself after a productive today, to talk yourself into slacking off tomorrow.

The working day doesn’t start in the morning. It starts the night before.

The first post in this series was titled RESISTANCE WAKES UP WITH ME.

It does, and I know it.

Resistance will hit me tomorrow morning before I even open my eyes. It will try to turn my success today into failure tomorrow.

Resistance will try to convince me I can relax, ease up. “You put a good day in the bank today. Enjoy it. Slack off a little tomorrow.”

Tempting, ain’t it?

But I know what will happen if I listen to this siren song.

So I don’t listen.

Instead I steel myself. Like an athlete, like a provider for a family, like a contender, like a professional.

I am playing the long game.

I am inculcating habit.

I am deepening my practice, day by day.

I have a month-at-a-glance calendar on my desk. Every day when I finish work, I write a letter as a code for the project I worked on that day in the upper right hand corner of the calendar day … and I put a check mark beside it.

What I’m trying to do is reinforce for myself the idea that my artist’s life is 24/7/365.

I want to be able to look down at that calendar and see check mark after check mark with no gaps in between.

I’m my own boss, my own coach, my own CEO.

I’m training myself and reinforcing myself every day.