Challenges.

Welcome back to lazy and unmotivated girl. Nothing inspires or excites me: neither books, nor movies. Writing. To keep for records on my computer? French. To keep for records in my mind? Music. To keep for records at my fingers? Sport. To keep for records in my muscles? What do I do it for? That’s the worst part: almost always the most desirable and enjoyable part for me is “the goal”, “the award”, not “the process”. It’s not that I just need to know why I do this or that. No, I need to know that if I jump over this rock, I’ll get something great, something I am longing for. So I put all my efforts in this jump, I do unbelievable job, and I feel happy and satisfied to get a well-deserved reward. There SHOULD be the ENOURMOUS efforts and an AMAZING reward! If one of the components is missed, the whole thing doesn’t make sense. I guess the psychological type “winner” can be an obsession, some kind of a disorder…

Moreover, the reward should be right now, right here, after my enormous efforts to jump over the rock. A blurry goal somewhere in a long-term future – however sparkling and attractive it looks – doesn’t satisfy nor motivates me. I always hated dreaming (hey, it’s useless!), I like planning. People say you can’t get everything right away; you have to go step by step. First of all, who said that? Secondly, even if it’s true to some degree, I need to know exactly how this or that step makes me MUCH closer to my goal. How, where and when. If I don’t get my goal, it, certainly, demotivates me. However, there are two possible ways of the continuation. If I know that it was my fault and I just have to work harder to get my goal, I’ll put twice more efforts to get it. But if I don’t even know whether it was my fault or there is just no way to get my goal this way, and I don’t know how to get the goal the other way, I’ll most probably quit. What can I do, if getting the goal doesn’t depend on me?

Finally, the last (not the least though) part of the trick is challenges. I need them, I urgently need challenges. I need to struggle, to fight, to feel pain in my sore muscles, to have sleepless nights, to clench my teeth, etc. That’s why I love sport: you have to struggle, to suffer, to overcome yourself, your weakness, your limits to get your goal. And this goal is pretty definite: you can see it right away, you can feel it, and you can get your reward for it. So it worth fighting for. 

I’m getting sick of routine, calm life, where you have to work but not a lot, where you get your salary, but every month it's the same (and it doesn’t really depend on how much efforts you put in your job), where you swim just to keep your body in shape, where you cook just because you need to eat something. I need challenges, I need problems, I need enemies, and I need resistance. Someone might say - challenge yourself. It’s easy to say. That’s what I try to do for last 5 years: create challenges to myself. But look at me – I’m now writing this post about myself failing to challenge myself. I guess I need more than just self-recognition. I need to win. There is no point in jumping for me if there is no rock to jump over (or if it’s small) and there is no reward (or if it’s small) after. I need the world of big challenges, big goals and big victories.