When life throws us difficult tasks, gain a new perspective on how to make your day easier.
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Welcome to the Be Your Best Self Blog by Marsha Abbott.
"Eat The Frog!"
It’s time to Eat the Frog! Just do it already! And no, I don’t mean you should order Frog Legs the next time you are eating out…like my mom probably will…Yuck! Instead, I mean something else altogether…
And when we are finished today, and if you choose to follow this advice, then I believe your life will be better…it will really be so much better…if you can just learn to Eat.That.Frog…
So let me tell you about my frog. Every single day during the week, I have one goal. One simple mission to accomplish: To try to get a nice workout in. Whether it be at my favorite gym, OrangeTheory, or spending time in our at-home gym. Either way, it’s my goal to try to make it happen. Seems relatively easy right? It’s just one task…yet why is it the one thing that I tend to dread the most? I just hate making time for it.
But here is the ironic part: For being that one chore I despise the most, it’s also the one thing that makes me feel the BEST each and every day. Funny, right!?! And when I miss it, those days tend to be my worst because of that endorphin thing…it’s no joke, that’s for sure! But in the past, I was really struggling with getting it done. Actually, I was struggling with it pretty badly. That is until I had an acquaintance of mine tell me all about Eating the Frog…
What this friend reminded me of is that life is so much easier if we can just learn to Eat That Frog early in the day. To take that one thing that we are dreading the most (like eating a real frog…ewww!) and just getting it done…and I mean like now. Get it done and get it off your plate! Get it off of your mind!
So for me…most days…it’s dreading my workout. I learned that if I can just get my exercise done first thing in the morning, then that good feeling tends to carry with me through the rest of my day. And boy, it sure does feel good!
But here is the great part: Not only do I apply this strategy to my workout routine, but I also apply it to my whole life, each and every day. Every morning when I wake up and tackle my first frog…my workout…I then sit back and think through any other frogs I may be dreading. And guess what I do next? Yep, you guessed it! I do those things in the first part of my day too. I knock them out and just get it done.
So what are the frogs in your life? As you woke up today, what is that one thing you hated thinking about doing? Is it also your workout? Or is it maybe a tough conversation you need to have with your coworker? Or perhaps it is a hard talk you want to have with your child? Maybe it’s knowing you need a career change, but you are dreading taking that first step, so you keep putting it off.
I totally get it! It’s easy to do. To put off that hard thing we don’t feel like doing. But here is what I learned by just eating that frog early on, by doing the hard tasks first…
When we remove these difficult things from our list right away, not only does it make for a better day, but it also makes for a better life. It allows us to stop wasting our energy thinking about that difficult task over and over again till we finally get it finished. It allows us to free ourselves of this burden. To free it from our minds. So let’s finish it already! And let’s stop allowing it to take any more space in our head.
So tomorrow when you wake up, don’t forget to start your day by Eating Your Frog. Free yourself…free your mind…and then see how it ends up changing the rest of your days to come.
*For those of you struggling with something in life or have a topic of interest that you want me to talk about in this blog, email me at BeYourBestSelfBlog@gmail.com. Let’s work together to Be Our Best Selves!