My Own Challenge: Continuity in Action

In general, I find Steve Pavlina's Blog about personal development to be quite useful and good food for thought. I found great things in his recent article "The Past DOES Equal the Future." I realize that I need more continuity in my own actions to produce better results.

Part of the article's point is to contribute positively within your own field. I find this interesting when compared to Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project Blog's idea that giving to others help you achieve your own inner happiness. (Unfortunately, I cannot seem to locate the exact place where I read that.) This is a notion to which I fully subscribe. I love giving to others, even when it's a small gesture such as sending a postcard or giving cheesy, little, fun toys to my adult friends. It just makes me happy.

Thus, I realize that I can "kill" two birds with one stone, I can be happy by giving more to others via good content here (I hope the content is good) and improve myself in terms of writing and editing. My challenge, as you may have noticed, is keeping the ball rolling. I have trouble with consistency in terms of how often I post. I was trying for twice a week, but Gretchin Rubin's suggestion is to write everyday.

Some things Steve Pavlina's article mentioned that I am considering:

• "If you take haphazard action, such as was mentioned in the Gung Ho Dufus approach, then what are you injecting into your past? Not success. We could say you’re injecting failure and even stupidity into your past because you’re simply repeating a strategy that’s a known failure. And that leads to a perpetuation of the past in your future. (Einstein once said, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)
• Instead what you need to do is inject some form of consistency into your past. You need to establish a new pattern of behavior. That new recent past, if it looks consistent enough, will alter your predictions about the future.
• No new behaviors means no new predictions.
• If you want change, you must create evidence of change. Evidence of change equals new habits. No new habits equals no change in prediction.
• If you really want to create some serious changes, another perspective I can share is that you want to think about breaking your past. Shatter those past patterns, so they absolutely cannot continue in their current form. Deliberately create a disconnect with your past which — at the very least — makes your previous predictions impossible… even if it means trading the comfort of certainty for the discomfort of unpredictability."

I am struggling to have consistency and structure. I find that it is a very difficult lesson especially as I am unemployed and have a lot of "free time." Perhaps there are others out there in the same boat as me.