I Don't Follow My Own Advice - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/129/advice

I give myself advice all the time - I rarely take it.

Spoiler - I write. I write a lot. It's how I think through things as I've said before, and it's one of those things that writing helps me think through things. It's like my own advice that I write and respond to. I write and I write my way through problems. I come to a solution to the conflict that I had in my mind, and then I get stuck because although I mentally know the solution, in the real world, it rarely goes into effect.

This is such a crazy thing that I've done that it goes to the point that in one of my emails I have a draft that has been sitting there for months now. I haven't read it for a while, and I have no where to send it to because I'm talking to myself, but every single time that I log into that specific account I see the draft and I'm one of those that gets irked by any unread message, so I instantly see it and remind myself of the message that I wrote to myself. The catch to that - I've had it sitting in my email for a long time, and I've yet to take my own advice.

I know exactly what I need to do.

I know what I need to do at work.
I know what I need to do with my relationship with Alicia.
I know what I need to do to be a better dad.
I know what I need to do at church.
I know exactly what I need to do, I've written it down and I have almost a daily reminder of what I need to do, but I still don't follow it.

This is the most depressing part of my life.

Any time that I get upset about my life or anything like that, this is the one that gets me the most upset. I know that I could be doing better. I know that I could be doing more. I know exactly where my weak points are at, and instead of choosing to be better, I'm choosing to be stupid.

It's a weird thing when it comes down to it. It's such a weird contradiction. I know exactly what I need to be doing, but I'm choosing to take the easy/lazy way out. It's times like this that I'm deeply afraid that because of my stupid choices now that I'm limiting myself in the future. Just because I chose to be lazy on Tuesday and do things like take a nap instead of working my butt off, what is that going to do to me long term? What about those bad choices where I take the lazy way out more often than the hard working often? What is that going to look like in the long run?

That's what scares me.

I know what my advice is to myself. I know exactly how to make my life better (this is not saying that it's not already good, because it is, I just know that it can become better), but I'm choosing not to do it.