anamnesis

I have been working over a week now on a statement that started as "where I wanted to be 5 years hence." I have done these before, but this time something clicked. I’d probably been doing them wrong from the onset, but when I dropped all the big plans and obvious goals and started letting this vision reflect and articulate my deepest intentions, oldest dreams and buried passions, it became something completely different. More like a quest, than a statement. I’ve revised it several times. I review and think about it daily. It’s becoming more finely tuned, more accurate of my true desires. By writing it out, expressing it, even just to myself, it is a clarification almost every part of my mind seems to champion. It’s becoming something concrete, something I can back with all of my being and engage in with my total essence. A powerful spell, and I find the words and phrasings matter immensely. “When you are 50 years old, you should know your destiny” -Confucius

It's all well and good getting charged up about how we want to change, why it's important to us and how we see ourselves afterwards. All very motivational. And it may last for a week or two. When our energy is high or our disgust is visceral. But what determines if we stick to it? Instead of dropping it once again and picking it up later for the 1000th time? I think it boils down to this: have we clearly assessed, based on our past experience and present conditions, what kind of obstacles we are going to put in our own way? And do we have a strategy for how we are going to deal with each and every one of the obstacles we will throw up for ourselves? So this time, when that initial burst of motivated energy runs out, and we are far from the starting line and fanfare and inauguration of the great event, the great life change, what we need is a strategy to sidestep those predictable, inevitable potholes that will send us limping back. He who conquers himself is the m