Vote Every Day

"What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while." - Gretchen Rubin

I just finished Outer Order Inner Peace. It's a small book loaded with practical tips and ideas. One of my favorite tips was to Value Your Mental Real Estate, an idea I visited in a post few weeks ago. This book is divided into 5 sections: make choices, create order, know yourself - and others, cultivate helpful habits, and add beauty. The above quote comes from the section, Cultivate Helpful Habits. I'm a huge fan of focus on daily progress. The "I'll get around to that..." mentality does not work well for me. It's too easy to put things off for far too long with that kind of mindset. I generally think of myself as more of a "maintainer" than an "overhauler." I know that overhauling is sometimes necessary, but I also consider daily progress much more sustainable and a key factor to getting important things done.

I heard James Clear say, "your identity is your repeated beingness." I'm a huge fan of Clear and his article about Identity Based Habits was a game changer for me. When he talks about identity, I listen. In that article, his "recipe for success" was a pretty simple 2-part idea. 1. decide what kind of person you want to be like. 2. act like that person every day. Make small, daily gains. Those are small, daily wins. Those are the small things we do "every day" that matter so much more than what we do every "once in a while."

Plants don't thrive by being watered once a month. We don't get in good physical shape by working out every couple of weeks. When we attend to things daily, we make long term, sustained progress. The subtitle to Rubin's book is declutter and organize to make more room for happiness. I like the idea of making room and creating space. This is true for both my physical and my mental environment. Section 4, cultivate helpful habits, is the path I choose to create that space and find inner calm.

So what matters most to each of us? We answer that, not by what we say, but by what we do. Words are nice. I just filled this page with them. But actions are what "cast the votes." Here's another golden wisdom nugget from James Clear, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." Thank you James. And thank you Gretchen. It's a great reminder to vote every day and cultivate the habits that build our identity and make room in our lives.

So what matters most?

We will know by the votes we cast today.

Photo by Jennifer Griffin on Unsplash