Cleaning up your own messes

I will be honest with you the last thing I want to do this morning is put words together in to sentences. Saturday I realized that I had gotten myself in a hole with school work. I had procrastinated and put things off tell the last minute as I tend to do. There were two things I could do: I could stair at the large pile of work I had before me and turn away or I could roll up my metaphorical sleeves and start making the pile smaller.

Part of the road to personal growth is realizing what are failings are and confronting them. To that end I spent the weekend in battle with my urge to procrastinate and be lazy. Three essays, four online assignments, two message bored activities were done. Add two documentaries watched and two loads of laundry done. The weekend was fully given over to homework and my commitments were realized.

Should I be proud that I got myself out of the whole I was in? Yes. Should I be proud that I was there in the first place? No. The real challenge is staying out of the whole. Truly being aware of our weaknesses is part of growing. In being aware of them we should take masseurs to limit their impact on our lives. I failed at that the last few weeks knowing I had plenty of time to do the work I did not. On the other hand I stood firm in the face of self created adversity and did the work. This is a reaffirmation of my will to succeed in school.

You see with the weight of all the work I was putting off on my shoulders I felt like a bad student. I felt that my attempts to conquer school once and for all where all for nothing and would be just another failure. Last night I just felt tired of looking at school work. Today I feel like I can do this I can achieve and I can and will continue my march to graduation. The lesson here is one that I right about all the time: We have not failed until we give up.

We all have challenges we create for ourselves by giving in to our weaknesses. We can turn away or confront the change it is our choice but I will tell you this: It may just be a symptom of the problem but fixing the mess gives you a small brick with which to build a wall to contain the weakness that caused it in the first place. You will also have a victory, a place for your confidence to grow and a sense of accomplishment. That is not say we should create challenges for our self but instead focus on the challenges that are already present. The better challenge to overcome for me would have been the procrastination rather than the mountain of homework due all at once. But it is better not to walk away when things get hard it is better to stay in the trenches and not give up the fight.

I hope your week is good and you can meet your challenges.