Followers and Leaders

After a few crazy weeks, the momentum is gone.  But momentum is something we can create.  Momentum and feelings are followers.  The feeling of accomplishment and moving forward happens just so long as we continue doing what we had been doing previously. 

Feelings act in much the same way.  If you don't like your feelings, tell your feelings to shut up and start acting in a manner that produces the results you want. 

I didn't have any inclination to study this morning.  I've been self-teaching myself the CCENT and CCNA by reading the books to myself and recording it.  From those recordings, I make CDs and listen to them as I drive around town doing my normal work.  Following the path set forth by the book, I skipped from the ICND 1 book to the ICND 2 book for a few chapters.  I've been stuck in chapter 1 of the ICND 2 book for at least two weeks.  Sorry, but VTP trunking is not that exciting, even though VLANs are pretty cool. 

Rather than wait for excitement to return, I did what I keep preaching to myself even though I have a tendency to forget: I charged on.  This morning, I had to motivation to work.  Now, ten pages later I can see the end of the chapter that has me bogged down, and I can see myself making more progress.  I wasn't motivated, but after I worked at and did what I wanted to do, the motivation quickly returned.

Motivation to do a task is a follower, not a leader.  If you want to accomplish something, do the task regardless of how you feel.  If you believe you've made progress, your motivation will sky rocket and your feelings will fall into line, putting you where you want to be. 

This isn't that hard, but as a part of the American culture, we are taught that feelings are leaders and feelings are important.  This is incorrect and needs to be purged from our thinking.  Why else do we have an ADD culture?  It spends its time focusing on things that are followers and highly inconsistent.  For a stable culture, we want to follow a stable leader.  Feelings are an inconsistent leader.

Maybe more on this later.  I have to think about it more.