I had three fish tacos for lunch today, baja style. That means they had cabbage, fresh cilantro, a squeeze of lime, and some sort of tasty sauce.
And though fish tacos are pretty inspirational by themselves, I'll bet that somehow in the next five hundred words, I can connect my lunch with your future.
But first, let me double down. For breakfast, I had a giant cup of cold brew coffee with a decadent three tablespoons of half and half. And a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on sourdough. I emptied out my one-liter Nalgene water bottle, which means I'm probably about a third of the way through how much water I need today.
So why does that matter? Why did I write down everything that I ate today?
The reason is one of the best ways to change our behavior is to capture it in writing.
In 2017, I lost 25 pounds. In 2018, I lost 30 pounds. So far in 2019, I'm up about 15 pounds. I mean, that's still pretty good right? I'm down a net 40 pounds. But that's about 25 pounds from my target. What's the difference between when I was making progress and when I wasn't? Keeping track.
Our attention is one of our greatest assets. It's the reason why social media companies are multi-billion dollar industries. What would it look like for you to direct your attention on *you* for a little while?
It's a little scary at first because we all tend to walk around with a polite fiction about what we eat, what we do, and what we think. Here's the truth, though. What is, is.
You wouldn't open Google Maps to get somewhere and instead of typing your true starting location put your favorite park, your favorite restaurant, or Paris, France as your starting point. But we walk around with fictional starting points in our heads all of the time, wanting to get to a destination, but not reconciling ourselves to where we really are.
It's much more helpful to enter our current location into the starting point for Google Maps, and then put Paris, France or your favorite park, or your favorite restaurant in the *destination* box. Then, Google will give us all sorts of suggestions on how to get there.
Let's do that with our lives as well. Whether it is our food, our work, our learning, or our thoughts, we have the opportunity to capture an honest assessment of where we are -- like an internal GPS system-- and that will lead us to a much higher likelihood of getting to where we want to be.
You probably aren't here to hear about my fitness journey. You're here to learn about how to better enable our young people to find careers that they're passionate about, develop skills that are marketable, and be able to talk about themselves in ways that are engaging.
More in line with the goals of Career Launch Group, maybe you are interested in how much you're getting done. That might look like an activity log. Or maybe you're interested in what you're learning. That might look like a media log. Or maybe you're interested in communicating your thoughts more clearly and succinctly. That might look like a traditional journal.
What if you kept notes on your true starting point for a day? Or even a week?
Perhaps that would fine-tune your internal GPS and get you started on the adventure you've been looking for.
To the career you're looking for.
Or Paris.
Or maybe even all of the above.
-James
For more about the power of tracking, check out this TEDx talk by best-selling author Laura Vanderkam: https://youtu.be/n3kNlFMXslo