This weeks blog post is gonna be a little different. I had a day trip this week to Mt Takao hiking up the mountain and having a gorgeous view of the whole city of Tokyo. However, Iā€™m gonna do the recap for that trip with all the pictures Iā€™ve took next week. This week Iā€™d rather talk about something else. Itā€™s gonna be more of a personal story about motivation, discipline and dreams.

Life Goals

The ever recurring theme of laziness. The time when you just want to stay in your room, lay in your bed and do nothing except watching Netflix or YouTube all day long. I even wrote a blog post about exactly that. Your just there, existing, and being unproductive. Everyone has these days, they just happen from time to time. Itā€™s totally normal to have these days and one should take these days to rest and recover a little from the ever crushing weight that is called life. Just take the day off, be lazy and give in to all the things your mind is up to in that moment.

However, these lazy recovery days are something that should not become the norm. You should not be in a state of everlasting recovery. And these moments should not take up multiple days or weeks, if there is no specific reason for it. Being lazy everyday and not doing anything can be soul-crushing. Youā€™re unproductive everyday and you do nothing towards all the goals you set yourself for your life. You donā€™t study for your degree, you donā€™t put in the time for your hobby to get better, you donā€™t accomplish any of your life goals. You are standing still in life, not getting anywhere. Youā€™re getting unhappier with your life and how things unfold. Youā€™re not motivated to work towards it, because the things seem to get harder and harder the longer you donā€™t do anything. And so time flies by, weeks, months and years go by and you moved merely an inch from where you were last year. You havenā€™t stuck to any of your New Years Resolutions, nor did you do anything for the dream you have since as long as you can remember. Does this sound familiar to you?

It sure as hell does to me. I had goals I wanted to accomplish when I came here to Japan. I wanted to write these blog posts every week. I kinda managed to do this, but every week Iā€™m dragging it along to the end of the week and write it in the night on Sunday. Every damn week, instead of writing it during the week and not having to stay up so late. I wanted to go running frequently. I managed to do that, at least in the beginning. I stopped at some point, Iā€™m sure I had some elaborate reason to not go for a run in the beginning. But after some time it just became a habit not to go. I was just lazy. I wanted to actually learn Japanese properly, set aside time everyday to study a little for it. Learn kanjiā€™s, vocabulary and grammar everyday. I stopped doing that. Iā€™d rather binge watch some useless YouTube videos of some random YouTuber. I bought a cheap bass a few weeks ago and I wanted to practice often, so by the time I got back home, I could join a band as quickly as possible. Guess what happened to my practice routine. I flushed it down the toilet together with my dream of playing Live with my own band. I also wanted to start searching for a job, so I could start working as soon as Iā€™m back home. You know, to earn money so I can accomplish more of my dreams. Well, I had that thought last month. I didnā€™t even type job searchingĀ into Google since then. And donā€™t get me started on my classes in university. To be honest, itā€™s kinda pathetic.

Then I always hear from friends that I should not see it this way. I am in Japan after all and this is such a huge step. I should be proud of that. I am proud of doing all this, doing this exchange year in a country so different and so far away from my home. Still, I had weeks where I barely left my room other than to go to my classes at university and then coming straight back home. I donā€™t need to be here in Japan to experience that shit, I can be a little bitch at home in Germany too.

Donā€™t get me wrong in all of this, I am proud of how far Iā€™ve come and grown as a person, especially in this last year. However, as always, I am regretting all the things I didnā€™t do. I regret all these times where I set my mind to something that I wanted so dearly to accomplish and then gave up because I lost my initial motivation and I lack any kind of discipline in my life. All the lost opportunities I had in doing something I wanted to do, meeting new people and asking that one person out. Nah, Iā€™d rather sit in the corner and pity myself or sit at home and watch the 20th video of ā€˜Whoā€™s line is it anywayā€™ without actually paying attention to what was happening in the video. I donā€™t feel like I am where I want to be right now in life. I feel like Iā€™m standing still in life. And I donā€™t want to grow old feeling like Iā€™ve wasted my life. But currently I am exactly on that path.

In my binge watching madness this week Iā€™ve watched a video of my favorite YouTuber Matt dā€™Avella, which was called Watch This Video Before You Die. Itā€™s a video about life goals and a group of teens, who wrote this huge list of goals they wanted to achieve. They all crammed into a bus and drove of from coast to coast and one after the other accomplished these goals. They also helped other people on the way to do the same with their goals and dreams in life. The video was really inspiring. Matt has a lot of these kind of videos, where he points out the typical pitfalls people fall into in life. Where he tries to show his way, his story of how he overcame these pitfalls and got to where he is today. He always talks about how you should get out of your comfort zone to grow as a human being. He does this in a very human way, as in, he doesnā€™t pretend that he is perfect. He talks about all the failures he had in his life, the obstacles he had to overcome. How he is also lazy from time to time and so on. His videos are well-made and intentional, they are inspiring and motivational. And yet, here I am, sitting on my chair with all the wisdom of this great person and I am doing nothing.

Sometimes at night, more often then not after watching some of these motivational videos, I get motivated to do something and change my life. I get so motivated that I feel like I could single handedly create world peace and end world hunger. But of course it is too late to solve these issues now. So I go to sleep, with the intention to change everything amd then I wake up and I donā€™t really feel like it. Donā€™t really feel like actually changing. This happens more often than Iā€™d like to admit. The other problem is when I am really motivated to do something new. I read into it a lot, inform myself about everything. Then I start doing it and after a few very motivational days I lose the desire to continue doing it. The initial motivation is gone and now the painstaking reality of my lack of discipline makes itself noticed. One of those things were me trying to learn bass and becoming a hobby musician. Well, now the time has come again to be motivated to change everything and funny enough, it is actually night again. So is this motivational push going to end tomorrow morning when I wake up or is it for real this time?

Another big problem of accomplishing my goals is even starting to work towards them. Itā€™s always the same excuses. I am so motivated to change my life, I am going to start the new me next thing tomorrow/next week/next year. Am I though? We all know that I, just as much as anyone else who tells himself that, is just full of shit. Why should I wait until tomorrow or next week to start working on my goals? Because it makes more sense to start something at the beginning of the week or beginning of a year? If I canā€™t start doing this right now, I am sure as shit not going to start it next week. Or another great excuse: I donā€™t have time to do this now, I am going to start it right away after I finished this semester/my degree, or whatever other arbitrary time in your life. Iā€™ve learned one thing when it comes to time, if you actually want to do it, you will always find the time to do it. That goes for everything. You donā€™t have time for this right now because of work or all the exams you have to learn for? Oh, but you have time to binge watch four 45 minute episodes of some series youā€™ve already seen. Rightā€¦

I, like many people, have both these problems. A lack of discipline and a bunch of shitty excuses. And I really want to change these. I wanted to change these for years, but I fell back because Iā€™d rather take the easy path in life and not do anything. So, to battle this Iā€™ve come up with an ultimate two step master plan: First I am going to write a list with all of the things I want to do in my near future and hang that list above my desk. Second I am going to work towards doing all those things. Done. I know, I know, fucking brilliant. Well, it sounds stupid, but writing all the things you want to accomplish down is the first step towards actually accomplishing them.

So I want to take the next few days to think about all the things I want to accomplish now, in my near future and maybe even in my life time. I am going to write this list and I am going to hang it here above my desk, next to all the pictures that hang there. Maybe Iā€™m going to post them here next week, maybe not, I donā€™t know yet. But weā€™ll see. So I am going to start working on these goals right after I wrote them all down in the next few daysā€¦ HAH, see I am postponing again. Not taking action immediately. So, the first thing on my list of goals is going to be ā€˜Running a marathonā€™, because that was on my to-do list anyway. And so I am going to start working towards that goal right now. I am done writing this blog post and I am going to go for a run right now. ā€˜But it is already midnight and you have classes tomorrow and youā€™re still a little sick.ā€™, I hear the little, lazy shithead in my mind saying. Fuck off asshole, I am going to do this now and start working on my damn life goals and dreams. This run is going to symbolically represent my start into a life where I donā€™t have feel like I wasted my life.

Thank you for reading this a little bit more personal blog post.
I hope you will accomplish everything you have set your mind to. I know you can do it. I really do.
See you next week :)
Ash