Day 365 – Mission Accomplished

Today marks Day 365 of my latest 365 Commitment. This is roughly the sixth time I have done a “365 Commitment.” The exercise is relatively simple. I have a simple formula that I follow, and then I commit to do something every day for 365 days in a row. I usually tie this to some great ambition that I have and have this general unwritten idea that if I keep my commitment every day for 365 days in a row, then I will gain what it is that I am seeking. So far, that has worked well, although what I “achieve” has never happened exactly as I had envisioned.

I have had a variety of commitments during this process over the last six attempts. Here is just a quick list of some of the things that I have attempted (not all of them have succeeded). Every Day for 365 Days in a Row:

• Pray every day and every night (I accomplished this on my first commitment)
• Write in a journal every day (I accomplished this on my first commitment)
• Write a blog every day (Still doing this, now on 2,540 in a row)
• Read a passage from a book every day (I did this for one of the commitments)
• Run every day (I did this for one commitment, which ended in my first marathon)
• Wake up at 5:00 am every morning (I did this for one commitment; I’m not going to do this one again!)
• Memorize five additional digits of PI every day (I only made it 3 – 4 months, memorized 500 digits of PI)
• Talk to someone that I do not know every day (I only did this one for 5 months, but it changed my life!)
• Record everything I ate in a diary every day (I successfully achieved this one, waste of time btw)
• Perform +1 Pushup, +1 Situp, and +1 Squat every day (Yes! I did this one – ended up doing 365 Pushups, Squats and Situps on the last day)
• A few more embarrassing ones that I will not mention here.

This last go-around, I decided to write and publish an article every day and then post it on three major social platforms: record it on video, post it on YouTube, and also record the audio and post it on Spotify. This took work. The time commitment was so burdensome I had to get some help with the publishing effort. I had to do this while traveling, when sick, on vacation, and feeling miserable and overwhelmed. I learned many lessons along the way, made several friends, and embarrassed myself on more than one occasion. I learned many things along the way and dispelled many myths.

Just in case you did not know this (it seems obvious), publishing content alone is not enough to drive subscribers. Although I do have a small increase in people “following” me, publishing a long-form article every day for 365 days in a row did not result in a massive follower count. This was never my ambition, so I did not do any SEO stuff or look for topics that were high click-rate content, and I certainly did not put out clickbait things to draw in subscribers. I did not add the “click the like button” at the end of my videos. So, if someone tells you that the secret to being famous is to publish every day – that is not true. It could help, but that alone does not do the trick. I am saying this all tongue-in-cheek because this makes no real difference.

I have learned that there are many people out there in the universe who are “thinkers.” People ponder and consider topics that I find interesting, so if I have gained anything, it is the knowledge, the things I have learned, and the things I struggle with are shared with other people. That is comforting in some small way. In a few instances, I have received a personal note saying that something I wrote had an impact on them. That made this whole exercise worth it, for that reason alone.

However, the real reason I made this crazy commitment is that I was trying to make a significant change in the trajectory of my life. For six months, I was doing something different, but this time last year, I realized that I needed to put it all on the line and make a serious commitment to make such a monumental change in my life. This writing process gave me a tremendous anchor to help me with the stress and anxiety of change. I set an ambitious goal at the start of this process last year, and I was able to achieve that goal a little over 100 days ago. So the commitment produced the desired result.

If there is anything I would recommend after following this process, it is this. If you want to achieve something in your life, obtain a goal, or hit an objective, then I recommend making a commitment equally as big. Make a promise to yourself or to your higher power – I am going to keep this commitment every day for 365 days a year, and if I do, I hope that I can gain this great goal, but if not, I will do it anyway. In the words of one of my first blogs on this topic – “every day is every day.”

This is EXERCISING faith by putting your commitment behind your ambitions in life. It is a good idea that the commitment is at least in the same domain as the goal you are hoping to achieve!!

So what is next? Well, that is easy to answer. My following 365 commitment. Starting tomorrow. I will still chronicle this on the365commitment.com. If you want to read my daily updates, you can subscribe to my newsletter. The one thing I am going to discontinue is publishing each article that I write to hit social media. Rather, part of my new commitment is to seriously improve the quality of content that I produce. Just spitting stuff out is not good enough; I can raise my game, and I plan to try at least. I hope to improve my skills in this regard, become a better writer and a solid publisher, and focus on some areas I am keenly interested in. So, my content is going to become more specific. My daily blog, however, will remain focused on my daily journey and my random and sometimes crazy thoughts. If you have read or listened to even 5% of what I have put out this last year, well, I am humbled by that but also grateful that someone would bother to pay attention to my opinion on any topic.

I have a new, audacious, and impossible goal. My tradition is not to share that goal, just suffice to say it is a big one. I plan to meet that goal with an equally ambitious commitment. Tomorrow is DAY ONE!