The Great Work Is Not What You Think

Janice M. Burke
Jan 3
2 min read

You are brand spankin‘ new every day. It’s not just at the New Year when you can choose to change your life. You can make this decision every single day...many times a day. You get your second chance every second. Your second chance is the actual word “second”. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can tell you that I need plenty of chances at it. I need all of those 86,400 seconds of the day to keep readjusting and remembering and going at it again. When your choice is to be a healthy, conscious and aware person, the biggest part of that is to be on top of it when you reverse, which you most likely will reverse, we all do. If you choose to let it finish you then that is what you will be…finished, given up. But really, wouldn’t you rather just say “Oh well! That didn’t work out” and move on to try again until you get to where you want to be? I mean, why would you want to have an experience that is traumatic and then just allow all the fears and pains and triggers to remain in place without even trying to change them? It’s easy to do that. But is it really? Because the price you will pay for NOT putting the work in will make you far more unhappy than putting the work in. What is this work that everyone speaks of? It’s the work of changing those things about yourself that you don’t like. It’s the work of keeping your commitments to yourself so that you can respect yourself. (You will not respect yourself if you don’t do this.) It’s the work of putting time and effort into those things that you love and care about until you become a master at them, until you become proud of yourself in a healthy way, which will develop self-confidence that is built on a solid foundation of real effort. It is taking care of all of your basic needs. It is giving yourself recreation time and time with loved ones. It is focusing on seeing yourself the way you actually are and understanding why others may view you in the way that they do. It is being fearless enough to accept when you are less than who you can be and then choosing to work hard to change it. It is seeing the negative in yourself and then giving yourself Compassion AND a big kick in the pants to change it no matter what. Using hypnosis, life coaching, meditation, regular time at the salt “mine” (room), therapy, etc., whatever it takes. The “Work” is us taking full responsibility for who we are right now. Full responsibility. it is about no longer using the crutch of blame. You are not incapable of doing what you want to do. When you have done much of the work, fall away, come back and continue to do it, then, you can do what you want. You can have the life that you want. You just have to keep at it. The only one that can do that, is you.