Pursuing self-improvement sometimes feels a little like this.

Over the years I’ve tried many different things in a fruitless attempt to curb these demons to little avail. I’ve tried writing to-do lists and forcing myself to do at least 1 thing that I find distasteful or uncomfortable every day. I’ve tried doing a bunch of things all at once to “get them out of the way.” An who can forget my self-enforced “reward” system in which I would allow myself to do something that I enjoy only after I completed a task I was procrastinating on. Obviously, none of these methods has worked to date (again, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing this post.)

As a rule, I like to believe that a person has the ability, through sheer force of will and perseverance, to change the things about themselves that they find less than ideal. As one Rocky Balboa so eloquently put it at the end of Rocky IV (one of the best bad movies ever made in my opinion. But I digress…) After he has turned the entirety of the Soviet crowd in his favor: “If I can change…and you can change…anybody can change!” Well put Roc. Yet, even in Rocky’s case it took a 15 round war with a steroid-juiced Russian wrecking ball in order to achieve the revelation he needed to really change. I find this to be an extremely apropos metaphor. It seems to me that change, especially change in relation to a person’s personality or character traits, is something that can only be achieved by having a plan of attack and accepting that the pursuit is much more of a war than a singular battle. In other words, you’ll win some and you’ll lose some. But, in the end, perseverance will win the day.

So, even though I’m still a procrastinator and I’m certainly still forgetful, I’m slowly winning the war. I’ll continue to try little tricks here and there. I’m sure most of them won’t work but I’m also sure that some of them will prove to be valuable and, hopefully, when the dust clears, the partisan crowd will have miraculously turned-coat, and I’ll be the one standing over my fallen foe while testifying to the ability to change ourselves for the better.