Finish What You Started: Weekly Lifestyle Practice

Each Day, You Must Finish Something That Is Currently Incomplete

Simple Instructions:

• Starting Monday, finish a currently unfinished task each day of the week.
• This can be anything – making an overdue appointment,having a conversation you’ve been avoiding, doing the laundry you’ve been putting off for a week, or cleaning the breakfast dishes before you leave in the morning (if it’s something you normally leave undone).
• You must decide intentionally what you are completing, and it should be something that is routinely incomplete or that you regularly avoid. Don’t count making the bed if you make the bed every day.
• If this feels overwhelming, start with something small or something off your existing “honey-do” list.

Why Is This Practice Important?

Starting things and failing to complete them is a basic human problem. It’s exciting to start something new when you’re dreaming about the outcome, but once the hard work sets in and the momentum dies down, then our excitement dwindles. Or maybe the task is something we never liked to begin with. Either way, it’s our future that sits there incomplete.

That may seem a little dramatic, but these incompletions hang around like extra weight in our lives. From the mundane things like dishes and laundry, to bigger things like important conversations, appointments, or projects around the house. Nothing gets completed on its own, and the constant presence of incompletion can sap our energy.

Start with small things to create momentum. You’ll be amazed how easy the task actually is compared to how much mental energy it was taking from you. When you complete big things, you’ll see how it’s the little actions that add up to get the big things done. And also, completing big things is just awesome.

The best part is once you’re in motion, it’s much easier to stay in motion. Completion begets completion.

Photo Project 50 – Day #11 (Laundry Day)” (CC BY 2.0) by seanmcgrath

Michael Stanwyck

Michael Stanwyck is the co-founder of The Whole Life Challenge, an idea that developed during his seven years as a coach and gym manager at CrossFit Los Angeles.

He graduated from UCLA with a BA in philosophy as well as a degree from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, and feels food is one of the most important parts of a life - it can nourish, heal, and bring people together.

Michael believes health and well-being are as much a state of mind as they are a state of the body, and when it comes to fitness, food, and life in general, he thinks slow is much better than fast (most of the time). Stopping regularly to examine things is the surest way to put down roots and grow.

He knows he will never be done with his own work, and believes the best thing you can do for your well-being starts with loving and working from what you’ve got right now.