It’s day 14 of your 21-day diet and right as you prepare to cross the finish line you tell yourself – Hey, I’ve done this long enough. I deserve a double chocolate sundae or a large fry from Wendy’s. Sadly, that one “treat” leads to a session of binge eating and 14 days worth of work is undone in an evening. You think about starting fresh again but you’ve lost your motivation. You have grown complacent.

Ultimately complacency comes down to settling for good enough and not the best. It cheats you of achieving greatness and leads to a lot of halfway done projects, simultaneously lowering both your and other’s expectations.

Complacency is a dream killer my friend and what’s more, it’s a killer of motivation. But we can over come the complacency mindset by staying committed to the end.

When you stay committed to the end…

you take advantage of your second wind – that extra boost of energy you get right when you think you can’t keep going. I’ve experienced this many times during a workout. I’ll tell myself I’m going to work out for 30 minutes and I may start out strong but at 15 minutes, I find myself asking the question “Am I done yet?” or thinking “Well 15 minutes of activity is better than none, I could just stop where I am.”

Instead of quitting…

I decide to break my remaining time down into baby steps. There’s no “that’s good enough for now.” Instead I tell myself “stick it out for 5 more minutes.” Sure enough those 5 minutes pass and I think “okay well now I’m only 10 minutes away from the end.” Break that down into two 5 minute sprints and BAM I’m finished – cue confetti graphics on my Fitbit.

This same mindset towards working out can be applied to any aspect of life. Maybe you’re in the last semester of your program, your finishing up the last round of your college applications or are working on scholarships. Whatever your task is, stick it out until the end. Doing so ensures you won’t just live a good life, you’ll live the BEST life because you refused to grow complacent.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get it!

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

  • Hebrews 12:1

Comment below with the ways you’ve been guilty of falling into an attitude of complacency and then write ONE way you can work to overcome that mindset.