The Effort

So right now we're working through the basis of the 'perfect' antidote philosophy and so far we've briefly talked about averageness and the realities of achieving success, and now we come to the effort we expend to achieve those goals.

First of all, we'll define Effort as the physical, mental, or emotional expenditure required to do work or achieve something. Effort may also encompass our physical reactions to certain factors such as stress of failure, or time pressures. All to achieve a certain level of success.

Let's call that success, "Greatness,"  which we'll define as an ideal state of being in regards to any aspect of your life. It is a completely self-defined state. However, in each case it is the ideal ultimate state, whether in your career, hobbies, relationships, beauty, self-worth, whatever. Examples may include a perfect beach body, promotion at work, the perfect relationship, a .400 batting average, acing the final exam, or the perfect recital.

The effort to achieve that may take many forms. Whether it's stress at work, time studying, pleasing others, or emotions in response to failure or negative situations, we all expend effort every day.  So before we can begin thinking about what drives us to achieve greatness, what the problems associated with our ambition are, and how we can begin to change or reduce our effort, we need to understand the six components from which our effort is derived:

- Our understanding of our own capabilities
- Our need to meet others’ expectations
- Our productivity-derived self-worth
- Our time management skills
- Our susceptibility to the allure of the perfect state
- Our emotional state in achieving success

Now it starts to get fun, because next up are the 6 Habit's of Marginally Effective (yet happy) People.

 Song of the Day
In honor of the pressure to expend effort every day, and in honor of great songs in great movies, the song of the day is Queen's "Under Pressure".