Yesterday I watched my brain disguise an excuse as a true reason to give up on one of my goals.

I heard it say to me “It’s so hard to post videos every week. Your videos are so cringe anyway. Plus, you don’t have time for this. You don’t really want to do videos, you just set the goal in the heat of the moment. You can always post one next week instead when you have something better to say.”

Ha!

I know my brain extremely well. I know BS when I hear it. Yet this one almost had me, but I caught myself at the last second. I was lucky this time – I’ve seen plenty of my own dreams go down the toilet because my brain disguised an excuse as a valid reason to give up.

Not this time. Here’s the thing: occasionally, there are valid reasons to give up. They are so few and far between, you can almost always assume that little voice inside your head telling you that “this time doesn’t count” or “have a rest day” is just an excuse. But how do you tell the difference?

Here’s the test:

Ask yourself, “Would I want this goal if I didn’t have to work for it?”

In my case, I imagined having 52 videos (one for every week of the year) posted to my YouTube channel. I imagined how much better my videos would be by the time I’d made 52. I thought about how I could say I had properly, whole-heartedly had a go at my dream of creating video content.

If someone handed me on a silver platter my own YouTube channel with 52 videos on it, I would very happily take it.

There’s my answer. NO. It is not time to give up. I only felt like giving up because in the moment it felt hard to create a video. But I didn’t, and I’m so grateful I didn’t, because come December, I can’t wait to see 52 videos from this year on my channel. I had a similar experience when I first committed to writing on my blog every single day for two years. Day 48 of 730 was the day I almost gave up (I’m on day 198 today).

Asking yourself, “Do I still want this?” is hard to gauge when you’re faced with putting down the ice cream or putting on your workout gear or facing the blinking cursor on your Word document.

However, asking yourself “Would I still want this if I didn’t have to work for it?” has a gut reaction. Yes or no. You know straight away if it’s fear, procrastination making an excuse, or if it’s truly no longer what you want.

You know the answer. Follow through. The pain is only temporary, the reward is forever.