FUNdraising Friday: Intractable Stubbornness

I work from home and it is difficult to get enough movement when you walk basically to the kitchen, your office and then to your bedroom every day. I had gotten lax in my exercise regimen (what there was of it) and was waking up feeling stiff and sore every morning. 

So, for these reasons, I decided to challenge myself. I wanted to do two things every day: at least 20 minutes of yoga and get 10,000 steps. I add a daily entry indicating that I have done it on my Facebook profile with a status update and the hashtags: #yogaeverydamnday and #10Ksteps. Probably it annoys more than 3/4 of my Facebook friends, but I don't care. In my opinion, I'm helping them with their own practice of scrolling past things that annoy you. 

By Day 10, something weirdly amazing started to happen. I had had a terrible day. My kids had gone bonkers. It was a weird, off day and I basically ate my weight in Mexican food to cope. It was 9PM, my children were finally asleep and I only had like 3,000 steps. 

What did I do? I stayed up until midnight and got those damn steps, that's what I did! 

I could have just stopped posting about it on Facebook and no one would have noticed or cared. But, at this point, I was invested. I didn't want to stop for one bad day and have to "start over" with another 30 days. 

Intractable stubbornness had set in. That stubbornness made me do it because I wanted to, just because. Even though it was hard. Even though there were no gold stars and no one would have cared if I stopped. Now, I'm on Day 15 and I'm starting to see more and more benefits, but the biggest is just the satisfaction that I didn't freaking quit. 

Why am I posting about stubbornness on a blog post that's FUNdraising Friday? For a few reasons: 

1. Honestly, I was behind on my writing and I thought about not writing today. I mean, who would care? But then I thought about how long I've been writing on this blog for 5 days per week now and the same intractable stubbornness propelled me to come up with something.
2. Because this is what's on my mind right now. Not only am I trying to find a new level of consistency from myself but I'm trying to teach my daughter to channel her own stubbornness into practice. 
   
3. I wrote about this on a "fun" column day because I have found in my life that the things that are most fun require higher levels of commitment from me in getting there. Great trips require intense planning. Being a great parent means having patience for the tedious consistency you must develop. Being a great fundraiser means setting a goal you believe you can reach and getting there: no matter what! 
   
4. I think that this psychology has implications for fundraising and especially consecutive year and monthly giving programs. I've always thought that these programs work because they help people forget about giving, making it easy for them and having the staff tending to the reminders. But, with this new perspective, it's possible that consistent giving is in many ways its own reward. It may be the intrinsic motivation that keeps consistent donors giving, not the external factors.

All that said, where in your work can you activate the power of intractable stubbornness? What areas of your personal life could benefit from the same mindset?