You’ve asked me the same questions over and over and over again.
And mostly they have to do with discomfort.
- “I’m not sure my work is good enough.”
- “I’m an introvert so I never go to events or conferences.”
- “I clam up when it’s time to state my prices.”
- “I feel like everyone’s going to know that I’m a fraud.”
- “I’m totally tech-phobic.”
And you let these persistent thoughts keep you stuck in the dim grey of not-doing.
And the world spins on.
You don’t start your business.
You don’t write your book.
You don’t make enough money.
You don’t make friends with powerful people.
You don’t fulfill your creative promise.
And the world spins on.
Waiting for your work.
Waiting for you to be bold.
Waiting for you to share your heart with us.
It’s like we’re in some odd stand-off: the world is waiting for your art, and you are waiting to feel comfortable.
This is totally backwards.
You will never feel comfortable BEFORE you take a risk.
You only feel comfortable afterwards.
(And, to be frank, sometimes not even then.)
So you dwell in a twilight of discomfort.
No crashing failures.
No exhilarating leaps of faith.
Just the slow drip of
“I’m not ready,”
“I’m not sure,” and
“Now’s not a good time.”
And the world spins on.
But honey – now is the ONLY time there is.
All of us – we only have today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one.
So please –
Grab your discomfort by the nape of the neck and drag it along with your art into the clear light of day.
And I promise – if you smile while you do it, we will be so dazzled by your bravery that we won’t notice if you wobble a bit.
Smiling and wobbling our way into the future, together we can make this world a better place.
Sam.
That person who expressed interest in your work, but you never followed up with them…and now you think that too much time has passed, so you don’t reach out to them.
The friend who was having a tough time, and you wanted to call or write, but you got busy and now it feels weird.
The thank you note you didn’t send.
The invitation you never made.
The opportunity that passed you by.
It’s a TERRIBLE feeling, isn’t it?
Guess what?
It feels terrible because it’s FALSE.
It’s not too late.
It’s never too late.
As long as you have breath in your body, it is never, ever, ever too late.
If you are still thinking about it, then the possiblity is still alive.
The fact that it is still on your mind means that it is NOT TOO LATE.
But there is a challenge here:
You are going to have to change.
You are going to have to sacrifice
– your perfectionism
– your embarrassment
– your discomfort
– your misplaced pride
– your big idea that you know how long something is supposed to take
and GIVE IN to the DESIRE you have to take action.
It’s time to put on your Big Girl Panties.
And I know — you think about reaching out to that person, or pursuing that opportunity, and you cringe.
It feels scary.
But trust me: you would not still be thinking about it if it weren’t the right thing.
And who knows? Maybe NOW is an even better time than before!
Maybe now is the perfect time.
So here….to make it easier for you, I’ll give you a little script to use:
“Hello X,
I find myself still thinking about you and XYZ today, so I wanted to follow my intuition and reach out.
If it feels right, I’d love to connect. Are you available to talk on DAY at SPECIFIC TIME or OTHER DAY, OTHER TIME?
If not, no worries – but I’d be remiss if I didn’t even ask.
I hope this finds you well.
Yours,
Me”
Take a chance.
Turn that regret into action.
Open yourself up to some new information.
Let me know how it goes, OK?
Yours,
Sam.
Chapter 21 – Getting Out of the Urgency Trap
Your email pings. Your message app pings. Your other message app pings. You’ve got forty-seven notifications and thirteen new requests and an overflowing inbox. It all seems urgent. After all, it pinged. That must mean it’s important.
Your brain is hard-wired to respond to immediate stimulus. This is another survival mechanism. Anything that sounds like “Alert! Something is happening!” gives us a little hit of adrenaline, whether it’s a rustle in the bush that indicates a hungry tiger is nearby or a text from the spouse reminding you to get milk on your way home.
Correspondingly, our brain releases a hit of the “feel-good” chemical dopamine each time we feel a sense of achievement, even if that achievement is simply texting back, “Yes. Milk. Love you.” As Simon Sinek explains in his brilliant book Leaders Eat Last, we can get addicted to the cycle of doing and doing and doing, and we fail to notice that nothing is actually getting done.
We get addicted to the cycle of doing and doing and doing, and we fail to notice that nothing is actually getting done.
Bringing just a bit of mindfulness to your daily movements can help a lot. One way to check in with yourself is to play the Because/Because game.
The Because/Because game asks you to pause for one moment before you begin an activity and ask why you are doing what you’re doing and why you’re the person doing it.
So, in the moment before you start catching up with the bookkeeping for your side hustle, you might have this conversation with yourself: “Why am I doing this bookkeeping? Because it’s important to me that I know whether this side business is really profitable. Why am I the one doing this? Because even though I dislike doing these kinds of detail-oriented tasks, I’m the only employee.” Now, this awareness might not lead you to hire an assistant immediately, but once you’ve had this conversation with yourself five times in a week, you might start to see the value of getting some help.
On the other hand, if you find yourself dreading a visit to Sad Susan, your friend who just ended yet another disastrous love affair, you might hear yourself thinking, “Why am I going to see Susan? Because she needs a shoulder to cry on. Why am I the one doing this? Because even though Susan’s love life is a non-stop soap opera, I care deeply about her happiness.” Remembering your true motivation can put a smile back on your face as you stop off along the way for the margarita mix and ice cream.
Little Changes Action Step: Put a few of your least favorite activities through the Because/Because game. Are there any that you could you eliminate from your life today?
To finish reading… just grab a copy here: http://www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com
The good news… this quick tip will help you with any project or goal you are interested in starting or completing.
Now find the tension between you and your goal and get started today!
Chapter 14 – Minimum Daily Requirement
Now, I love home-remodeling shows, but I also believe that we are naturally inclined toward productivity. We love to be learning, doing, and playing. We love to stretch and grow and solve problems, and we love to feel like we’re making a contribution to the world . Too much unstructured time can be stressful and depressing. When we don’t know what to do with ourselves, we give up.
The trick is to inject some creative tension into your life. The word tension gets a bad rap, but remember that it is structural tension that holds the keystone in every arch — and sexual tension is often the beginning of all kinds of wonderful things .
Think of a goal that frightens you a little bit, something that stirs you up, maybe even something that you’re pretty sure is impossible. Let it loom large in your mind. Connect with it. Feel the energetic relationship — the tension — between where you are now and where the goal is. Feel that energetic spoke of the net between you and that goal, and let that tension to pull you forward into taking one first step.
When you’ve taken one step, celebrate. It’s easy to brush aside first steps, especially when you believe that you really should be farther along already, but don’t. You did something, which is more than you did yesterday. Which is excellent. Be proud.
To finish reading… just grab a copy here: http://www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com
To really get the benefit of this chapter you need to read it in completion (get your copy here.)
But I didn’t want to leave it out because even if you just go with this snippet it will help:
Chapter 12 – Quit Buying Groceries at the Quickie Mart
When people talk to me about not having enough time in their day, I usually find some combination of these misjudgments:
· not being realistic about how much time some tasks actually take
· not prioritizing activities, or allowing priorities to shift
· failing to think things through, not planning ahead
When you are not realistic with yourself about how much time something actually takes, you feel rushed. And when you fail to prioritize your activities, you end up spending way too much time on the wrong things and don’t have nearly enough time for the right things.
When you fail to plan ahead, you end up scrambling around at the last minute, and often the results are unsatisfactory.
For example, maybe you often don’t remember that you’ve got to make dinner until you’re on your way home, forcing you to grab whatever groceries you can find at the local Quickie Mart. Instead, take the time to put those responsibilities into your schedule right along with your other commitments. Too often your personal tasks end up being crammed into the corners of your day, and you then you are forced to rush, which just adds to your feelings of being overwhelmed.
Remember to account for transit time: getting stuck in traffic time, finding a parking place time and waiting for the elevator time. Failing to account for the time it takes to get from one place to another is a leading cause of pernicious lateness, and is one of the hallmarks of the permanently overwhelmed.
To finish reading… just grab a copy here: http://www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com
Chapter 9 – Completion is Overrated
There’s a half-completed sweater in the knitting basket. There’s the first three chapters of a novel in a drawer. There are the specialty tools that you bought to make the ornaments for baby’s first Christmas, even though baby is now entering the fifth grade.
When you see a reminder of something you’ve left undone everywhere you look, you are automatically going to feel exhausted. Half-completed tasks create what productivity guru David Allen calls “open loops” in your mind, and those open loops take up a lot of bandwidth.
There are plenty of good reasons to have stopped moving forward on a project. You might have simply lost interest. That’s fine. There are no starving creative artists in Antarctica being deprived because you didn’t finish what’s on your plate, so to speak.
You might have stopped because you made a mistake or hit a wall, and your misguided perfectionism won’t let you keep going. This could be a good time to make some 5-Minute Art about that perfectionist voice and see if you can’t liberate your project from her thorny clutches. It’s not like there’s really a right way to do creative things .
Fear of commitment can sometimes play a role, too. Allowing yourself to get too deep into a project might mean that it’s actually important to you, and it might have a real impact on your life, your work, and your relationships. So you keep it casual. Being a creative Casanova might feel like it’s protecting your heart, but ultimately you’re setting yourself up for dissatisfaction. What do you suppose might happen if you committed fully to your work?
I’ve also seen people quit mid-project because they find themselves in what the master consensus facilitator Sam Kaner calls the “Groan Zone.” He uses this expression to describe the point in consensus facilitation where diverse opinions have been expressed, and it feels like you’ve reached an impasse and will never find common ground — which is often the moment right before some new and beautiful solution emerges. I find it works equally well to refer to the sloggy middle of any project. Once that new-project smell has worn off and the end seems too far away, it’s easy to let boredom and discouragement take the wheel. Try creating some mini-goals, or even micro-goals, and make sure you’re rewarding yourself for your incremental progress.
Little Changes Action Step: Have a frank conversation with your inner, wise self about one of your half-done projects, and make a swift decision to either let it go or to schedule time in your calendar so you can get back to work on it.
To finish reading… just grab a copy here: http://www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com
