Procrastination from LitReactor
Sometimes he who hesitates is lost…
with thanks to GraphJam.com
If you want to give yourself the power to create all the results you want (and who doesn’t?) then start by banning the word try from your daily life and work. A results person does things or does not do them while a reasons person tries things then invents excuses to cover themselves. Actually, it’s impossible to try to do things.
Try And Stand Up
And in case you are in any doubt, try to stand up.
You can sit down now. Look again at what I asked you to do. Try and stand up now. You can’t can you? It’s impossible because the state of trying to do something does not exist. You are either standing or you’re not. Nothing in between.
For most situations trying something is a virtual guarantee of not doing it.
Every time you use the word try you are setting yourself up to create reasons. Promise yourself that from now on you will either do things or not do them – no more trying. And that includes figuring out what you want. No more trying to know what you want, you are either going to do it or you’re not going to do it, aren’t you?
Available at Amazon now
This is the most damaging success myth of all. Remember all those heroic stories where someone invents a new product or makes a change and their life is wonderful ever after?
Nobody talks about the money running out. The dead ends, the frustrations, the prototypes that did not work, the relationships that got lost on the way. No one talks about the grind. The hours of practice, the constant preparation and training. Somehow, these details get left out of all the stories.
If you know you want something, sometimes the only way is to grit your teeth and grind it out.
I found this the book great. I usually find self help books have one bright idea which the author keeps repeating and more than that there is an evangelical atmosphere which really puts me off. This book is down to earth, practical and inspirational. I take it with me on every train journey and have given it, or recommended it to everyone at the other end. I am not sure that it has yet changed my life but hey, I am working on it which is more than enough.
via Amazon.co.uk: Customer Reviews: First, Know What You Want – why goals dont work and how to make them.
What should you be dropping?
Is it time to let a few things fall?
Look around you. It’s Autumn and the leaves are falling. Yesterday in Essex was a perfect Autumn Sunday, bright blue sky and leafy smell as they crunched underfoot.
It was a warm day yet everywhere nature is preparing for winter by letting things go, cutting back, pulling in and retreating back to the core.
Could there be something in this for you? One of the ways to get clear about what you want is to stop doing things you don’t want. Sometimes the reason we can’t hear our inner compass is that we are too active, too busy doing a bunch of things we are not really invested in. Sometimes what you want only becomes clear during an enforced rest – an accident, illness or a twist in circumstances that forces you to stop for a moment.
Eventually you will have to listen to that inner compass but why wait for a crisis? Start now. Start this week.
What do you want to drop? What do you want to stop doing and let go of?
Who do you want to drop? What conversations could you let go of with relief?
Complete the sentence…
I no longer want…
I don’t want…
If you were to begin letting things go, cutting back, pulling in and retreating to your core, what would that involve? Could you start some of it today?
Do less of what you don’t want to do and you’ll create space to recognise what you do want to do. And when that shows up, do it.
Learn more about how to “Use What You Don’t Want” in Chapter 4:
Step back to find the way forward
Have you ever seen a fly trying to get through a window? It can see the light but when it flies towards it – bang! – it runs straight into an invisible barrier.
The harder it tries the more it hurts itself.
So what does it do? Let’s say it consults a nearby self- help book that recommends setting challenging goals.
Having done that, it tries again and – bang! – straight into an invisible barrier. So off it goes to a motivational talk, three hours of cheerleading followed by a fire-walk. Pumped up, ready to go for it, full of the joys of clarity and purpose and bang! Straight into an invisible barrier. No matter how hard it tries it cannot get past the thing that’s stopping it getting to the light.
What is a fly to do? Try even harder?
Nope, that way lies death.
How about this? Step back gently and take a look at the bigger picture. Do that and you will see a little gap which you can fly through with no effort at all. If you’ve been wrestling with the problem of knowing what you want and you’ve tried everything then relax. There is no trying here. All we are going to do is take a step or two back and see if we can find you a gap.
Have you spent too much time struggling like this fly? Why not find a different approach…
We all know how we’re supposed to succeed, don’t we? We set clear goals and objectives, make a plan, and follow that plan to the successful achievement of our goals.
While this kind of logical, linear approach to life looks great on paper, in my experience life has far more say in how things turn out than many of us would like to admit. And in my formal and informal interviews of happy, successful people over the past twenty years, I’ve noticed that even if they made plans for specific, short-term objectives, when it came to the bigger picture of their lives, the “plan” these people have followed was not so much created as unfolded from the inside out.
In other words, they picked a direction that appealed to them and took their first few awkward, stumbling steps in that direction. Along the way, they bumped into people and circumstances and challenges and opportunities. If they liked what they found, they kept stumbling along in that direction, making more and more refined distinctions as they went. If they didn’t like what they found, they stumbled off in a different direction, following their inner sense of desire to mark the path that was appearing in front of them as they went.
Did they occasionally stumble a bit too hard and fall on their faces? Inevitably. But because they were so enjoying their adventure, they would simply pick themselves up, lick their wounds as needed, and stumble on in the direction of their own fascination and curiosity.
And this same approach is available to all of us at any time.
Are you looking the wrong way?
All his life he has looked away, to the future, to the horizon – never his mind on where he was, what he was doing…(Obi-Wan Kenobi on Luke Skywalker)
I wonder, is this you?
One thing I’ve noticed in myself and in those who feel a bit lost about what they want is that we spend a lot of time in a fantasy future. Always imagining how things will be different when we are lighter, richer and with nicer friends.
It’s nice to spend time in the future and there’s a lot to be said for using your imagination to prepare yourself for change except that isn’t what’s happening here.
What’s happening is that devoting mental energy to an imagined possible future is leaving you stuck right where you are.
Why?
Have you noticed that no matter how old you get this fantasy time, when your life will be the way you want it, is still just as far away as it was 3 years ago?
Imagine instead Obi-Wan had said this about you…
All his life he made the next 10 min count, never worrying about the future. Taking care of it by taking care of the present. Getting what he wanted in small steps.
Available at Amazon now
(HT to Gruber for reminding me of the quote)
Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come.
via Haruki Murakami: Talent Is Nothing Without Focus and Endurance :: Articles :: The 99 Percent.
The difference between talent and skill is practise…
In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it. I ask you to do this by an apparently pointless process I call the morning pages. Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages – they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind – and they are for your eyes only. Occasionally colorful, more often than not Morning Pages are negative, fragmented, repetitive or bland. Good! Worrying about your job, the laundry, the weird look your friend gave you – all that stuff distracts you from your creativity. It eddies through your subconsciousness and muddies your day. Get it on the page first thing in the morning and move on with your day with a freer spirit.
via Morning Pages | Julia Cameron Live.
Julia Cameron on one of my favourite exercises for knowing your own mind. Follow the link to see her explain it live.
