As I read the first chapter of the book Overcoming Underearning by Barbara Stany, I am reminded once again of the reason why so many of us keep ourselves away from creating what we want.
The author is laying the ground for how to get the most out of the book and she asked “How do you feel about working with this book?”
And my first honest thought?
“It will take too much effort”
This is a reaction that I noticed my mind has many times before doing something.
A vivid imagination creating a huge obstacle in front of me, then checking if I feel ready/motivated/energised/prepared to face such challenge.
If I don’t question that, I unconsciously take that as a given and live as if things are too hard to get started on.
The funny thing is that living in reality is always less daunting than how the mind makes it to be.
Whether it’s about reading a book, leading a team or starting a business, the “It will be too hard” thought can show up at any time.
And if we are aware to notice it, we can see how there’s a difference between how we feel about something and the act of doing it.
Just last week I was coaching an aspiring leader who was living as if their vivid imagination of “hard” was based on truth. No wonder they were not taking action.
If you convince yourself long enough that something will be hard, a logical response is to protect yourself from that made-up nightmare and keep it away.
Now, I am not saying that the experience of taking action reveals that things are always more delightful. What I am saying is that we truly don’t know what an experience will be like until we jump on the boat.
As strange as it seems at first, living in not-knowing is way more freeing than pretending we can predict the future and trying to be right about how we think we’ll feel.
This week I did a cold plunge in a freezing cold water of 0,3 degrees Celsius. If I thought I was right about how I’d have felt, I’d never get in the water.
Maybe, just maybe, you only THINK you know what an experience will be like; and perhaps testing that thought with the evidence of action is incredibly freeing.
“Thought creates our world, and then says 'I didn't do it” ~David Bohm
