“You’ve gotta find a way to get out of your own way, so you can progress in life.”
Steve Carlton
Beyond the Quote (63/365)
The ideal way to go from thought to end destination is through appropriate action. Simple enough, right? That’s the way you bring entrepreneurial ventures from thoughts to life. It’s how you incorporate healthy lifestyle habits into your daily routine. It’s how go from grade school to high school to college to job to career to living your imagined lifestyle. And it all happens through the appropriate actions that you take once the appropriate thoughts get confirmed in your head. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, taking appropriate actions isn’t all that simple. Before you can take an appropriate action, you have to have the appropriate thoughts in your head confirmed. And THIS is where most everybody gets tripped up.
So many of us never get to the step of taking appropriate action because our thoughts don’t make it out of our heads alive. We have a great idea that we think we might be able to start a business with, for example, and we get excited at the potential of the venture, the potential for the future, and the journey the business could take us on until… we get smacked with: “It’s not going to work.” “You shouldn’t risk losing the security of your current job.” “Who are you to start a business anyway?” “If this fails you’re going to be embarrassed.” “It’s going to be too much work.” “Better not even try.” And before even a single action is taken—appropriate or not—POOF! …The journey ends before it even begins. It’s where your ideas go to die—in your own head.
This is what Carlton means when he says we need to get out of our own way so we can progress in life. We need to get out of our own heads. We need to stop exhausting ourselves before we even take a single action. We need to forget about our insecurities, anxieties, and fears, and let actions flow into the possibility of the present moment so we can see what happens, reflect, and improve. This is not to say that we should act fully on every thought we have because, well, not every thought we have deserves to be acted upon. But, I have a feeling that a lot more of them do than you might be giving yourself credit for.
It’s hard for me to tell you which ones do and which ones don’t, but what I can say is that if you’re on the fence and unsure, then that’s a pretty good sign that you should at least try. Usually a bad idea won’t make it past a couple rounds of thought. But an idea that keeps coming back that you can’t quite argue yourself out from, is worth noting and probably worth acting on. Because why not? At best, you progress in a new way in life. At worse, you learn something about yourself that will formulate and shape your thoughts moving forward (and you can clear your head from that annoying, recurring thought).
So how do you get out of your own way more often? Meditation is a good place to start. When you’re fully connected to the present moment, by definition, you’re out of your head. With practice, you can learn to quiet the mental chatter and mental disagreements and act more swiftly. Mental analogies can help too. The next time you have a thought that you think might be worth acting on, imagine that every counter-productive, argumentative, negative thought you have is like a mental boxing match that you have to face before you can proceed. Think you’re not good enough? Time to step in the ring and box that thought for a bunch of rounds. Scared to fail? That’s another boxing match you have to win. Feeling like you want to procrastinate and that later will be better? Yup, that’s another one. And each of these matches happens back-to-back. If you’ve ever boxed before, then you know how absolutely exhausting the potential of this sounds.
That’s what your mind has to go through to even get a single idea to the action phase. Unless, of course, you can reduce the number of boxing matches or, better yet, take away the boxing matches all together and just get to the acting phase seamlessly and without interruption so you can just see what happens already! Isn’t that what life is about after all? Trial and error? Delving into experiences and figuring out what they mean as you go? Interacting with the world around you through various forms of action? Living your life only in your head is no life at all. Life is meant to be interacted with, experienced, and tried! So, get out of your own way already and let yourself do that, eh?
Don't Let the Motivation Stop There...!
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