Have you ever had a list of things you know you are supposed to do or you should do that you really don’t want to do? Are there things you choose to ignore due to discomfort? Things you know will move the boat forward in the direction you say you want to go, yet you just keep putting them off?
I have those things. Sometimes I get to make tough phone calls. Do you know what I mean by the tough phone calls? The ones where you get to face the conflict head on. The ones that make your stomach turn upside down. The ones where your mind runs 100 miles a minute about what people think about you, self doubt creeps in and you wish you could avoid them completely and pretend they don’t exist?
In an effort to justify our avoidance we say something like… “time heals all wounds.” Not really. Time may create enough distance for the initial pain to subside or become normal… yet it doesn’t truly heal. Have you ever found yourself avoiding something that is uncomfortable long enough that it begins to feel irrelevant and then you tell yourself… well now it wouldn’t really be worth the effort to take it head on because it has pretty much dissolved. Or you tell yourself something like it would be reopening a wound unnecessarily. I would just be picking the scab. All the stories we tell ourselves to rationalize not taking action on what we know is the action for our greatest and highest good.
Brian Klemmer used to say all the time, “You’ll have one of two things in life. You’ll have reasons or you’ll have results. You won’t have both.” You get to choose.
It’s never too late to have the clean up conversation. And pursuing it early will always generate the best fruit.
Here’s the thing, your heart will probably beat fast. You will either talk yourself into it or you will talk yourself out of it. Choose to tell yourself a forward moving story about taking the action. Don’t allow yourself to overthink it. Take urgent action now. When you find yourself avoiding something; conflict, conversations, people, projects these things begin to hang over your head and weigh you down. They can even begin to invade the way you view yourself and what you believe you are capable of. They can affect the stature of your heart. Do not allow what you want to avoid to be more important than how you view yourself and the character of who you are.
Take action now. You might be experiencing your heart beating fast, your stomach in knots, your palms sweating, maybe even your knees rattling… and you might be currently choosing to call that fear. Those are the physical representations of fear in your body. Those are also the ways excitement shows up in your body. You get to choose what you call that rush of adrenaline. Which serves you in moving forward and taking the action?
Here’s what I have found; inaction takes a ton of energy. No matter how we try to sugar coat it… it’s exhausting.
So invest in the healing needed to support you taking the action. Do the internal work. Start before you feel ready. Choose and move. I will make you a guarantee that as you begin to take consistent imperfect action on the things you are avoiding in your life you will begin to experience more energy and peace than you currently are. In little ways and big ways you will personally benefit from the shift. The cool part is, many others in your life will benefit as well.