An Honest Yes or An Honest No: Pick One
There is no half-assing anything.
When I first published my pieces on Medium in June 2017, I knew no one was listening. I had no followers. I was new and figured it would take months or at least a year until anyone would care what I wrote.
I still poured my heart and soul into my writing and wrote as if thousands of people cared. I acted like it mattered.
Then one day it did. My article, “4 Steps to End Negative Habitual Thinking,” got a ton of traction. I received thousands of views.
I was ecstatic and over the moon. It was something I always wanted: to serve others through my writing and to have people care about what I had to say.
I can’t even remember the last time I felt this excited. And I just graduated college, so, there’s that.
That realization made me reflect on other recent events in my life that I have been sort-of, kind-of about. A job interview I’m not that interested in. A business idea I start but then stop. A friendship I’m lukewarm about.
What else in my life was I not all the way in on and why was I choosing to half-ass anything?
While I talk about how important it is to feel all of your emotions, especially the negative ones, I have been avoiding one in particular: disappointment.
If you are not willing to feel disappointment, you are preventing yourself from reaching your highest levels of growth, period.
When this specific emotion is avoided, so is excitement. It’s a defense mechanism. When something exciting happened, I’d find myself thinking, “Oh, that’s cool, but I’m okay without it.”
Whatever “it” is, I can be safe believing I’m fine without it because then I have nothing to lose. I have nothing to risk.
Disappointment is defined as,
“the feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations.”
The opposite of disappointment is excitement and satisfaction.
If you want anything worthwhile, you have to be willing to feel non-fulfillment at times when you expected the opposite. You’re going to have to deal with an empty glass when you’re really thirsty.
My experience on Medium has been life-changing simply through the excitement it gives me. After years of numbing myself to avoid disappointment, the outcome is not feeling life all the way through.
Well, I’m sick of that. I want epics wins and I want epic losses. If I’m in this, I’m going all the way. I’m not sort-of, kind-of, lukewarm maybe. I’m all in.
The older I get, the more I realize I don’t care about being known as the person who succeeds. I want to be known as the person who tried. I want to be that person that people pointed to and said, “She went for it. She may have lost but she went for it.”
Give the universe an honest yes or no. Tell it what you really want. If you want to win epically, tell it. Risk the loss. Risk being seen in all your glory, as Jim Carrey says.
I decided I am committed to feeling all the things I need to feel in order to get to my next stage in evolution.
Say yes or no and be honest about it. Have intention behind it. Know what you do and do not want and honor it. Take the wins and losses.
You’re not here to half-ass life.
