Why that thing you are avoiding is robbing you and others.
I kept avoiding it.
I knew what I was doing, but it’s easy to convince yourself of almost anything.
The problem was, this thing I was avoiding, became a roadblock to even starting a certain project.
The real issue was that I knew that I had to have a potentially uncomfortable talk with someone in order to be able to move forward, but my default is to avoid confrontation.
And so, I had a choice, get out of my comfort zone, and get on with it, or keep avoiding.
I kept avoiding.
But I had plenty of other things to keep busy with. Plenty of other ideas to pursue. Plenty of avoiding tactics like clicking around Facebook, or following the shiny objects.
And even making significant strides in other projects. Good projects.
But this one project? It sat stalled because I was avoiding that first uncomfortable step. And the longer it sat, the more “what if” questions filled the space.
Truthfully, no one is making me do any of the projects I’m pursuing. There’s no taskmaster, or higher up barking at me to get this done or else…
Steven Pressfield talks about it as resistance in his book The War of Art.
He says “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.”
So what made me finally step up and step out?
I started to think about what was potentially at stake. My own creative work, yes, but beyond that. What if this project of mine was the thing someone had been looking for? Waiting for, yet couldn’t find?
What if the work of others that had impacted me along the way had never been completed?
Someone is waiting for you to get on with it. Because they need your thing. Only they don’t know that it’s you who is going to deliver it. Yet.
How long has it been that you’ve allowed things to stall? Days? Months? Years?
Maybe today is the day you step up and step out. That first uncomfortable move. Let it be the move that causes the avalanche.
Will you do it? Maybe your next step in getting going is to speak it out loud. Leave a comment if that helps. Come out of the shadows and let’s get this thing going!
