Keep Chipping Away: When Your Mind Says No, Here’s How To Say Yes
It’s 00:06am.
I just finished locking heads with fatigue, procrastination, and comfortability.
And I came out victorious.
It was the most productive day I’ve had all month.
Allow me to paint the picture:
It’s 22:36pm.
I’m tired.
My eyes are low.
My head is aching.
I can feel a cold brewing.
I’ve completed all my tasks except for one.
The biggest one, and the one I’m dreading to start.
I’m looking at the lecture I need to watch.
It’s 2 hours long.
Even at double speed, that’s an hour of concentration, note-taking, and consistency.
I do not want to do it.
Guess what I do?
I think.
And not long after I start thinking, here they come:
Doubt.
“I don’t have the energy to concentrate right now.”
Excuses.
“I can do it first thing tomorrow morning if I sleep right now.”
Disbelief.
“I work better in the morning, it’s actually unproductive for me to start now.”
Anything to escape the difficulty of the reality before me.
The task just seems too big.
Anything to offload that burden away from the current me, the comfortable me.
I’m giving up.
But then I heard it.
I heard my little sister singing whilst working in the study down the hall.
Suddenly, something stirred within me.
If she could keep pushing at this time, as her older brother, who am I to give in to a little bit of fatigue?
Who am I to throw in the towel that easily?
What’s two hours of work?
Why not try?
If she can, why can’t I?
Isn’t it funny?
That’s all it took.
Just being in the same vicinity as someone was enough to forcibly change my posture towards work.
Suddenly, giving up turned into “why not try”.
And it’s not as if I didn’t know any better.
Funnily enough, I wrote about trying just a few days ago.
So why couldn’t I remember it when I needed it the most?
— — — —
There could be a number of potential factors.
It could be a habit.
It could be circumstance.
It could be who I am—my identity.
All of the above could’ve signalled to my brain:
This is just too much.
But contrary to those signals, I was victorious in the end.
Contrary to my headache, I completed the lecture and did some extra reading after.
Contrary to my fatigue, I felt energised whilst I watched the lecture.
Contrary to the fact I work better in the morning, I was still productive at night.
Because what you feel like, is not always indicative of your performance.
Sometimes you have to act, to disrupt a self-imposed perception.
Even though, my little sister was the kick in the backside I needed to actually act — I carried the burden of the action myself.
Even though I didn’t believe I could do it.
In his book Beginners, Tom Vanderbilt quotes the psychologist Albert Bandura:
“Disbelief in one’s capabilities,” writes the psychologist Albert Bandura, “creates its own behavioural validation.”
And that analysis is so poignant.
I didn’t believe in my capability to complete the lecture.
The behavioural validation created in response was to give up.
And typically, when we disbelieve in ourselves, that’s our first point of call: surrender.
But if you want to get anywhere, you have to shatter the source of the behavioural validation.
You have to shatter your disbelief.
Take a wild guess at how you do that.
TRYING.
The best way to counteract disbelief is to actually try.
Only then will you be able to break the shackles of behavioural validation.
Most people are just like me.
Victims to habit.
Victims to repetition.
Victim to the things we have learnt repeatedly.
At some point, I learnt that if the task is too big for me — surrender.
But that’s all wrong.
Look at me; I didn’t believe I could, yet I still did, and then some.
So,
Who said it was too big for you?
What convinced you of that?
What experience taught you that?
The details of the ‘who’ or the ‘what’ don’t actually matter.
The point is, you are responsible for rewriting that disbelief.
And clearly, learning that trying is the answer once or twice isn’t enough.
So, experience it a million times.
Keep challenging your disbeliefs and transcending them.
Keep trying.
“Experience is the best teacher / teacher of all things.” — Julius Caesar
So keep chipping away.
That’s all.
Keep trying and trying and trying.
Keep experiencing.
There is no tree in the world which cannot be felled by an axe.
It’s simply a matter of chipping away.
Eventually, it will fall.
And self-imposed lies are no different.
Just keep chipping away at them.
They will lose their grip on you.
Keep Chipping Away.
LM
