I was finishing a project and a little tired as I stood back to take in that sense of accomplishment that comes with seeing something you have imagined come to life and my alternate brain asked the question: “so why did it take you so long ?” The current podcast episode will help you ask that question as well.
I’ll warn you ahead of time that I monitor my avoiding behavior and this had been something I had been avoiding for a long time. It happened after I had a talk with myself and decided to follow my own advice (you know, just agree to do a little bit to simply get started and allow myself to see that it was not as difficult as I imagined) and started work on the thing I had put off. Doing this got me thinking about all the ways we limit or stop ourselves from doing things that can help fulfil all kinds of dreams you’ve had.
Before I go into some of my thoughts on the subject I’d like you to take a moment and very honestly ask yourself some of the ways you limit yourself. You know what I’m talking about… All the things you tell yourself from time to time. Things like “this will be hard” I don’t know where to begin” or “I don’t have the time or the energy to do it.” You know, all those things… that roll around in your head day in and day out. Set all the can’t do’s aside for a moment and really think about some of the things you’ve wanted to do but didn’t because you stopped yourself.
It might help if while you are thinking about it you write down the things you’ve thought about. List them in a free flow way so you get them all down on your list. Now that you have them all listed out, begin to ask yourself how each one would add to your life. You know: How It would help me do this and that, or just feel better about yourself.
Now stop for a moment and look at the entire list and ask yourself which five are the most important for your life right now. This is going to involve some soul searching because a few of the things you’ve avoided are long term or maybe a little complicated because they involve other people. That’s part of the reason I’ve asked you to get the list down to five that seem doable in the near future and require only you to take action. Got that done? Good…
Now go through that final list of five and ask yourself which one would have the most impact in your life right away. This part requires you to visualize what you see happening once you have or are able to do whatever it is. It is important and necessary because it allows you to see how your life could be and gives you leverage to support getting it done. This visualizing gives you your “why”. Enjoy that picture for a moment to really let it sink in…
You probably enjoyed seeing all the benefits that can come from doing this thing and it felt good. Now ask yourself what is holding you back…? What are the limits you’ve placed on yourself and more importantly why? Think about breaking the blockage down to the one thing standing between you and the thing you desire. And, now that you know what that one thing is, you can begin to step by step remove this block to get you to the place that mentally and physically want to be. True, it may not be a slam dunk but now you see a path and can begin to follow it a little every day until one day you find yourself “there”.
Without knowing it my friend you have now gone through a complete visualization exercise and begun the process of freeing yourself from some of the limits you’ve placed on your life. You’ve removed the mental clutter and gotten down to the thing that will have immediate impact and in the process challenged the thinking holding you back. And, what I think you will find is that the more you practice approaching the life limits you’ve accepted you’re going to find greater strength in overcoming other things as well.
Just so you’ll know how following this process helped me, below is the project I was working on.
It may look like a decorating project to finally clean up my junk sun room, but is also an insulation project for the whole house. This simple combination of muslin and PVC pipe lowers the room temperature on the sun room 20 degrees. I now have a new get-away place that lowers my whole house cooling costs from the western Florida sun. And, this was created by someone who previously did not consider herself “handy”. Let me know what you decided to tackle and how it turned out because you are capable of more than you think…