When I'm feeling stuck -- and I do feel stuck from time to time -- I move myself out of inertia via a couple of tricks I’ve picked up along my journey.
The first trick is the title of this post.
There Is Always Room for the Best
Reminding myself that there is always room for the best is often enough to get me into momentum.
Even if I do small things toward a big goal or dream, all movement is good movement on the way to the best.
If what I'm doing now isn't the best I can do or be, then something I do differently will get me closer to the best I imagine I can do or be.
I don't know why it works.
I simply know that it does.
Books Are Amazing Motivators
The other trick I like to use is one I learned years ago when I was teaching writing. It's an exercise that anybody can do at any time. It’s good for moving people past writer’s block. And it’s fantastic for moving anyone past feeling stuck.
It goes like this:
Pull a book off your shelf, open it to a random page, and read the entire page, or a sentence or a paragraph on that page. Whatever you read is the message that you need to receive right then.
I know it sounds weird. I know it sounds a little (or a lot) woo-woo.
But hear me out.
For the past few days, I've been feeling blah. Stuck. Wanting to sleep more than normal. I could attribute this blahness to the fact that we're in mid January, it's been gray, it's been cold. I haven't seen or felt the sun the way I like feeling the sun during the spring and summer and fall.
But it's also part of the normal ebb and flow of life. Not every moment can be off-the-charts thrilling. I’ve learned that every now and then the tide of my enthusiasm is going to recede and I'm going to get stuck in the muck. I'm going to feel a sense of Why bother? Who cares? Does what I do really matter?
Those three questions have plagued me for the last few days. But this morning I woke up at 4:30 and was wide awake, thinking about my big dreams. So many things to do. Still, I said to myself, Damn, this bed feels so good. Maybe I can sleep another couple hours...
But then I realized, Who was I kidding? I wasn't going to fall back asleep. Plus, I happen to be writing this post on a Monday. There’s something symbolic about getting up early on a Monday and hitting the ground running.
So I pushed the covers off, hopped into the cold room, made my bed, and went downstairs to begin my day, as I usually do, with a hot cup of tea and my morning nutritional cocktail. I then went into my office and did some administrative work that has been hanging over my head for too long.
I think that's part of what has been dragging me down -- little things on my list of things to do that I've been avoiding. Because quite frankly, I don't want to do them. They're an annoying part of my business. They're not the sexy, fun, creative part of my business. But they need to get done as part of me doing my business. So I set my mind to achieving one simple task that I could check off my to-do list.
Then I pulled the random book from my shelf. The book I pulled from my shelf today is Unf*ck Yourself: Get out of Your Head and into Your Life by Gary John Bishop.
The title alone is totally appropriate for what I need to hear right now.
But I wanted a deeper message, a more specific message. So I turned to a random page and this is what I found waiting for me: Being Relentless.
“Anytime you're working to achieve something, you're going against the current, often the opinions of the people around you are trying to push and pull you away from your destination. They'll say you can't do it, you're making a mistake, it's impossible you'll fail. The more unique and out of the box your endeavor is, the stronger the pushback can be. Why? Well, mostly because the other people in your life have gotten used to relating to you as a specific kind of person. So anytime you attempt to break out of that mold, you're not only messing with your own world, you're also messing with theirs.
“And the resistance doesn't just come from other people. It comes from your own mind to both your conscious and subconscious thoughts can work against you to stop your dreams right in their tracks. It could be outright negative, that's impossible. Why even try?
Or it could be subtler. Wouldn't it be a lot better to just sleep in instead of getting an early jump on things at the office? That game on your phone is so much more fun than working.”
Ah-ha. There was the message I needed to hear today. One that hit me between the eyes and snapped me out of the blahs.
This part of the message bears repeating:
“They'll say you can't do it, you're making a mistake, it's impossible, you'll fail. The more unique and out of the box your endeavor is, the stronger the pushback can be. Why? Well, mostly because the other people in your life have gotten used to relating to you as a specific kind of person. So anytime you attempt to break out of that mold, you're not only messing with your own world, you're also messing with theirs.”
Do you see the dilemma here?
Not only do other people in our life get used to us being a certain way. We get used to ourselves being a certain way. We become comfortable with “the who” that we are right now, despite the fact that we have dreams that require us to become a "different who" if we are to achieve them.
That comfort can eventually become the blahs.
That same-old, same-old can keep us from pursuing the next best version of what our life is calling us to seek.
Which brings me back to the title of this post today.
There's always room for the best.
For the past year and a half, I've been chiseling my way out of an old mold as a newer, better version of myself is emerging. It's been exciting. It's been terrifying. It's been some of the hardest work I've ever done.
It points to the truth that to move forward with anything we deem important, we have to break out of the existing mold. Let go of the old. Make way for the newer, better version of ourselves and our lives.
We have to embrace the discomfort of stepping into the far unlit unknown (which happens to be the title and theme of my latest book).
Because -- there's always room for the best.
Why would you settle for anything less?
