If ever there was a theme for the past month it is this: Feel the fear and do it anyway. I can't remember where I first heard that phrase but it has been resounding in my head for the past few weeks as new challenges have come up for me.
I've spent the best part of this year procrastinating. I've told you previously that this year I've enrolled on a course to help me grow the business and whilst I was so excited to get stuck in, since the course actually started, I've been procrastinating like mad to get away from it. And it's frustrating. No one wants to procrastinate, at times it can feel debilitating. I literally feel as though I'm holding myself back from what could be something great but at the same time, I have zero motivation to get started on the tasks I need to do to complete it.
It was only when talking to Watson about his own procrastinating that I was able to give myself the pep talk I needed to get my backside into gear and only then because I was telling him everything I know about procrastination and motivation and not trying to tell myself. But of course, I could hear what I was saying to him and in amongst my words was the phrase "motivation comes after action", which of course, is very true.
It's so easy, even when you have a project that you're excited about, to wait until motivation strikes to start working on it. But here's the catch, after a long day at work, or even a gentle weekend morning that has started with a quiet cup of tea, it's really hard to switch from the mode you currently find yourself in, to one that requires a bit of mental agility and stamina. No matter how much you've been looking forward to opening that new set of paints, writing that next chapter, making that next video, if you're currently feeling even the tiniest bit sluggish, stirring yourself up to focus on a new task feels like climbing a mountain.
The same is true of date nights. Having lived through one ten-year relationship that fizzled out due to lack maintenance, I'm determined not to let that happen with me and Watson. We both know that we can't always be bothered to do some activity on a Wednesday evening, especially in winter when it's dark outside, but we also know that on the Wednesdays that we do do something new together, we feel even closer afterwards. Trying new things together let's us see each other in a new role and a new light and that's attractive. New experiences trigger new conversations, new points of view and of course, new memories.
But back to motivation... After telling Watson that motivation does not strike like a lightning bolt from the sky (that's inspiration), it comes after you've already made a start, I ended up reminding myself in that moment that motivation is the feeling of wanting to continue and it only comes after you've taken the first and most difficult step. The following day, I opened my laptop and logged back in to my course.
One of the reasons why I have been procrastinating so much with this course goes back to what I was saying last month about The Effort Contingency. Each module is taking far longing than I expected and is requiring a lot more effort than I expected it to. I have made my peace with it taking longer than I originally thought it would and feeling as though I'm behind because I'm not following the live trainings in real time, but when every module starts off looking like a hill and then exponentially grows into a mountain before my very eyes, it takes it's toll. I gear myself up for the next video thinking, OK, one hour training, a few hours of homework, this is what I'm working on this week, only to find that this module has an additional 30 mini videos to watch and six weeks of bonus trainings. It's hard not to feel disheartened in that moment when you realise that this step isn't going to take one week and it isn't going to be easy. In those moments, staring down the barrel of a complicated new skill that you're about to learn, the feeling that keeps coming up for me is overwhelm. And that is how this month, my brain which has so often been the enemy of my success, did me a favour and reminded me to: Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway.
I was sat in a coffee shop when this first happened. My van was in the garage having some work done and I was waiting in the Costa around the corner with my laptop, determined to make the most of these couple of hours of downtime. I was feeling quite proud of myself for getting almost an hour into the training video I was watching when we were shown a complicated looking, techy, code thing which looked like something an android spider had made from it's rear end. I froze. Suddenly this was hard and just then I didn't think I had the mental capacity for something hard but a calm voice inside my head said "Feel the fear and do it anyway".
I breathed out. Of course I would do this. I didn't have a choice. I am committed to finishing this course, even if it takes me a year to do it. I want this and I am enjoying the challenge of it but even so, these moments of "oh god, this isn't going to be easy" are very real and at times, very debilitating.
Since that first time, I have heard that same voice repeating that same phrase over and over again and I'm so grateful for it. Each time something complicated and techy has come up with the course, I have felt myself freeze, heard the voice and then breathed out again.
But it hasn't been exclusive to this course, it also came up for me during a weekend at Centre Parcs of all places.
During a mini family holiday over a long weekend, I experienced the unbelievable "subtropical swimming paradise" that Centre Parcs is renowned for and as someone who has always been mildly scared of water sports, this was an eye opener for me. I adore a lazy river in a rubber ring but anything that requires actual swimming is always more stressful than relaxing for me. I'm not a strong swimmer and my impulse on receiving a face full of water has always been to breathe in and panic, ultimately making it so much worse. But there was a moment in the wave pool where I received a wave fully in the face and was knocked back in such a hilarious way that my sister was overcome with laughter. Unbeknownst to her, the same thing was about to happen to her but from behind and I had the advantage of seeing the second wave coming for her and the joy of watching it douse her just as she was bent almost double laughing at me. The two of us were in hysterics, bouncing and bumping off each other, both using the other to try and stand up amongst the jostling waves. There's something humbling about a wave pool. It levels the playing field and strikes down the strong and the weak swimmers equally.
After surviving my initial dunking, a somewhat helpful voice inside my head (or quite possibly my brother-in-laws voice outside of my head) pointed out to me that if I didn't attempt to hold my breath as I was being forced under the waves, I wouldn't get a nose full of water. This is where my discomfort of water has always come from; the irresistible urge to breathe in during a dunking which always always always makes it so much worse. This is probably ridiculously and painstakingly obvious to a lot of you but hey, everyone has their weaknesses and swimming is one of mine.
Despite my underlying discomfort, I also have a conflicting love of being in water. It genuinely confuses me; I find it very relaxing, until I get a face full of it. I also love rides, until the big splash at the end... It was when I saw the sign for the rapids that I felt something stir within me. I felt resigned to not going down them but at the same time I felt like I was doing myself out of something. I guess that's FOMO at it's best. With my brother-in-law, Greg, leading the way and reminding me to breathe out not in when the water came, I followed him down the rapids for the very first time and I loved it. I think a large part of it comes from the fact that Greg and I are very similar; I could see myself in him so if he could do it, so could I.
Bolstered by the success of the rapids, and with my newfound confidence booster (Greg) leading the way, we next took to the slides. I've never been 100% sure about slides or anything that requires me to be entirely responsible for my own safety. There was a split second at Go Ape where I nearly backed out when I realised I would be in charge of unclipping and clipping myself onto the wires. But manning a two person ring, meant that I wasn't in charge and as a self confessed control freak, this relinquishing of control is oddly liberating. With Greg in the front "seat", I happily clambered in after him again and again, even more happily letting him take the brunt of the splashes at the end. Over and over again, I remembered to hold my breath at the right moment and to breathe out when the water came over me. That's a metaphor for overwhelm right there; breathe out when the water comes over you.
There was one moment on the biggest ride that the feeling of having surrendered all control was utterly breath-taking. The slide we were in suddenly opened up into a gigantic tunnel larger than my living room at home. We were skimming up the walls of this tunnel until we reached a seemingly endless drop. Greg had his back to it and suddenly all I could see was... nothing. The drop was so sheer and as we reached the edge, time slowed. There was no way of backing out and a slightly smaller voice in my head this time said, ah well, there's nothing you can do about it. And we dropped.
That feeling of being so utterly out of control was freeing. Knowing that you can do absolutely nothing to affect the outcome was euphoric. Perhaps if you're not a control freak and are a more laid-back, happy-go-lucky kind of person, then this won't resonate with you (but then why would you be reading something subtitled An Overthinker's Blog?) but to my fellow control freaks out there, I can honestly tell you that having zero control over something so physical was exhilarating. Is that the point of these rides? Have I been missing that all along?
I have often said that fear of a thing is always worse than the thing itself. What that day in the pool at Centre Parcs gave me was a crash course in experiencing this over and over and over again. Coupled with my new internal voice telling me to feel the fear and do it anyway, I'm beginning to feel far more resilient and capable of doing hard things than I have done in a long time and it's a feeling I'm relishing.
I'm reminded at this point of another of my favourite sayings from Fritz Perls: Fear is excitement without the breath. Which is to say that fear looks the same way in the body as excitement does in terms of chemicals being released and which parts of the brain light up, and when you remember that, if you can remember that, in a moment of fear, then you have the power to reframe that moment and turn something you are scared of into something that you are excited about. And that, my friends, is a very powerful thing indeed.
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