Posted by It is easy to get stuck on the way to our goals and not know what to do next. Often we get overwhelmed at the choice before us unable to decide which option is the best one, and so we do nothing. Or maybe a new obstacle has sprung up that has made the current path a lot more difficult, so you just stall, unable to decide what to do next.
This last one was what happened to me and this website. I was trying to make weekly videos to post on YouTube as well as here. But as my younger child has gotten older it has become much harder to find long enough stretches of quiet time long enough to film my videos uninterrupted before the older one came home from school. But now the older one doesn’t even go to school. So now what do I do? I could just wait it out until September when they both go to school. Or I could stop making excuses and take my own advice I normally give for health and apply it to my own business.
That advice is to ask myself “what is the easiest thing I could do to move forward?” In this case it is to wait with the video and just publish blogs instead. I write scripts for my videos anyway, so this is just cutting out the most difficult step. Even though yells have interrupted my writing of this a few times I haven’t had to start over, I do have to regain my train of thought, but at least I am still moving forward. And this is important because even though perfect action will move you faster than imperfect action, the imperfect action is always infinitely faster than no action.
“what is the easiest thing I could do to move forward?”
And who knows what the end result will be? If I sit on my ass and wait for the perfect time the worst case I could be sitting for my whole life, best case I stay where I am for now and restart filming videos in September. But if I start publishing blogs worst case I will have a lot of scripts ready to film in September; best case my blog takes off and I get a lot of readers. Either way I will have moved myself forward, be in the habit of creating content, and have more confidence when I take the next step.
And this is something you can do in your own life. We often ignore the easy path because we mistakenly think that only difficult things are worth doing despite the fact that easy changes often have outsized effects. But because the difficult path is difficult we often pause or stall not knowing how to overcome the obstacles in our way. And yet often the easy path makes the hard path easier too.
If you are finding it hard to work out every day, decide to use a self massage tool like the GRID every day instead, it helps you get into the habit of exercising and makes your body hurt less so when you do start exercising it’s a lot easier. (This was my New Year’s resolution this year, my legs have never felt so good).
Instead of completely overhauling your diet, try adding in one extra serving of vegetables each day, or having one less serving each day of something sugary like a soda.
While it might take a little longer to reach your goal than if you started the best option today, you will still be getting there a lot sooner than doing nothing waiting for the right time.
See you again soon,
Max
