It’s harder than it sounds sometimes to just do stuff…we can have hobbies and business ideas that we adore, that light us up and make us bounce a little in our seat. Last week, I wrote about being multipassionate and how it’s okay to have all those ideas.
But then we don’t do them.
We think about it. We talk about it. We might even make a list of steps or materials that we need.
And we stay on the couch or in the bed or work late at our day job. Because, you know…one day.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we deprive ourselves of what we want and need most? Minds are so tricky! Here are three lies they like to tell us that keep us from doing what we love.
Sneaky Mind Lie Number One: Someday….
Someday I’ll wake up with boundless energy and drive to get started on that project. Someday I’ll have more time. Someday I’ll feel motivated. Someday the muse will show up and I’ll be able to get past that block. Someday I’ll have more money so I can take time off/buy supplies/find office space. Someday I’ll feel braver. Someday I’ll care less about what other people think. Someday I’ll know my lines well enough to finally audition. Someday I’ll be better at _____ (even if I never do it).
Sneaky Mind Lie Number Two: My Idea Doesn’t Matter…
It’s all been done before. Someone else did it better. No one will pay for that. What’s the point? If the planet is doomed, why bother putting effort into something? I shouldn’t start because I won’t finish it anyway. Can’t fail if you don’t start! Other people’s needs are more important. It’s selfish for me to spend time/energy/resources on my daydreams.
Sneaky Mind Lie Number Three: It’ll Be Too Hard…
It’s going to take forever. I don’t know how to do any of this. If I don’t have a degree/certificate in it, I’m not going to be able to do it. Others have tried and failed. I’ll just feel worse about myself if I try. I’m not going to get very far so there’s no point. If it doesn’t come naturally on the first try, I’m not good enough to do it. If the first person I submit it to doesn’t want to buy it/invest in it/publish it, then I’m a failure and shouldn’t do it—and shouldn’t bother trying to submit it anywhere else. If I don’t already know how to do it, then I’ll never be able to learn how.
How to Deal with These Mind Lies
You’ve probably already tried some things to deal with thoughts like these. My guess is that you’ve thrown affirmations at them, tried to squish them out of existence, or got to the point where you believed them as fact (and maybe all of the above).
There’s a super-sneaky secret about thoughts: The more we try to suppress them, the stronger they come back later! Yep, engaging with our thoughts and trying to argue with them can actually get us more tangled up in them.
So what to do?
It has a fancy name: cognitive defusion. Basically, cognitive defusion means that, with effort and usually some mindfulness practice, we can get to the point where we can notice and acknowledge a thought without it becoming anything more than a thought. It doesn’t become our reality. We can see that it isn’t necessarily a face. We know that it is a bunch of sounds that happen to make words in the language that we speak, and we know that these sounds only have as much power and meaning as we choose to give them.
This is damm hard sometimes! Some thoughts are soooo sticky that we can start choosing our behaviour based on them before we even realize it. They’re not actually driving, but we start treating them like the GPS.
But here’s another secret: Sure, we can have GPS on and it can be talking to us. Still, we get to decide whether or not we follow those directions! We even get to decide whether or not we listen to it at all. Yeah, it can be distracting and annoying to have it droning on in the background, but we’re still driving where we have chosen to go, making changes and choices all along the way.
Here’s an example. If you’ve ever driven on I-35 in Texas, you know well the mysterious traffic jams that come out of nowhere and last for hours. Sometimes there’s an actual event, sometimes it seems like there’s a glitch in the space-time continuum. This time I hit one around Waco the night before Thanksgiving. I had Google Maps on already giving me directions, but then I turned on the Waze app to get a better prediction of the traffic situation. My Waze has the Cookie Monster voice; my Google Maps has a feminine voice with a British accent. I’m slowly weaving my way through Waco side streets when they start telling me to do different things. One’s saying go one way, the other is telling me the opposite, and Cookie Monster is throwing in some intense demands for me to stop and buy cookies (I shit you not).
Guess what? I had spotted a familiar landmark and chose to go a different way entirely. Both apps erupted into blips and commands to do this and turn there and try to get back on their routes, but I kept going. Eventually they settled down and caught onto my plan—although it was really noisy for a hot minute.
This is what happens in our head when we try to do something new, or anything that has some risk in it—which many creative and business ventures do. Our internal GPS starts freaking out and telling us to turn around, getting louder and louder until we’ve kept going long enough that it gives up and gets with the program.
How to ride it out?
Play a little
Using metaphors like seeing those thoughts as a GPS or as coming from a cartoon character can help us laugh at them and take them less seriously. Humor is a powerful unsticking agent! You can also try saying them out loud in a funny voice or singing them like you’re in a musical or opera.
Say thanks
You might think of these thoughts (whew, that’s a bit meta!) as misguided but well-meaning folx. You can politely thank them without acting on any of their “advice.” I personally use “Thanks for sharing!” as my response to unhelpful thoughts.
Remember that they’re just thoughts
Putting the phrase “I’m noticing I’m having a thought that ________” in front of sticky thoughts gives us a sliver of space so we can choose our behaviour rather than automatically following the thought.
Alrighty, y’all. Now you have some mind lies to watch out for and some ways to get unstuck from them. Give them a try this week—I’d love to hear how it goes or if you have questions about these ideas.
Until next time, be sweet to your weird self!
(And if you haven’t grabbed your free copy of the Get Focused and Make More Cool Stuff workbook, you can get it here. It takes you step-by-step through sorting and prioritizing your creative ideas—or even your adulting to-do list, if you’d rather.)
