You can dole out advice. Great advice. Fan-fucking-tab-u-lous, life changing advice.
If only people would listen to you.
Right?
I’m that way too. It’s one of the things I get paid to do. Give advice, guidance, suggest a course of action. One that works like gangbusters.
And it does. Every single time. When people do what they pay me to tell them to do, they get results. I’m proud to say I’m that good.
You know what I suck at?
Taking my own advice.
I imagine you struggle with this too. Knowing what to do. Helping other people see why they should do it. But when it comes to taking your own advice…well…there’s that facebook page to check, and damn, those dishes have been sitting around forever…and…woah…look at that funny youtube video on Bad Lip Reading…and…holy crap THE NSA!
Wait, what was I supposed to be doing again? Ehhhh…I forget…
It’s time to cut that shit out.
The past week, I’ve been re-taking my own Build Your Own Buzz program along with my students (did you miss enrollment? Get on the waiting list so you never miss out again!), and it has been an eye-opener to say the least.
While listening to one of my own class modules, thinking, “Wow, this stuff is freaking great! I wish I had thought of that…oh wait…” I did think of that. So why aren’t I doing it?
It was a relief to me to be reminded of an important lesson. A lesson that I’ve often taught my clients, and am just as adept at forgetting to apply to my own life.
It’s from the brilliant book, The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield, which is the go-to bible for any creative who suffers from procrastination (or procrast-urbation, depending on who you are). So in essence, it is the number one must read, must master, must implement book for…everyone in pursuit of getting shit done.
Resistance And Procrastination
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.
This second, we can sit down and do our work.
-From “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
It’s that last line that really gets me. This second we can sit down and do our work. Not get all satisfied with our deep and insightful self awareness (I recognize I am procrastinating, good for me!). Not make a to do list as though getting organized about what we need to do is the same as actually doing it. Not spiraling downward in a tirade of self-loathing and reproach (I’m procrastinating again, I hate myself!).
Just fucking do it.
If you give great advice to others, take it upon yourself to put that advice into practice.
If you know what you need to do, don’t let that knowledge be enough. Take action. Not later today. Not next week. Right. Fucking. Now.
Because, as Pressfield says,
We’re not born with unlimited choices.
We can’t be anything we want to be.
We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.
Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
This is a call to action. Whatever work your soul is urging you to do, heed the call. Do not delay.
This second you can sit down and do your work.
I’ve got to end this post because I’ve got shit to do! And so do you.
Meet you back here next week. In the meantime – go do it.
