The One Thing Stopping You From Doing Anything Is Everything

More Motivated Than Ever

The digital world is one that seems to brim with willpower, mental fortitude, and ambition. A figurative pantheon of modern day champions, high achievers, soul-takers and leaders. David Goggins, Ross Edgley, Courtney Dauwalter. Gary Vaynerchuk, Tai Lopez, Dave Ramsey. Prince Ea. Preston Styles. Jordan Peterson. Peta Kelly. Gary Bishop.

Take half an hour down the various motivational rabbit holes endemic to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube and you are certain to be inundated by thousands of content creators that have solved the Rubik’s cube for success in their life (and, often, in others’). Writers, athletes, entrepreneurs, researchers, doctors, travelers, speakers — whatever the niche may be, there is a success-oriented sect of influencers offering a blueprint to prosperity.

Now, it’s possible my tone has felt a little critical. That’s not my intention. Finding purpose in one’s life, isolating its essence, and conveying the resulting wisdom to others in a meaningful way is one of mankind’s fundamental beauties. I’m grateful to anyone that has it within them to share their compassion and good will with those who seek it (assuming that intent is genuine). Commodification and sensationalism be damned, there are worthy truths even in the most crass of commercials. You don’t need these people to tell you how you’re screwing up in order to stop screwing up, but like any epiphany, the right thing at the right time can shake the snow globe in exactly the right way.

I mean only to characterize the notion that “success,” “hustling,” “improving yourself,” are entirely ordinary fixtures in modern life. At some point this week, you are no less likely to see a video titled something akin to, “You Are Your Own Problem (And How To Fix It),” as you are to check your e-mails (… which you probably need to clean out, right?) Case in point: the title of this article. And you’re here! For comparison’s sake, I doubt an 18th century farmhand had many people telling him to “unf#ck” his brain; to paraphrase Faith Harper.

We are a culture that is historic in its openness to a myriad of pantheons; entrepreneurial, numinous, self-improvement focused or otherwise. The means not only exist to pursue any number of routes — there are thousands of mentors within reach willing to help you get there (and in some cases, they’re demanding it!) It isn’t just that, either: “Getting there,” as we think of it, is actually really, stupidly, outrageously, embarrassingly, enlighteningly simple (Cue chapter 1, 2, 3…).

Mind the (Knowing-Doing) Gap

Ask yourself presently: How is it that we go about accomplishing anything?

A degree or certification?

Picking up a fresh hobby?

Difficult conversations?

Starting a new career?

The question doesn’t seem to offer much of a fight. You (1) commit to the endeavor, (2) adhere to a plan, and (3) optimize the plan until the desired outcome is in the palm of your hand. Get out of your own way. Behavioral models such as the Priorities, Habits, & Systems model of change (PHS) offer a similarly formulaic understanding of personal development. Let’s stretch the meaning a bit for a best fit to the 3-step process:

(1) Commit. Set strong intentions around the quality of thoughts you want to have, or the actions you want to take. By specifying and prioritizing a belief, we are able to re-align ourselves with it whenever we stray — like applying a filter to cut out extraneous static.

(2) Adhere to a plan. Be conscious of the thoughts and actions which align with your belief. Make choices that proceed from that awareness. These are habits — the markers of behavior which illustrate the quality of your attention toward a goal.

(3) Optimize the plan. Developing systems to lower the cost of entry in making “correct” choices is a mainstay of behavioral psychology. The easier something is to access, the more likely you are to access it.

Easy. Now, if we could just find the time to iron one of these systems out!

As of this writing, we’re in month 11 of a global pandemic. For large swathes of that time, people have been shut away in their homes. Remote work is being championed — or at least nominated — as a new standard in several industries. If anything, one could make the argument that free time is running amok.

Most of us know someone who took up baking. Others opened Etsy shops. Still others started Amazon or Shopify digital marketplaces, or YouTube channels to cover the recovery of Bitcoin and Ethereum over the summer. People took to knitting, webpage design, building marketing funnels, freelancing businesses and more. The wayfarers among us looked to begin practices in yoga, meditation, running, hiking, or climbing. The past year has offered what appeared to be the perfect storm for transforming one’s sense of gratitude for their health (and the health of loved ones), the habits with which they go about their day-to-day, and the overall trajectory of their life.

Transforming with the circumstances afforded to us is a fine platitude. Things change, and so must we. But too broad an application of that axiom might also romantically overstate the ramifications of superficial change (day-to-day activities) at the behavioral level.

Point being: for every person that made a life-changing move over the past year, there’s someone who cozied up to a new status quo. Have no fear! In many ways, I’m among them. Even those who made changes surely have other nagging aspects of their reality that went unresolved. That’s just fine. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this, after all.

But why is it that some can make the leap? Why is that some people can make the leap multiple times, and in different ways? Why is it that some people can’t help themselves BUT to leap into new challenges, ventures, hobbies or businesses?

More than that, how are many of these intrepid individuals suddenly able to distill their distinct phenomenological experience into a how-to manual that clicks with so many? Does authorship, marketing know-how and public speaking just come with the “You’re Successful Now!” gift basket? Do we need to be able to do that? Should we expect that of ourselves?

The Everything

I read a classic parable recently in the book, “Finding Our Humanity,” by conservationist Leif Cocks. (Despite the parable being rather commonplace, I’ll make a point of the source as a certification of a hobby’s potential dividends: had I not read this specific passage from this specific book, I likely would not have gone on to complete this article.) The particular telling is as follows:

“One day, a highly educated and scholarly professor of philosophy heard of a Guru who was visiting a neighboring town. As a world expert in his field, the professor wished to meet with the Guru as a way of expanding his knowledge in the area. He sent word to request a meeting with the spiritual master and was able to arrange a time to see him the following afternoon. The next day, the professor travelled to meet the Guru and was soon seated at a lovely table under a shady tree in the garden of the home where the Guru was staying.

Asking the professor if he would like a cup of tea, the Guru placed an empty cup on the table in front of him. He began to pour the tea from a large tea pot. As the Guru did so, the professor began asking questions. The guru remained silent and kept pouring the tea into the cup. Soon the hot tea was overflowing from the cup and spilling onto the table beneath, yet the Guru continued to pour the tea.

Realizing what was happening the professor stopped mid-sentence and asked the Guru, “What are you doing?” The Guru stopped pouring and looked at the professor and said, “I cannot teach you because you are already full to overflowing like this tea cup. There is no space within you to learn. Until you empty your mind and heart, I can’t teach you anything.”

But how does that connect with committing to a new goal?

I’ve spent a lot of words dancing around something very fundamental:

In carrying the weight of every possible action, we are leaving no room for action itself.

Consider the mind-bending feedback loop of the brain. Our minds are constantly buffering external and internal information simultaneously. What is occurring outside of us is occurring within us via sensory inputs. Those sensory inputs signal the release of a vast array of chemicals which influence the way we perceive external occurrences.

Now consider that this phenomenon is mirrored through any thought pattern we have. You want to be an artist. With that comes an external archive of perceived needs, demands, standards, expectations, and judgments. Those external structures are then integrated into our perception of what “being an artist” is. Everything that you’ve ever heard about being an artist — and everything that you’ve ever felt as a result of that — is now part of being an artist.

(If you weren’t aware already, the mind is a mobius strip. Get used to it.)

The Anything

What’s the answer?

Let’s say we’ve given up on being an artist. We’re going to be a powerlifter now. Benching, squatting, deadlifting — a world record is what we’re after. What’s going to be on our mind?

The diet, the training, the long hours in the gym, the cost of groceries. The risks, the injuries, the recoveries. The competition, our genetics, our rate of progress.

That quagmire of cyclical, all-encompassing thought is critical as a catalyst to passion. But if we’re going to bench 772lbs (2lbs over the current world record), we’re probably better off directing our attention to what we can handle right now. All the expectations in the world are not going to move the weight for us. Moreover, training like a world champion before we’ve built our technique, joints, ligaments, tendons and musculature up would be outright self-destructive.

Our brain needs to warm-up just like our bodies do.

Our brain benefits from progressive overload just like our bodies do.

If you want to be anything, take your focus away from everything.

Do the sets. Do the reps. 5 minutes a day. 10 minutes. 30 minutes.

Allow yourself to rest.

Look for yourself more in the natural rhythms of progress, and less in the torrential downpours of expectation.

Maybe we’ll find ourselves on the other side of the gap.