Friend and mentor Chris Brown emailed me this week, excited about his weekend rediscovered of some important lessons he lost over the last few months. This is the way with important life lessons. They aren’t spontaneous so you need to do your homework and practice them in order for them to be of any value. You have to work diligently to make them your new normal.
In explaining the weekend re-enlightenment he said:
A few things stuck out at me during the weekend. One was a distinction that you get results or make up reasons, but you cant have both. I naturally always make up reasons simply because I analyze everything, but I didn’t realize that that takes up time in which I could be getting results which would actually move me forward. The other one was a distinction that your views create your actions. I realized this in terms of studying and reading as I noticed a drop-off there. I viewed myself as not as good as some of those trainers we read stuff by on the internet, so my actions represented my view of myself being lesser…”why try?” summed up the lack of motivation there quite well. Stuff like that.
Off to take some more “unreasonable action” as they call it.
That is outstanding! It captures the essence of so much of what seems to paralyze people who are prone to spending a lot of time in their head. If I’m not busy, I start to lose productivity very quickly. If I have time and don’t really like how things are going, it’s easy to come-up with reason why things are the way they are. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m wrong. But even if I’m right, I don’t really benefit. If I haven’t taken an action to move my life forward in a way that I know I can actually move my life forward, I haven’t really done anything of reasonable value.
A lack of action to improve ones situation is going to have a penetratingly inhibiting impact on how they view the world and their ability to do anything to make it better. This doubt stains the future before they even create it because it primes the brain with the tone needed to facilitate the experience it needed to validate the dirty world view.
I do that. Not all the time, but I do it and I keep forgetting that I do it. Thanks for the weekend recap Chris! Thank you for sharing it.