Don't get tripped up with a massive plan. Take the simplest, smallest step to your most passionate dream.
Hello my friends and welcome to Five Minute Mojo. There are some authors that never let me down when it comes to inspiration. Marcus Aurelius is one of them. I came across this quote over the weekend.
Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished. - Marcus Aurelius
How often do you procrastinate? Like many things, it’s cyclical. We find something that we don’t have any desire to do and we make up a ton of reasons why we can’t do it. Anyone from the outside looking in sees it as it as it is. They see the excuses. That’s just for the things that we really don’t want to do. What about the things we want to do that we procrastinate. Unfortunately that isn’t as simple to understand as simple displeasure. With things we hate, it’s simple to understand why we put them off. We don’t like them.
So what’s the deal with the things we do like; the things we are excited about? It goes much deeper. It touches our greatest fears. One of the reasons we are so quick to leave dreams in our heads is because they are safe there. We can retreat into our powerful minds and live out the comfort of an idea in absolute safety. We can see it working out. We can see the project succeeding, the money pouring in. In the warmth of our heads we can see ourselves at the perfect job, content and respected, doing work that means something.
Regardless of how well you are able to visualize, you feel successful and happy, and most of all safe. In your imagination you don’t fall victim to failure or disappointment. Your dreams fill you with as much promise as a blue sky on a summer day.
As wonderful as it feels to stay in that dreamworld, your rational self still realizes it’s not real. it brings a lightness to your heart but in the back of your mind you now it’s not real. It is simply an un-actualized fantasy.
To act on those dreams is scary as hell. In your mind you see the success, you created it there. But in reality it may not happen that way, not immediately at first and maybe not at all. So what’s the choice. You either live a fanciful dream in your mind that’s safe with no actual reward or you create a plan to take that dream from your head and try to make it a reality, possibly making you happier than you have ever been before. yet, in that plan you risk failure and disappointment.
That of course brings us back to procrastination. You avoid taking steps for something you want in order to keep that dream safe, infallible.
You know what i’m talking about, right? Absolutely every one of us has experienced that. So how do you make it happen? How do you kill that procrastination? You begin. You take the sage words of Marcus Aurelius and start. You don’t try and tackle it all at once. You simply start with the simplest step.
He knew that many of us dread that terrifying first step. He knew that each of us has the ability to see things through to the end if we only could get past that initial fear point.
So what is it going to take for you to put an end to procrastination of something you love, something you have been dreaming about? Let me make it less vague with a question of the day. What is one dream that you have right now? Think big or think small, just think. What is one wish that has stayed safe in your imagination for a significant amount of time?
What is the absolute smallest step you could take to make it a reality?
That is a perfect Monday question. Timeless actually.
Go to it my friends.
How about you help me make 5 Minute Mojo a stronger reality for the world? Did the episode get you stoked, thinking about a better life? I think you would agree that energy should be everywhere right? If you think so then share this episode with your friends, and tell them to do the same thing. thank you my friends.
This is Thom Walters signing off for 5 Minute Mojo. Make the rest of the day amazing, sleep tight and of course, sweet dreams.
