Happy Sunday Everyone:
Writer’s block is real. 14 years into these, it happens from time to time, one of those times has been the last couple of weeks. I remind myself why I started this in the first place, which was for 12 coaching students. A simple thought from my dad’s advice to spend an hour on Sunday prepping for your week ahead, and how powerful of a tool this exercise is. That turned into another thought the following Sunday, they seemed to like it, and it has now continued for 728 weeks, with a few more people included. Today it’s really about my observation and interpretation of the world, the people in it and the situations that occur, and what I can learn from them.
I was flying down to Thomas’s home opener in San Diego on Friday afternoon thinking about today’s thoughts. Like anything else, the harder you try to think, the tighter you get, and the less you achieve. Frustrated I put my pen down on my open notebook. When I put the pen down, I locked in on something I had written down from my coaching call this past Monday. My coach (Barb) was listening to me explain how I was excited about something, and then back track out of it. She has an ability to stare at you; awkward silence is an understatement. I finally said, “what are you thinking”. She said, “it’s not about what I’m thinking, what are you thinking”. I said “BS, what are you thinking”, she said “I think you do a really good job of talking yourself out of things”.
Two weeks prior, same idea rolling through my head, I’m speaking with one of my mentors (Gary). Gary says something along the lines of appreciating how deliberate I am in my thought process, but once I’m at 80%, make the decision. It’s the 20% extra that paralyzes you. For a visual he suggested I’m circling the top of the fishbowl. Oddly enough, the cover of “the big leap”, which I wrote about last Sunday Thoughts is a picture of a fish jumping from a small fishbowl to a bigger one.
My point of these thoughts today is to remind myself that clarity comes from action and confusion comes from inaction. Don’t get me wrong, making uninformed decisions is dumb, but that is not something I suffer from. Even making a decision to start typing this today vs. thinking about it, and here we are. It really is universal, from massive life decisions, to simply deciding to get out of bed vs. hitting the snooze button. Making the call vs. thinking about making the call, going for a run vs. thinking of going for a run, it’s all the same. The compounding effect of action is a universal thing, its applicable to everything!
At some point you have to stop circling in the fishbowl and jump out of it. If we start, the rest figures itself out!
A healthy exercise would be to ask yourself the same question, where is a place you’re spending more time thinking than doing? and what are you going to “do” about it?
Have a great rest of your Sunday!