When you write every day, you believe you can write every day.
When you don’t write every day, you believe you can’t every day.
And so it goes for running, working out, eating healthy, playing the guitar, or anything else you’re frustrated or satisfied with.
Beliefs follow actions.
Actions confirm beliefs.
So follow your actions to uncover your beliefs.
Then change your actions to change your beliefs.
You don’t have to feel ready to be a successful writer to pick up a pen or open a document and write today.
In fact, you’ll probably never feel ready to be a successful writer unless you write today.
This means, strangely enough, that despite how you feel in this very moment, you are entirely ready.
Ready to take the first step.
First, envision the future you – the one you’d love to be.
Now, what would that future you do today? What would they avoid?
And if you start acting like your future you today…
Have you not pulled the future you into the present…
Have you not already become who you’ve always wanted to be?
Frowns carry questions. Puzzles. Uncertainty on the edge of understanding.
“I don’t understand – yet.”
Sometimes they also carry dismissal.
“I don’t agree – why?”
Most of all, frowns symbolize a struggle, a moment of dissonance between what we know and what we encounter.
Balancing on the edge of comprehension or dismissively pushing away the unfamiliar…
This is where insights are born.
Can you say loud and clear
this is what I love
this gives me energy
this is why I’m here?
Can you then do what you love
do what gives you energy
do it, live it
without fear?
Can you choose to write your own stories
without letting them be tainted by past memories
or future worries?
Can you enjoy what you do
without believing it’s not for you?
How likely is the scenario you’re worrying about?
And how impactful or life-threatening is that scenario?
Now, how much mental bandwidth is worrying about it taking up?
Are your worries proportionate to the actual danger?
Should you be worrying at all?
If not, could you stop right away?
Of course, you and I both know that’s not always how it works, my friend.
Because even if we know rationally that we shouldn’t worry, the worrier mind tends to scoff at answering rational questions.
Yet today, I had an insight: maybe those questions aren’t meant to dismiss the worrier mind at all but empower the sane mind, temporarily suppressed and overpowered?
Maybe they can provide enough encouragement to make the sane mind stand up for itself again and say, “Enough is enough.”
Maybe that way, the sane mind will put the worrier mind back in its place, reminding it of the only task where it truly shines: protect us from life-threatening risks.
Or maybe not. I don’t know, my friend. You’ve seen me: I’m just another human with good days and bad—productive days and lazy. Days of irrational fears and worry, and days of relaxing, dreaming, and visioning.
But this I do know: worrying too much has never improved my mood, and I doubt it has ever improved yours.
So if you’ve had an overactive worrier mind lately, trying won’t hurt.
Let me know how it goes.
It’s not about content, it’s about consistent content.
It’s not about running, it’s about repeated running.
It’s not about meditating, it’s about many moments of meditating.@
It’s about repeated rehearsal, until you finally get it.
