In yesterday’s post, The remarkable thing about what you are telling yourself I shared with you how we become story tellers and make things out to be harder than they truly are.
Today I have a real life example to share with you. Last year a beloved uncle died and an out-of-state cousin asked if he had any hats and if no one else in the family wanted them he’d like to have them. Well all I had to do is send him the hats. Simple enough, yes? You would think so.
However, in my mind it was a different story. See I had made up a story about what a pain it was going to be to send the hats. I’d have to find the right size box, find packing materials, get the hats in the box and then take the box to UPS. Sheesh, that was a lot of hard work my mind was telling me.
That was until a client of mine (it’s isn’t always me teaching my clients, sometimes they teach me =) told me a story about a friend who said that she wasn’t good at sending things to other people; to which my client said to her “it’s not that hard, just go to UPS and they’ll pack it for you”.
My “hat” story changed that day when my client told me this and so off I went to UPS and said to the guy behind the counter, Steve was his name, I need some direction here, I want to send these hats do I just pick out a box and he simply said “no just put everything on the counter and you are all set.”
I thought, WHOA, just like that? This couldn’t be this easy, the story I had going was it was going to be hard and viola just like that less than 5 minutes later (well, almost a year and 5 minutes later) my cousin’s package was on it’s way! And I felt an amazing sense of relief at having accomplished this task after so much time.
The lesson I learned for myself and that I’m sharing with you is that things are never as hard as we make them out to be. So the next time you think “this is going to be a pain, too hard, or take too long”, think about my hat story and how it took just 5 minutes and it was done.
I know I’m not the only one with a story such as this, please feel free to share, I’d love to hear. Or if you would rather keep it private, email me personally at kim@kimravida.com
I can not tell you how many times I have become lazy about some things and feel like they will be too hard to accomplish and I make 1,000 excuses as to why I can’t do something. I spend more time procrastinating and thinking about it then it takes to do the actual task. My energy level literally falls to a point I feel weak and sleepy. Once I actually do the task I find it was easy and kick myself for taking so long to get it done. Then my energy comes back up!
Karen, isn’t it fascinating!? It’s true, for the most part the thing we spend tons of time procrastinating about usually takes so little time to complete. I have found that the trick to not get caught up in it is to remind myself that it won’t take as much time or be as hard as I’m thinking and just get it done. Less kicking ourselves and more patting ourselves on the back for a job well done =)
–Kim Ravida
I can’t or it is too hard is a game of the mind when we do something out of the ordinary. The mind is et up to keep us safe and safe means something known. So when ever we do something new, there Is no reference point., so the mind does not know if it is safe and have to come up with excuse to keep us from doing it and keep being safe. Darn it reptilian mind. We want to have fun here.
Juan, you mentioned my #1 word, fun! It’s no fun when were are thinking and feeling it’s gonna be so hard. It’s not that we won’t get caught in it, it’s that we learn not to stay in it for long!
–Kim Ravida