Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then I’ll begin….

“Proceed, and you will gradually build momentum” from The Tao Te Ching is my mantra for the month of January. It’s a New Year, time to look at our goals, both personal and business, and this year is set to be a very exciting one with some of our biggest goals to date and the energetic New Year just beginning. Plans for new training courses, books, blogs, staff, property – we find ourselves really rather uncomfortably outside of our comfort zones at times. I find words of wisdom a tremendous help; whether you want to call them affirmations, mantras, reminders, it doesn’t matter. Whether you want to write them down or stick them on your desk or your fridge, just remembering a line that helps you can be a huge boost when you need one. I imagine there are many of us in this place at the moment, facing fears and going ahead with plans that aren’t quite fully fleshed out, doing it anyway with some trepidation and lots of determination. January is for goals, comfort zones are made for stretching….
Why are comfort zones so darn comfortable? It can make it quite difficult to want to leave our warm cocoons that we know so well. Whether that’s a job we no longer love, a life we no longer fit into, people we don’t want to be around, a venture that is entirely new to us. How do we get out? I step outside of mine and at times it is exhilarating, at times scary, and more often than not just simply uncomfortable. It’s not too many mince pies making my jeans tight that causes this feeling, it’s the knowledge that I don’t have all the answers, that I may well do it wrong, that I could be vulnerable here. It’s leaving me in that place we all have to go to, it’s where growth occurs, and it’s where I can feel myself occasionally getting ready to take flight and run in the opposite direction!
Running is good after so many mince pies, but running away to hide in our comfort zones isn’t helpful, EVER. I’m forever telling my children that we learn more by making mistakes than by success. Many art and craft sessions with my boys are punctuated with tears; as their pictures don’t match their ideas of perfection, more sheets are angrily crumpled to my words of encouragement -“This is how you learn”. (Much to their annoyance). One day they will thank me?! When we are successful at things, they can often be the very things we’ve done before, they’re easy, we know how to do them, so we repeat them, easy peasy. Not so easy to do something new; we’re unpracticed, unprepared, vulnerable and a little afraid of failure. But if we don’t try we don’t learn. It is the very act of failing that teaches us our lessons and our new knowledge that takes us to the next step. Which is why I love the line from The Tao Te Ching. If we don’t get started how on earth can we ever build momentum! I have to keep reminding myself of this fact. It also reminds me of Susan Jeffers book “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway” which is a wonderful book with great perspectives on decision making. You can’t actually get anything wrong when you live with this perspective, that everything is as it should be. It certainly is a much easier way to view life. Our egos, the aspect of our personality that lives on our shoulders telling us we’re not ready, not good enough, there’s no plan….we will NEVER be ready if we listen to that voice. And one day it will be too late. Better to start without being ready and build your momentum. Who cares about ready? What about done?
“We only need to know what we need to know today”. I think this is one of my own sayings but I’ve read so many books I may well have pinched it! Akin to saying live in the moment. Our minds have a tendency to take us off on flights into the future, imagining all kinds of generally negative scenarios, which more often than not don’t happen. So I try to remember to just concentrate on what I need to know today, rather that what I think I may need to know in the future. Because, if I proceed and build momentum, it is pretty much assured that as each day passes new knowledge will be revealed to me, but only if I proceed.
“Proceed and you will gradually build momentum” Here’s to proceeding in January, and to momentum. Let’s get stretching!