You know that saying “You always find the thing you’re looking for in the last place you look”? Well it’s true…snarky, but true. In that same vein, many of us struggle on and on in our lives, looking here-there-everywhere for an answer to why things are the way they are and what they can do to get beyond this to have happiness and the life they deserve. And the answer is the one thing they don’t want to face, the one thing they most don’t want to do, the one thing they have avoided since the beginning. Because you always find what you’re looking for…
We all have to do things in life that we don’t want to. Even when we are living our absolutely best life, enjoying the crap out of everything we do, skipping along in a life of bliss, there will always be one or two things we have to do that we don’t want to. No business owner wants to deal with taxes, but if you want to have your own business you have to deal with them. You can make the process fun, you can make it easy, you can enjoy the people you work with, but you still have to do them and no one looks forward to it. But when someone is stuck, many times it’s because they are refusing to do the one thing they don’t want to do, don’t want to look at, don’t want to confront.
There are times when I will advise people to just hold their breath, do it and get through it. Sometimes that really is the answer. But many times it isn’t. Because the reason why the person doesn’t want to do the thing is what is actually the sticking point. They don’t want to because it’s overwhelming, because they have built up so much fear of failure, fear of consequences, fear of rejection, fear of (insert issue here) that they can’t even look at it. They don’t want to because it means their life will change and as much as they want the result, they don’t want to make the effort, to do what it takes, because the fantasy is so much better than the reality. Real change is scary.
Looking at these underlying issues can reveal entire landscapes of assumptions and identity pieces that are like skyscrapers built on sand. If you start looking you have to realize what you’ve built all these years isn’t viable, isn’t sturdy, isn’t really you at all. Then the realization hits that the one thing you’ve been avoiding looking at is what you’ve known all along. It’s not the thing, the process, the job that you’ve been avoiding, it’s you. And when you’re ready to really look at you, to acknowledge yourself, then the stuck piece gets unstuck, the actions start being easy, the path becomes clear, and things start rolling.