Welcome to “The Looking Glass”, a weekly newsletter journey of personal growth into mindset, meaning and mastery in work.
#26 – 21 Oct 2022
Hello friend,
Thanks again for being here!
Here’s an insight, a question, and a quote I reflected on over the last week.
💡 You don’t need another sign
I was scrolling Instagram, and this quote caught my eye:
You don’t need another sign. The fact that you can’t stop thinking about it is the sign you’re looking for.
– Light Watkins
That hits hard.
We always procrastinate and hide from what we know already.
You probably have something that you know you should be doing in your life.
But for some reason, you are not.
Don’t be too harsh on yourself. Working through the mess of things on our growth journey takes time.
I sometimes feel I have wasted almost two years on my little journey just to get here, writing this weekly newsletter consistently and building my coaching practice.
On the one hand, it feels like I haven’t got very far. But when I look back to where I was before taking this leap of faith and publishing online, I’m a million miles away from that old, scared person, flying under the radar, who wouldn’t face up to “the sign”.
Get real with yourself. You are thinking about something important to you. You can’t stop thinking about it, but you are avoiding it. And it’s time to do something about it.
Start this weekend. Pull out a notebook and write a massive brain dump of everything in your head about that one thing.
The next step will be hiding in there.
If you still can’t see it, you’re avoiding “the sign”.
❔ Your doubts are in proportion to the size of your dream
Do you find when you attempt a big new project or undertaking outside of your comfort zone, that you suddenly get plagued with a million doubts?
Well, it turns out this is normal.
We all feel it.
I have come to see this as counterintuitive, thanks to Steven Pressfield. If you have not heard of Steven, check him out. He is a treasure. Steven is a successful fiction author, but I love his series of non-fiction books, including The War of Art and Turning Pro. These books will help you move from stuck to creative output in whatever you pursue.
Steven famously labels these doubts we face as “The Resistance”. It’s that internal voice telling you you’re not good enough and you should just keep your head down and stay in your lane.
Resistance is this negative force of self-sabotage that will work against us anytime we try to move from a lower level to a higher level, ethically, morally, creatively.
If you have an idea for a book, if you have an idea for a podcast, if you have an idea for this studio or something that you want to do, a voice will come into your head immediately that will say:‘Who are you to put this thing together? This has been done a million times, and it’s been done better than you could do or ever would do. You’re too old. You’re too young. You’re too fat. You’re too skinny. You don’t have enough education. You have too much education, etc.’
– Steven Pressfield
The Resistance is actually trying to protect us. Keep us safe. But we no longer live out on the savannah where we have to fight to survive every day against big animals.
In today’s world, we get rewarded for pursuing our creative endeavours and pursuing our life’s work which can make a positive impact on others.
The trouble is, if you listen to The Resistance, you will never follow your calling. You will never start your big thing. And that is a terrible shame not to share your gifts with the world.
And that negative force is universal, I can tell you from thousands of emails of got.
– Steven Pressfield
And not only is it universal, but it’s the same voice in all of our heads. It may be tailored a little bit to you or me, but it’s the same voice.
And when we hear this voice in our head that says you’re not good enough; it’s all been done, etc., what makes that so powerful against us is we think it’s our own thoughts.
We think, ‘oh, that’s me assessing the situation objectively’, but it’s not. It’s this other siren voice, this force that’s out there, that’s a fact of nature.
And once we can say ‘oh that’s not me’, that kind of the key to the whole thing.
Everyone feels this. You’ve heard of imposter syndrome, right? Well, most people successful people say this never goes away. As we rise to new levels of success, we face new challenges beyond our comfort zone. This series of peaks and troughs are all part of the beauty of growing, and it’s a sign you’re on the right path.
Remember, that opposing voice is not you.
Another tremendous insight from Steven, which I will leave you with today, is this:
The shadow of Resistance is in proportion to the dream size.
So be aware that you will have massive doubts when chasing big dreams.
The more Resistance you feel, the more you are probably onto a good thing. It’s a sign that you’re on the way to the work you’re meant to do.
In contrast, if you don’t feel any resistance, maybe you need to unpack that and reflect:
What project are you avoiding that would trigger The Resistance?
P.S. if you want to dip your toe into Steven’s philosophy, I love his podcast interview’s on The Rich Roll Podcast and The Tim Ferriss Show.
💬 A quote to ponder – On meaning beyond ourselves
Does the outer space into which we dissolve taste of us at all?
– Rainer Maria Rilke
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Cheers!
