Day 29–100 Days 100 Ways Being Visible
Some days not quitting is progress
I used my diary today to keep myself honest. I felt like I imagine a caged animal might feel doing everything it could to escape. Over the course of the day, I was on-task working on my course for three and half hours, I did an hour and a half of urgent work such as following up sales calls and two hours of necessary but not urgent work that could have waited. I said I would achieve six hours of effort on my course.
What happened? In the afternoon I wasn’t making progress, got distracted and fell in a slump. A mood of resignation and sloth enveloped me like a fog and I just couldn’t see my way out of it. I spent the last hour of the day watching an instructional video that helped a bit and was at least on-task.
When I got home, I was ready to quit 100 Days 100 Ways Being Visible and give up on my online course. It all seemed too hard. I was feeling the ‘resistance’ (as Steven Pressfield calls the experience in his book the War of Art) and if Steven is to be believed it must be vitally important to my soul that I do this work.
Rule of thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more RESISTANCE we will feel towards pursuing it. (Steven Pressfield)
I would love to be able to tell a moving transformational story about how I got myself out of this slump with a great self-coaching technique and am now feeling motivated and back in action. Unfortunately, I can’t tell that story because I didn’t coach myself out of the slump. My partner did offer to ‘talk about it’ with me and then graciously listen to me complain about myself before I gave her permission to ask me some more probing questions. Her questions helped me to remember that I do have strong evidence that the problems I say my course solves are very real. She also reminded me I have personally met, literally, hundreds of people in the Australian Public Service who are suffering and looking for solutions to the leadership and management problems I address. As I talked with my partner I felt my mood lift like a fog burning off a lake in the morning sun.
Today I will not quit.
Knowledge
I am reminded of the importance of having family, friends and colleagues that support us on our journeys. Sometimes they need to do nothing other than be there, sometimes their listening to us is enough, and other times it is their coaching that helps us shift our mood and become more resourceful than our ‘thrown’ way allows.
Progress
Some days not quitting is progress. Today was one of those days.
29/30/100 (Number of days goals met/ number of days into project/ 100)
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