You Know You’re Killing Yourself and You Don’t Do Anything About It
Vulnerable thoughts on how to finally stop acting oblivious and take control.
Understand this: you are capable of achieving anything you want, but you won’t.
I say this with certainty because it’s 99% true — there’s no point in focusing on that 1% exception because it won’t be you.
I’m almost certain of it. Why? Because you already know that 1% exists. You already know you can do it, but you still don’t. Why hold out hope?
You fail every day to do the things you know you need to do in order to accomplish those ambitious dreams of yours and actualize that grand vision you have for your future.
It’s insane how something can mean so much to us but not be enough to stir up action.
It feels like the only thing that makes life feel purposeful is growing and having a dream to chase, and yet we can’t get ourselves to do it.
We just…can’t.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? If we can just do it, we could make the intangible…tangible. We are so in the loop about the formula of success, but clearly, knowing isn’t enough.
It’s always been the doing. Always.
Self-help is amazing in that it makes us highly aware of where we currently are. We become aware of whether we are living with intention and we start believing in ourselves for a change, becoming more and more in tune with our intrinsic knowledge that life is worth living because it is malleable. We can do something about it, and that’s great to know. Dreams are worth chasing because they don’t have to remain dreams. We inherently know that we are capable of accessing a world so few have seen. And yet, self-help is the worst for all the same reasons.
It would seem that it’s better to remain oblivious to our power than it is to be made aware of it.
Whether we know or remain oblivious to this power, there’s little to no hope we would actualize anything we want out of this life, but at least in oblivion life gives you the courtesy of not knowing how much you’re killing yourself.
At least in oblivion you might even stumble into success and do all the right things without all of the B.S. fluff you might have with access to self-help information.
I guess the same accident could happen if you are becoming knowledgeable on the self and how to better it, but there’s the whole “knowledge” problem again — it’s good to have, but makes things worse if those lessons are not acted upon and learned from (which is often the case).
Sure, I’m making all the numbers up. Still, I bet that 90% of the people out there who absorb self-help info (me included) are all just knowledge zombies overly aware of every passing second and how much we are killing ourselves each time we fail to do the hard things in order to create a life worth living.
The pain of not doing what’s required to actualize your dreams is greater than the pain of going through it, sure, but when you’re in the heat of battle with your own mind as you attempt to go through that barrier, it’s hard to access this truth and use it as fuel.
Steven Pressfield calls it the Resistance, I call it the barrier. I try not to give it too much power by capitalizing the first letter because it already has enough of a hold over all of us. I’ve already named the damn thing for crying out loud.
Either way, whatever you call it, there’s no doubt that the barrier is unbelievably strong. What’s worse is there’s no other way to get past it than to toughen the hell up and run through it. There’s literally no other way. You have to do it.
You are in control, and that’s either a blessing or a curse.
For a lot of people, it’s a curse because we will most likely fail in trying to get past that barrier, and self-help has made us highly aware of our shortcomings.
Oddly and backward enough, we humans have a tendency to make things worse after failure by finding comfort in misery. Instead of learning from said failures and shortcomings and finding peace in resiliency and course correction, we convince ourselves that we’re finished and wallow in despair because it’s easier to quit than to keep going.
The problem is we haven’t really quit, have we? Long after you’ve decided that you’re done pursuing your dreams, your soul continues to long for them because it brings you a sense of purpose. Your mind then reminds your soul of all the work it will take and how many times you’ve failed before. Thus, your new home torn, residing somewhere in between two parts of yourself that cripple the very foundation of your being.
There are those who bitch, and then there are those who take life by the reins despite the bitching. The latter realizes that it was their bitching that prevented them from even putting up a fight against the barrier.
I’ve led something of a double life, navigating the two stages of bitching and doing something about it, but I’ve spent far too much time in the former.
I had to stop writing articles for a while because I couldn’t find peace in getting my hands to type life advice to you about something I wasn’t putting into practice.
Then, something funny happened: I realized my fear of being a “hypocrite” was just a facade I put up to avoid once again pushing past the barrier.
My “hypocrite” excuse was a veil, a smokescreen, a cloak that made me feel cozy and hidden in the all-too-familiar pain that arises from failing to do the hard things. It made me feel safe, even if just for a bit. That was the reality.
When I dug deep, I realized it was all just an excuse. I was self-sabotaging.
I had to realize that the only way to get the life you want is to pursue it. You’re either doing what needs to be done or not. Sure, maybe you’re more of an imposter than the real thing at the beginning stages, but if you are actively pursuing that thing every day and nonstop, you have to realize you are doing the very thing that the people you look up to are doing. You’re on the same path, and the only difference is time.
If you value patience, that difference is nothing. Let Earl Nightingale remind you:
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
If you want to be a writer and you just started writing, you’re a writer.
If you want to be a famous musician and you just started writing music, you may not be famous right away, but you are indeed doing the very thing famous musicians do.
If you want to be a bodybuilder and you just started hitting the pump, you can’t kick yourself for not being where you want to be or else you will never get there. You’ll never be able to overcome the barrier if you don’t realize that working out, whether you’ve just started or have been doing it for years, is what bodybuilders do. It’s only when you stop because you’re discouraged or frustrated do you then fail.
It’s nonsensical when you think about it: you’re angry because you’ve been doing something for a few months and not seeing the results you want, so you stop doing the very thing that will lead to those results (that people you aspire to do as well) because it doesn’t seem like things are leading in that direction?
I’m curious, what do you think is gonna work then, if not the thing that actually will? Or are you gonna lie and say you don’t care anymore?
The problem is when you get caught in a haze dreaming and smiling about that future that sets your soul ablaze, you don’t factor failure into the equation. You don’t factor in the barriers you have to push past to get there, and because you aren’t prepared for them, you buckle, tuck your tail, and dash in the other direction at the first site of struggle.
Once you realize that you just have to do it long enough and consistently enough to get there, at some point in the process you will convince yourself that you are more of the thing you are chasing than the thing you once were, and you will feel less like an imposter.
I had to realize that if I didn’t get my ass back in the chair to start writing these articles, then I would never move away from the position of feeling like an imposter writer or a hypocritical motivational guru if I didn’t continue to do the very things they do.
I also realized that I don’t have to give advice when I’m feeling like a failure. Maybe you can relate to a flawed human being because we all are.
Maybe I don’t have to come from a position of power like I thought, but instead a position of vulnerability and hard truths.
Perhaps I could use my words as a warning.
Perhaps I can at least string together words in a way that clearly articulates feelings we all experience but haven’t been able to express.
Maybe I should give myself more credit and realize I do have things to share because I’ve accomplished more than I like to give myself credit for, and if my fear of being a hypocrite bothers me like I claim (even though it’s more so another excuse to avoid writing), then I need to stop bitching and practice and act on the things I absorb and preach about!
Perhaps you could follow my journey with me: I aim to do everything in my power to prove to you it’s all possible and worth pursuing.
We have to learn to stop being intimidated by the barrier. We have to stop being intimidated by the pursuit or journey of the very thing. We have to stop being intimidated by the idea of being vulnerable and actually trying every single day. We have to stop being intimidated by the distance between where we are and where we want to be or it will make the fight with the barrier that much harder. In fact, it will make the fight impossible to win.
If you’re doing the things you need to do and feeling lost or unmotivated or lacking trust in the process, keep going. Please please please aim to be that 1%. Show us all that dreams are still worth fighting for because people are still actualizing them. Show us that we are capable of change because people do it all the damn time. Be an inspiration! That’s what I hope to do.
If you’re feeling like an imposter or a hypocrite because you are still having your own struggles with the barrier, first, know that you are not alone. Second, know that every day you spend grinding, you are doing the very thing that the ideal person you aim to be is doing, and that counts for something my friend. Over a consistent amount of time, it will have accounted for everything.
You are only an imposter once you’ve stopped the pursuit. The moment you fall back into bad habits and start ignoring the things you need to do, you have to get back on the horse and convince yourself it’s worth riding.
The only way you craft a mind strong enough to break through barriers is to keep hacking away at them as they arrive. The more you are able to get yourself to do those things that you don’t want to do, the stronger your mind becomes.
I’m no expert at this, but I can talk about it because I’m not saying anything we don’t already know. I know the barrier is strong because we hide from it despite our abundant knowledge of the harm we are doing to ourselves when we don’t act on said knowledge. Marianne Williamson said:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We are only scared of this inherent power because we know we are capable of awakening it, but we also know that we most likely won’t because of the many battles we’ve lost to the barrier.
I wish the answer was more than “you just have to do it”, but that’s all there is to it.
Though it’s quite scary, maybe we can find comfort knowing that the success we find in life is a direct result of the barriers we are willing to push past.
Your dreams are on the other side of the adversity within your mind. You’re already aware of this, so do yourself a favor and execute. Act on those things you need to do consistently for the long haul. Be relentless. Be unwavering. Be a force to be reckoned with. Start or continue the journey before you fully drive yourself into a void of madness you won’t recover from.
I’m rooting for you to be in that 1% where you finally decide to execute and change your life.
You’re capable, my dear friends. Live your life in such a way that you won’t regret having not done so.