The Magic You're Looking For
You know what you're doing that's holding you back.
Yes, you know!
The drinking that's too much, too often, justified by stress that everyone else manages without a bottle. The scrolling that steals hours you claim you don't have. The relationships you stay in because leaving feels harder than slowly dying inside. The way you try to control everything and everybody because you don't trust and want to make yourself feel valuable.
You know.
And I hope, that soon, you finally get tired of your own bullshit.
I hope you wake up one morning disgusted with the excuses you've been feeding yourself. "I just need to get this project done first." "I'll start when things calm down." "After the holidays." "When I have more time."
There is no perfect time. There never was. You're not waiting for the right moment - you're avoiding the uncomfortable truth that you have to choose.
You can't grow and stay the same. Choose.
I have a client who started studying law in her 40's. Everything in her head screamed it was too late, too hard, too impractical. Her emotions told her she wasn't smart enough. Her thoughts convinced her she was being ridiculous.
She did it anyway. Because she wanted to become someone different more than she wanted to stay comfortable.
Never trust your thoughts or emotions too much. They're just electrical impulses trying to keep you exactly where you are. Your brain's job isn't to make you happy - it's to keep you alive. And alive doesn't require growth. It just requires staying safe, staying small, staying the same.
The voice in your head that says "you can't" is the same voice that convinced you drinking every night was normal. That settling was smart. That waiting was wise.
Stop listening.
I hope you actually harden the fuck up and start respecting yourself enough to change. Not the fake respect that buys expensive things for the person you are now. The real respect that does hard things for the person you're becoming.
Being kind to yourself isn't enabling your weaknesses. It's having the courage to face what's broken and fix it.
This advice? It's for me too. Right now I'm scared, unsure, don't always trust or believe in myself. But I'm doing the work anyway. Five weeks of building instead of talking. Training my body for Greenland even when I don't feel like it. Making the calls I don't want to make. Writing the proposals that might get rejected.
Because the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding.
The transformation you want is on the other side of the conversation you're not having. The discipline you're not practicing. The decision you're not making.
Stop planning. Stop preparing. Stop waiting for confidence to arrive before you start.
Just start.
Get someone to hold you accountable if you can't trust yourself. Find a coach. Join a program. Tell someone what you're going to do and when. Make the cost of staying the same higher than the cost of changing.
I hope you surprise yourself this year. Not with how much you can endure, but with how much you can become when you stop negotiating with the person who's been holding you back.
That person? They've had their turn. They got you this far. Thank them and move on.
Time to choose who you're becoming over who you've been.
The magic happens when you start before you're ready.