The reward for your courage to move into an uncomfortable, even undesired place is the good things that will come after. These good things are a direct result of your action you did in the past — sometimes only 5 minutes ago, sometimes ages. There’s a saying that who you are today is how you worked two years ago.
Riding the wave
The moment you’ve received this reward by riding the wave where things seem to happen so mellowly and smoothly is when you realized it was because of what you did before. It feels good. It’s pure enjoyment. It’s like auto pilot or the feeling of passive income when you only need to superficially supervise what’s going on because the plane is flying by itself.
„I believe in the good things coming“
You can call it flow, being in the zone or whatever you fancy. Fact is: Because you took action, good things followed. With action I don’t necessarily mean literal action where you make or hope to make an immediate impact that’ll positively effect the cause you support. I mean the action that is done with purpose.
Action is also thinking and holding on for a bit, or a bit longer — taking active time to do something. The action I mean is actively, consciously and purposefully doing something. It’s the action that is at least active but at best proactive — an action that came from within yourself.
Cleaning houses as the eye-opener
Today when I decided to expand my search scope looking for a day job, I included cleaning households as an option — I did it 2 years for some months and despite being a relatively uncomfortable, tiring and sometimes painful job I actually liked it (mainly because I like the pain and helping solve people’s problems on whatever level). I contacted that company that knows clients who want clean rooms.
This is what followed:
Two emails from a job platform I’m observing through email notifications. Both in the field of telemarketing and sales — a field I worked in ten years ago, which I enjoyed as well. You could say that these two emails would have arrived in my inbox anyway. I would say: „Probably“. But I don’t think the effect it had on you (without the effort of going into an uncomfortable direction) would have been the same with the arrival of these two emails.
Getting out of your comfort zone starts in your head
In fact, cleaning itself is not so super uncomfortable. The way I mean „uncomfortable” is when I entered an uncomfortable place related to my mindset. I was adjusting myself and getting comfortable with the idea that I would make money only through writing for these online platforms where clients give you a topic with their brief and how much they would pay you — per word.
I was thinking that I could make a living only writing these texts that would end up in an hourly rate of something in between 5 to 1 Euros. Writing at home and making money was the ideal scenario I built up in my world and it felt good and doable.
Remember your goals
However, moving away from this world and thinking that I want to make more than just a few Euros this month — avoiding scarcity mindset in the starving artist mentality — I reconsidered and found out: „Alex, you need to get your ass moving. The money is out there. You just need to collect it and move out of your own prison (your four walls called home).“
That’s what I did — not literally because I „only“ made phone calls and wrote e-mails. But I took action. I became proactive. I put effort into it, and I mentally prepared myself that this coming month of August is going to be full of struggle, pain, „blood” and sweat. It’s action month, a month of action — smart, conscious, with purpose and meaning serving my goal.
The take-away from today: There’s no movement unless your mindset has already been made the move before. There’s no result unless you moved already and took action before. Get into these situations where you feel insecure and provoke yourself to feel dumb, unsure, vulnerable and ridiculous.
Guess what?
These will be the situations where you will a) learn to shine like phoenix from the ashes, b) learn to improvise acting in an agile manner and c) learn to rejoice the wow moments of now being fully present and able to make use of your full capacity, skills and capabilities.
You’ll probably get red in the phase, stutter and be shy in the beginning but having overcome this scary moment you will evolve into a better, more powerful you so that the good things will follow — and flow. Flow and ride the wave. You’ll be unstoppable. “Who Gon Stop Me?” Only you.
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This was episode 49 of the #weekdaykickoff 🌊 Every weekday (Mon-Fri). Also find me on Anchor so we can talk — literally talk from person to person!
Also published on Medium.