The Trouble Isn’t Interest, It’s Force
Dear [FIRST NAME GOES HERE],
The Waves of Focus course and community is now open to new members through November 2nd.
- Kourosh
_________________________
A familiar refrain from many a wandering mind.
Too often we say it’s all about interest or urgency, something shiny or on fire. We throw up our hands and say, “without these we can’t do anything.”
But there’s so much more going on than simply interest. Interest, after all, is a deeply complex emotion. In fact, it may be more about an injured sense of trust within ourselves.
An Example
It would seem simple, for example, to set up a “thing to do” from 4-5pm. But a whole series of questions can appear, each belying a lack of trust:
- How will I feel when that time comes?
- What will I be in the middle of?
- Would I be able to stop if I got started?
- Would I be able to get back if I need to set it aside?
- Would I even know what to do if I started? And what if I don’t?
- What if other things come up while I’m working? Will I even realize it?
- Would I miss yet another important matter?
- What if I run off on a thousand tangents in the meantime?
Years of experience have taught us that things can go very wrong very quickly. Why even start?
Where to Grow Trust
The practice is to grow trust that we can ride emotional waves besides desire and urgency. In other words, can we engage if we “don’t feel like it.” That doesn’t mean we ignore those feelings. Quite the contrary, the exercise becomes one of agency: that ability to decide and engage non reactively.
This is not something we grow automatically. By definition, it cannot be forced. A visit-based approach, as is my encouraged unit of work, can be one method to gather that over time.
When we can trust ourselves to find those seeds, the world starts to open up. The heavy fog of impossibility begins to lift. We can not only be on top of our work, we can start more reliably getting to things that matter to us, feel more confidence in our visions and how we develop them and even improve our relationships.
We garden that spirit through risk and bravery, and we do so in a kind considered way.
- Kourosh
PS. If you find these newsletters to be helpful and are interested in a structured deep dive into transforming your workflows over time, not through some next hack of whatever sort, check out the Waves of Focus. Doors are now open to new members until November 2nd.
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