Get Past That Mental Block With A Less Meaningful Goal

Proving you can do something - anything, may be just the thing.

Sometimes we have massive mental blocks when it comes to pursuing an activity that means something to us. Maybe that is writing, maybe running a marathon, or starting a daily meditation practice. This is when it is time to train the mind to let us do the thing, when all it wants to do is talk us out of it.

I find it is best to do this by starting something else that doesn’t carry the emotional weight of the thing we really want to do. For instance, when I wanted to start a YouTube channel long ago, I was completely blocked. I couldn’t get it started. I would talk myself out of it or find some other thing to occupy my time. Every time.

One day, completely unrelated, I had a notion to run a mile every single day. I wanted to shake up my routine. So, like Forrest Gump, I just ran. It was easy for me to do this, because I didn’t really care much for or about running. I had no internal pressure to make it into anything bigger than that the one mile a day.

Start something less meaningful in order to train your brain…

After about 14 days however, my knees began to bother me and though the rest of me felt great and accomplished, I stopped. I didn’t want to hurt myself. Then, out of nowhere on day 15, without thought, I did a video for YouTube and published it.

I couldn’t believe that I just did it after all those years of psyching myself out of it. I didn’t even give it a second thought. Until I was all done. Then I wondered, what made me suddenly so brave? And I just knew that it was the running. Not so much the activity of running, but proving to my mind that it wasn’t going to be able to talk me out of it.

In the process of taking this meaningless activity and making a daily habit out of it, I had trained my brain. Without trying, I convinced my ego to basically think, “she is going to do what she says she is going to do, so I won’t argue it”.

This was such a valuable lesson to me. It would eventually lead me to starting my own business, and a life altering meditation practice. I realized that by creating a habit we don’t have an emotional stake in, we can build our internal mind muscles up to handle doing the big scary thing.

If you think about it, we do this all the time as children. There is always a new habit we must take up, like brushing our teeth or washing our hands before we eat. As children, we always were having to learn new subjects and try new activities. It was all part of the process of life.

This can and should continue into adulthood. Part of changing and growing and evolving is continuing to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and try new things. We all have something we have always wanted to do and find reasons not to.

So, try something else. Prove to your mind that you will follow through on something. After a while, you will know when it is time to do the big scary thing. Then, without thought, just jump in! Once you have done the scary thing enough, it isn’t so scary anymore. You have also gained the power to change your thoughts and guide your life in the direction that calls to you.

If meditation doesn’t seem that scary for you as a daily practice, I highly recommend making this one habit stick. It is from the space of connecting to your highest self each day that you will begin to receive the meaningful nudges in the direction you truly want to go.

Live your best life. Continue evolving, keep healing the old wounds and making new memories. Love yourself enough to finally do that big scary thing. That’s what life is all about.