The gap between who you Are & who you want to be.
Most days I feel a gap between who I think I am, and who I imagine I could be. Most days this gap is filled with pain, fear, and confusion. Every once in a while and some times just because I’ve had enough coffee that gap shrinks, a bridge forms to where I can see across that void and touch the possibility.
There’s another way to bridge that distance, one which doesn’t involve the ashtray sensation of a caffeine overdose, and that way is this.
The person you want to be is only a behavior.
The thing that we all want are the benefits of the behaviors that we wish we did. We want to feel good because we do yoga or work out. We want to have written a book, or be an influencer… we want. We think that if we felt better, or had a portfolio than we could do. This is putting the cart before the horse. It’s obvious but it’s also what blinds us. I find my-self falling for this thinking again and again.
An ancient tree struggling out of a crack in the rock on a high mountain pass in the Olympic National Range. — Peter B.
All of this becoming takes place in time.
This Vision of who we could be, of who we wish we where can be a trap. We can become target fixated and loose touch with our surrounding reality. We are whole people. Our lives are full!
As much as we wish that we could simplify down to a specific activity or direction, most of us are not in a position where this is possible. We can’t just live in a gym and 4 years later pop out as a fully formed Arnold Schwarzenegger. We have lives, and that takes time, mental energy and dedication, all of which are finite. Because of that we can get over loaded and default back into a state of “I wish,” because wishing is so much easier.
Lone Tree on a ridge with puffy clouds behind it. — Peter B.
How would Nature approach the problem?
Wishing like fear, is some times direct, but sometimes these emotions get in moods and dress themselves up in ways that deflect our attention from the underlying drive. I have my own specific cocktail of show stoppers:
Getting overwhelmed, crushed.
Pulled in too many directions, confused.
And feeling that if I can’t spend X absurd number of hours to do X perfectly, then why bother? Perfection paralysis.
Vision, effort and becoming all dance around a universal element that needs named, Time. All of this becoming takes place in time, that miraculous, merciless universal force that always takes too long, is over too fast, can never get enough of and is wished away. Our relationship to time is another thing that’s tripping us up.
as long as effort and attention is applied to the little things rather then the dream you will grow.
It is so easy to think “I want X” (A body, mind, bank account etc…), and never get it, never even move towards it, because its’ so far away in time, effort and will. In my moments of grace I think about how nature would approach the problem? Nature has no ego, nor does it have a perception of time. Nature is indomitable, always moving on all the smallest levels at once. This is a damn good approach!
Deep Forest Path. Olympic National Range. — Peter B.
Darren Hardy’s book The Compound Effect is a nice tool that illuminates this aspect, and can help you start where you are.
