21 okt Zero fucks given,

Well, as you probably may have noticed Mark Manson inspired the shit out of me. His book, two hundred and ten pages, is definitely one that’s worth reading. Mark writes a lot about values, about how we live up to them, how we’re used to our comfortzone and ofcourse how to NOT give a fuck.

It’s time for some realness. Time for some confessions.

So where to begin .. It took me a long time to write the texts that I wanted to post on my website and to be fairly honest I struggled for months. Before I started writing them, I also struggled with the thought of having a website. I wanted a website BEFORE I actually started coaching. In my mind ‘launching my website’ was the first step that I had to take, because then I could put myself out there. Luckily some of my friends function as a mirror. So one good friend of mine convinced me, through asking questions, that a website wasn’t that necessary and guess what .. He was right. In January 2018, I started coaching WITHOUT even having a website. And it went perfectly well.  

This actually shows that there are more roads that obviously lead to Rome but it also shows the power of thought.

Now I know I struggled because I already had a path in mind which didn’t make me very flexible, as we all know is a possible risk of formulating a path or plan in advance. And you know hwat, the second struggle was right around the corner. I wanted to describe my WHY. Not a boring why, a catchy one, a real one, a ‘good’ one etcetera. Another delay of overthinking things and ending up being stuck inside my head. Mark’s words triggered me in a positive way.

“The more something threatens to change how well you see yourself living up to your values, the more you will avoid ever getting around to doing it. There’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort is inherently scary.” People are often so afraid of success, for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure, because it threatens who they believe themselves to be.” The example Mark added was the following one: “You avoid writing that screenplay you’ve always dreamed of because doing so would call into question your identity as a practical insurance adjuster”.

That’s exactly what was happening. The internal chatter: “I’m a beginner, not an experienced coach .. So what if I fail? If I’m going to post this, what will people think about it? Am I being original enough?” My perfectionism was taking over, combined with the importance of what people would think about me and the fact that I was about to ‘threaten’ my identity and my underlying values, such as “I say what I mean and I do what I say”. Not being able to shut that inner voice up, it kept the internal blockade for what it was.

“Despite dreaming about making a living through his art, the real potential of becoming an-artist-nobody-likes was far, far scarier than remaining an-artist-nobody’s-heard-of. At least he was comfortable with and used to being an-artist-nobody’s-heard-of.”

If you’re experiencing an internal blockade, you problably lose the ability to visualize things because of the pressure. I was. And I need to be able to visualize things in advance ‘cause that’s what eventually triggers me to get into a state of FLOW. “DO or NOT DO”, Mark wrote. The awareness of the fact that I was stuck, got me thinking about how to cut myself loose and get myself in motion. But the actual thinking didn’t necessarily help me. What helped me was;

“If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.”

Action > Inspiration > Motivation, REPEAT. As simple as it may sound, it worked for me. Not immediately, nope. But eventually, yes. I got myself in motion. Ideas popped up in my head. I slowly started visualizing again. Each piece of the puzzle was presenting itself, still shuffled. But shuffled pieces were better than nothing. ‘Cause when the pieces are shuffled the only thing that’s left to do is put them together. And that’s exactly what I did!

If I have to admit, I’m still workin’ on the subtle art of not giving a fuck .. What about you? Have you recently threatened your identity?

Bron: The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck – Mark Manson