One Day At A Time

disarrangedjane(55)

Published in

#blog

Words

707

Reading

4 min

Listen

Play

Day 1

You are what you do daily
~John C. Maxwell

Yesterday, my journey began.

I started my day like most days. Reading the daily devotional, Discord, coffee, breakfast, Discord, dishes and laundry, checking Steemit, Discord, more coffee...(did I mention Discord?) Reading the devotional yesterday though, a sentence stuck out to me. Struck like lightning, really. "From deciding, to decided", it read.

That intrigues me, as I've been suffering with some tough issues, and I know I want to make changes for the better in my life. However, it seems as if I am paralyzed by ambivalence and fear. I don't know where or how to begin to make the needed changes. When I think I have a plan, I start to doubt myself. Either I convince myself that it's the wrong plan of action, or I believe I'll screw it up somehow, and talk myself out of taking any action at all.
I wrote the aforementioned quote on a magnetic whiteboard, and placed it on the refrigerator. Knowing my tendency to forget things, I thought this a good idea. There, I would see it everytime I walked into the kitchen, which is roughly 6,000 times a day. There it was, in black and white (literally). Satisfied, I went about the remainder of my morning routine.

From deciding, to decided.

Settling in front of my laptop, I loaded up Steemit to see who was up to what that day. I checked all the usual suspects, and then went on to dilly dally around in the categories. Feeling particularly in the doldrums, read a few posts tagged with love, sex, life, eventually finishing in psychology. Initially, I was looking for the "relationship" category, figuring it would be loaded with posts. Imagine my surprise when I found none! There is no relationship category? If there is I couldn't find it. Which is why I even bothered checking the "sex" category. I thought perhaps there'd be something about relationships there. There wasn't. (At least, not in a way that I desired. Though "desire" was covered. Extensively.)

There I was then, in the "psych department", when I came across a post by @dedicatedguy.
I was astounded at the timeliness of seeing the post, being that he had written it 6 days prior. A beautifully written post, all about precisely what is causing my failure to thrive: limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs

So long as I continue to trust it, everything I do, anything I try, will forever be limited by my self-doubt. Any success will evade me. Every act of courage will devolve into surrender. My full potential, never realized. It's said that fear is a great motivator. True. I imagine I'd be motivated to run a mile in 4 minutes flat provided, say, the vicious dog next door were to chase after me, for example. Conversely, fear can also stop someone dead in their tracks, losing any momentum that had been gained. This is the consequence of fear. The reward of indecision.

At this realization, I made a resolution to move from deciding, to decided. I owe it to the little girl inside me to find out what it's like, to cease living in fear of failure and self-loathing.

First things first

So, where to begin? What's the first step? Frighteningly enough, it's to take inventory. To identify those beliefs that are holding me back. Much easier said than done, especially when to do so threatens compounding already depressing feelings of worthlessness. As @dedicatedguy points out, "properly identifying those limiting beliefs can be a little bit challenging...because knowing they are sabotaging themselves with some of their own thoughts is not something to be happy about." Couldn't have said it better myself. Actually, I didn't. He did.

With that, I woke up this morning, and grabbed a journal off the bookshelf. A journal that has been sitting there for years, just waiting for me to gather the courage to take a quick jaunt through the rocky terrain of self examination. Yay.

So here I am. Day 1. To figure shit out, write it down and change it.

(all images: pixabay.com)