Complacency kills too many dreams.
The fastest way to get complacent is to learn and do nothing about it. If you know better do better. 9 times out of 10, this is easier said than done. After all, Newton was right in so many ways when he found that objects at rest want to remain at rest and when it comes to people and life; when we feel stuck, it can seem impossible to get un-stuck.
The opposite of complacency is growth, and while I believe complacency comes from learning and doing nothing about it. I believe true growth comes from closing the gap between what you know and what you do. The smaller the space between belief and action, and the more momentum and growth you will have in your life.
The thing is, when you learn new information, your mind is forced to put it through 3 filters:
1. Belief
2. Understanding
3. Navigating Barriers
When you go through all three, you move forward. However, anywhere along the way, you may get caught up limiting the action you take.
If you believe it, you understand what you need to do about it, and you can navigate the obstacles to make it happen, you will change. You will grow. You will move forward. If you don’t truly believe it, game over. If you believe it, but don’t understand what to do about it, game over. If you believe it and know what to do about it, but don’t know how to navigate the obstacle… game over.
You need all three for real and lasting change!
I overheard a question asked the other day: “If you could put on a magic sweater that gave you a gift, what would it be and how would you use it to help others?”
My answer would be: To never forget what I learn and share those lessons with the people around me.
Sometimes I find myself having to relearn things I thought I had already grown through. Other times, I find myself looking up to the person I used to be because I respect the actions I use to take more than the actions I am currently taking. This all comes down to one simple thing: The space between what we believe and the action we take. The bigger the gap between belief and action, the more stuck we are. The smaller the gap, the greater the momentum we feel in our life.
I think our society identifies this as passion most of the time. We see a young person who learns about an injustice in the world around us, drops everything, moves across the country, sacrifices everything they own for a specific cause just weeks after really diving into it. We say, WOW!!! They are so passionate about _____. There is a respect there, because despite the cause, they put their money where their mouth is. They eliminated any space between what they believe and what they did. Those things became indistinguishable. They live the cause, they identify as the cause, and they can’t sleep without doing something because of it!
PASSION.
Normally maturity is mistaken for the median. We see maturity as an even state of being. A stable and sedentary attitude that is never over the barrier between passion and abandon. It’s okay to show passion as long as it doesn’t go too far. It’s okay to believe in something as long as it doesn’t demand drastic action; that would be reckless! There is a pressure to find the edge of authentic freedom and live just within it, so that we can keep the respect of our piers without making them too uncomfortable. The only problem is that the space of comfort is the gap between what we believe, or want to believe and what we are willing to act on.
SO… The big question becomes what do we do? What does this mean? How can I grow in a healthy way that doesn’t uproot everything in my life?
Reverse engineer the 3 filters our mind puts new information through.
1. Desire/Belief. What do you really believe? Are you willing to own it? Are you willing to think through it, talk through it and go through the process of understanding not only what you believe. But how you believe it and why you believe it?
2. Understanding. Do you understand what to do? Like do you really know how to put it in practice? Do you know what tools you need to develop and how to develop those tools to support what you know?
3. Navigating Barriers. Some of these barriers are real and some of them are excuses. Do the work and trash the excuses. And for the real barriers that remain, it’s time to take one next step. If one step seems too big right now, take a shuffle.
Order matters with this. Start with your desire/belief and make sure what you want to move forward with you truly believe in. Next work through what you need to understand to move yourself forward and when those two things have been done, look at what your next step is to overcome any obstacles in your way.
In coaching, this is my same philosophy: When someone is not making a correction, it is one of three reasons:
1. They don’t believe the correction will help or they don’t want to make the change for another reason such as fear.
2. They don’t understand the correction or how to apply the change.
3. They are physically unable to do what I am asking in which case it is time to take a step back and give them the tools to be stronger more flexible, etc.
Knowledge is sight to your path and when you act on that knowledge you give yourself forward momentum.
Don’t lie to yourself though, if you don’t truly believe it or want to change, own it! If you don’t understand it, own it! And if there is an obstacle you are unwilling to face right now, own that also! When you are willing to own it, you are also limiting the space between what you believe and what you do.
The crazy reality is, there never is space between what you believe and what you do. Only between what you say you believe and what you do. So, look at your actions and measure them against your words. Find the space and do the work on 1. Desire & Belief 2. Understanding 3. Navigating Barriers.
Show me what you do, and I will tell you what you believe. You don’t believe the exercise is that important. You don’t believe the unforgiveness is a bigger burden to you. You don’t believe the alcohol is killing you. You don’t believe it is worth the trouble of that hard conversation.
You think it is all okay… but you have forgotten that time is short my friend. Tomorrow is not guaranteed and the moments we have today are the most precious we have, because they are the moments we can do something about.
Close the gap. Go Live