This past week my task was to revise the business plan for local groups that are interested in assisting Reid Miller. There is something about staring down an excel sheet projecting your desires and fears for the next few years of your life that can lead to anxiety. In the end it is just a bunch of numbers in a software program, but together they represent what your dream will cost, what it will yield, whether it will support you and a team, what you do and don’t have in this moment to achieve it, and the enormity of your work ahead.
So one of these evenings I was cooking and listening to a new favorite book “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself” trying to find respite in the business planning. The author, Michael Alan Singer, starts sharing an analogy for the fear that keeps us trapped – a dog sitting at an electric fence. Because the dog has been zapped by the electric fence it is scared to go through to the other side. If the dog sat at the fence line and got used to the discomfort of being zapped it could just go on through to the other side – to freedom. It would realize that nothing bad actually happened to it, it was just uncomfortable. It is the act of facing that discomfort that keeps it from freedom.
So here was the message – your business plan or whatever fence you are facing down that stands between you and your dream is not going to annihilate you. It may make you uncomfortable though. If you can face down your discomfort, let it be there and coexist with the act of doing it, freedom is possible on the other side. So I did just that. I worked through it. I let the fear and anxiety coexist with my work on the business plan. And yesterday I turned it in. That important thing that scares you , it is just discomfort. It won’t kill you. You will survive discomfort. So sit down and do it. And join me on the other side. Again and again.
Go, fight, win.
Reid