Seriously, I am so sick of you whining. Would you please stop complaining and just do something. I have heard you talk about cleaning out your basement for the past year. I have heard you say you want to write a book since you were five.
And you want to be a speaker? Ha, what are you going to talk about? How to put your life on hold? Are you going to tell the audience how you rearranged the boxes in your basement and never got rid of anything?
Oh, excuse me, did you think I was talking to you?
Is this your life? I was actually talking to myself, but I can let you in on a little secret. I know how to stop stalling. I figured it out this morning when I locked myself out of the house.
3 ways to stop stalling
1. Just do something
I woke this morning at 5:00 a.m. like I have been doing since January 1st when I decided to live like Ben Franklin. I am not using candles, wearing a powdered wig or going to live in France to raise money for a revolution; however I am trying to live with purpose.
You may delay, but time will not.
Benjamin Franklin
Today instead of writing at 5:00 a.m., I weeded the flower bed on the side of the house. I went in the garage to put something in the garbage can this morning around 5:15 a.m. When I went to go back in the house I couldn’t. The door was locked. I could have called my husband, my phone was in my back pocket. Instead, I put on my work boots and my gardening gloves and weeded the flower bed.
I have been whining about the weeds for months.
I stopped whining and yanked out the weeds. ( I still have to put down mulch, but at least it is weeded.)
2. Stop talking and start doing
Have you told your best friend about the book you want to write? I heard you talk about it yesterday at the ball game. Sometimes you mention all the projects you want to do when we talk on Sundays. Have you started anything yet?
I know you have to pay the bills, clean your basement and drive your kids to school. Stop whining about the work you have to do and do the work. Pay the bills, clean your basement and drive your kids to school.
Do you want to write a book? Write a sentence today. Write one chapter.
Stop talking and start doing the work.
Just start.
3. Quit wasting your time
Stop checking facebook. Who cares that your friend just ate a bagel, or found her earring that she lost. Check your email a couple times a day, not every five minutes.
I am so mad at my basement. No, really, I am not mad at my basement. How can I be mad at a pile of clothes? I am mad at myself for stalling.
All of the things I am supposed to do, that I don’t do, hang over me like a cloud. It is time to blow off the cloud and do the work.
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone
Pablo Picasso
What about you? Do you have a project you haven’t started?
Please let me know in the comments. I would love to chat. (Later, after I clean out my basement, and write the first chapter of my book.)
