There is a change you have been meaning to make since about summer.
You know what it is. A conversation. A decision about the business. A habit you keep promising to start on Monday. You have thought about it in the truck, in the shower, and at eleven at night with your phone in your hand and the house asleep.
And it is still sitting there.
A note for this week: we will be closed Thursday and Friday, November 5 and 6, while I am away at a coaching event for continuing education. If you reach out, I will answer when I am back on Monday, November 9.
When a man stalls on something he knows he needs to do, there is almost always a fear holding it in place. Usually one of three.
The first is the fear of loss. If I make this change, I lose something I care about. Money. Standing. The way my wife sees me. The version of me people have come to expect.
The second is the fear of the process. Even if the change is right, getting there will cost too much. Too many hours. Too much discomfort. A conversation I do not know how to start.
The third is the fear of the outcome. I do all that work and nothing gets better. Now I am tired and embarrassed too.
Each one is reasonable. That is why they work so well. A fear that sounded foolish would never keep a grown man stuck for six months.
In your head a fear has no edges. It runs as a feeling, it borrows from every bad thing that has ever happened to you, and it gets louder at night.
On paper it has to fit in one sentence. One sentence is a size you can handle.
In 2009 I had to tell my wife that I had squandered our life savings. Our investment properties were upside down, I could not fund them anymore, and the same bank was calling five, ten times a day. For weeks I ran that conversation in my head. I had her devastated, disappointed, and finished with me.
Written as one sentence, my fear was this: if I tell her the truth, she is finished with me.
Weeks of dread, and it came down to ten words.
I told her on a walk with our dogs. She asked me, "You're healthy, correct? Your hands work, right? You can adjust people, right? So who cares? Let those properties go." Then she told me she was sick of that bank calling.
Not one of the lines I had written for her came out of her mouth.
You can write the sentence and still feel your chest tighten when you read it back. That is your nervous system doing its job. It has been rehearsing this for months, and it does not stand down because you made a decision at the kitchen table.
So before you act, give your body a signal that it is safe to move. I use the same one I teach for the drive home. Six breaths, four counts in and eight counts out. The long exhale is the switch. Release tension, set intention. Then take the step while your body is with you.
This is the part mindset coaching skips. I have had my hands on people for over thirty years, and courage lives in the body before it ever shows up in a conversation.
Pen and paper. Ten minutes.
Five days on purpose. Long enough to get ready. Short enough that you cannot talk yourself out of it.
Center yourself in Christ before you pick up the pen.
Joseph was sold by his own brothers, and he stayed clear about one thing. He was going to follow God, whatever was dealt to him. Years later he stood in front of those same brothers and said, "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good" (Genesis 50:20). What I take from Joseph is his posture. Clear either way. Following God whatever landed on him.
If you do not share my faith, take the same move in plain terms. Sit quietly for one minute with who you intend to be on the other side of this fear. Then write the sentence.
The morning after that walk with the dogs, I stood with my first patient 110% present, and thankful. My health, my hands, my family, my wife's blessing, and my faith were all still standing. It was a new day and a new beginning.
What does your fear come down to, in one sentence? Write it today.
Let's get to work.
Yours In Health and High Performance, Dr Howard Dennis, DC, CHPC
If you know what you need to change and you keep not moving on it, something is pulling against your follow-through. The free Initiative Indicator scores the ten forces behind follow-through and shows you the three to work on first. Take the free Initiative Indicator