Be a Fish. Don’t think, just swim.
I take this thought from a book I recently read. In Haruki Murakami’s South of the Boarder, West of the Sun the character tries to escape what is troubling him while he swims laps in a pool.
“I imagined I was a fish. Just a fish, with no need to think, not even about swimming.”
Today this message affects me when I think about how I tend to handle my daily life. All too often we overthink everything. Well maybe you don’t but I sure do. I spend a lot of my time thinking about what I need to be doing instead of actually doing anything! I drive myself crazy with it.
For some people writing a “to do” list is helpful but I usually just get caught up in my list. I take time to think it all up and write it all out. As the day goes on I start thinking about this list as things I haven’t gotten done. By the time I’m getting tired I sit down and stare at it, feeling unaccomplished because I maybe did two or three things but my list was six to eight things of varying tasks. I’ve think, “I’ve done okay,” not all the things were small jobs, but I start to focus more of what I didn’t do. I roll this list over to the next day and now it’s a “things I STILL need to do” list. My list becomes a weight on my mind, a negative thing that I can’t stop thinking about but can’t ever seem to get done.
Do you know how easily I could have done half my list in the time I took thinking about doing or not doing my list?!
It’s incredibly embarrassing. With only an hour or two of my day I could have done the silly little things I took the time to list and then think about, without having to think about them at all. The type of things that you see and you just do right then, no thought needed, like dishes..
And that’s what I want, to be in the practice of doing without thinking. I see it, I do it. No worrying, no stressing, it’s just what you do.
Nike really had something with that stupidly simple add. “Just do it.” Honestly it’s not that hard. But then sometimes the hardest part is just getting started, no matter what you are doing.
But this brings me to my other problem that tends to make things hard for me, causing anxiety and procrastination in new fun ways: A need for perfection.
Perfection Kills
Too many times I have let my need for perfection hold me back. Prime example: Working on this blog, excited to get it started and bursting with ideas to write about, I started lists of ideas and began post after post in preparation for when I launch.
Why hadn’t I launched it yet? I couldn’t think of the perfect blog name.. How can I have a blog before I have a name?
Part of my problem in this particular situation is that I hadn’t decided the purpose of my blog. Should I specialize it? Should it be general and open to all topics? These are big decisions I needed to make but still I wanted it PERFECT and that made me feel I couldn’t decide at all.
Let me be very honest here: It took my sister to convince me to buy a domain and even have the courage to try a blog. It takes regular encouragements from my boyfriend, when I start to doubt myself, to continue working on my blog. It took BOTH of them and some harsh words from myself to make the choice to finally, finally launch.
In a way perfection is good. I had to make sure I was starting my blog right to insure activity (and I didn’t want to look silly). One reason it took me so long to get it launched is that I had a lot to learn. Another is that I couldn’t decide a theme (I changed my theme so many times I think I spent a whole week just figuring that out). I didn’t sit around doing nothing for two months, I heard about something that was good to do, I read about it, I stressed over whether or not I should do that with my blog, tried it on my blog and it took time to even figure out how to make it work! My need for perfection forced me to learn how to do this whole blogging thing but I still needed another couple nudges to launch it because it wasn’t perfect yet, there were still decisions I needed to make and I just wasn’t sure what was the best thing to do!
-Aaarrgggghhh!!!-
See I drive myself crazy!
Eventually all these things to learn and do become reasons to procrastinate. Then suddenly it’s been two months and your launch date is three weeks behind your predicted schedule that gave you lots of time to get everything done and learned.
The moral here is that there will always be things to learn, ways to improve and excuses to make. If you think too much about it you will never get anything done, you will fill yourself with anxiety and self doubt and you will belly up your dreams.
I am SO INCREDIBLY HAPPY that I have supportive people to stick my head back in the water and remind me: Swim.
Is this a compulsive thing? Or is it just personal, a need to be perfect stemming from insecurity?
I think it can be a little bit of both and for me I know it is. But I’m tired of being held back by myself! I’m ready to make things and put them out there for the world to see. I’m ready to try, to post my blog and make it a real thing that isn’t only “in the works” but is there for people to read and for me to be proud of.
Imperfections and all.
Be the fish, see the stone and swim around it.
Just swim!
Do you struggle like me, on the little tasks and the big ones? How do you get past your anxiety?