Waiting..Waiting...Waiting...

Waiting...waiting...waiting.

Lately all I feel like I have been doing is waiting. Whether it be waiting to start my dream career, waiting for my current job to be over or the day, or waiting for my next bout of inspiration to hit.

The people in my life often agree with me that they just feel like they are constantly waiting for one event to happen, to lead them to the next big thing that they are meant to accomplish.

For my mom, it’s trying to find a job that meets her checklist, while also nourishing her soul and mind. For my best friend it is waiting for a routine. Waiting till she can have a set schedule for her week for her to finally feel like she has everything under control.

The irony of this is that the point of waiting is useless, because it could all be over tomorrow. There is no guarantee that you'll open your eyes the next day ready to start the new life that you are craving. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about why people wait for Monday’s or New Year’s, or the beginning of months to start this new and improved version of themselves. I have to admit that I am one of these people that will snooze the alarm clock and then say I am going to wake up at 8 but if I miss that then I am definitely just going to have to wait till 8:15 to try again. I am especially guilty of this when I say that I am going to start exercising in the mornings. I have this whole big pep talk with myself on Sunday about how I am going to get up early and really get my life together. For this upcoming week, is going to be the week that changed my life forever. Well, that is probably a bunch of bullshit because chances are I am going to oversleep one of those days, or go to bed too late the night before, or wake up sick. It is so crazy that we put so much stock in the beginning of things when it reality the beginning started a long time ago.

I was listening to a myriad of Ted Talks and came across this one that Mel Robbins did. This Ted Talk talked all about the hack to getting past the feeling of having to start at the beginning, and it was simply counting to 5. I have since tried this ridiculously simple trick and I have to say it honestly works...when I remember to do it. Counting to five is something almost every person over the age of 4 can do no problem, but the motivation to wake up and remember and want to count to 5 is a little different.

I have been feeling tremendously lost in the middle of all of my emotions and feel that I am someone simultaneously living on two opposite sides of a spectrum. I have finally starting thinking about how I want to change as a person, but I am still at my crappy 9-5 soul sucking job and have to attend that job for more hours than I would care to be there. All the while, I am filled to the brim of displaced excitement about a life that I could potentially have if I just figure out my next steps. It is exhausting to be in transformation, and none of the ted talks really ever tell you that. I am overtired, and full of catharsis that comes in waves, while also reminding me that I have bills to pay and I cannot just empty my life savings and jump on a plane to New Zealand to take gorgeous pictures for a living. So when I am sitting in my bed some mornings I really don’t want to count to 5..so I don’t and I just lay there mad at myself that now I have to rush, and I blame myself for not doing the most arbitrary thing to help myself.

I started thinking though, what would give me the motivation to get up and get going? Because it definitely wasn’t going to be the joy of job well done. I needed something that was going to speak to me. Something that would make me happy to be up at 5:30 am running on a treadmill with sweat dripping in my eye. Suddenly it hit me. Because you fucking have to in order to not feel like the shit person you feel like when you don’t.

This idea literally hit me like a ton of bricks. I have always hated those people that are like “ just do it, because it’ll make you feel better” I would be like “ yeah, because that’s just sooooo easy huh?” Now to be fair, I still feel this way about most things, but when I started thinking about it it terms of my own success it made sense. The only way that I was ever going to be successful is if I let me be successful. If I wake up 4 mornings a week and get sweat in my eye to make myself feel good about getting up and working out, then why shouldn’t I do that? I have always been a self saboteur which is just a real fancy way of saying that I stand in my own fucking way almost exclusively. I needed to hold myself accountable (there’s that word again) I can't expect someone else or the pure act of going to the gym to change my life, It was going to have to be the way that I framed it to myself in my head. Now this may seem like common knowledge to some of you, but to my self saboteur friends this realization is literally one of the most life shattering things you can uncover. I have spent so much of my time telling myself I am not good enough, or that idea is stupid, or of course you didn’t follow through with this, this is just like you. All of this self negativity is like a black hole that you have found a comfortable lawn chair in, and decided you’d just sit down and stay a while. Realizing this was like being ripped out of my comfortable lawn chair and being thrown into the beautiful location of New Zealand on a mountain somewhere. It was like I could see myself standing there.

So I guess what I have to say in summation is that Nike’s got it right. Just Fucking Do It.

And when you inevitably fall of the wagon a bit, respect the process of your old saboteur self and acknowledge it, and then tell it to get lost. Read books, enrich your mind, find your calling by trying everything there is out there until you find the thing that you know you can do for the rest of your life. Be smart, be kind to yourself and to your unique process. There are so many things out there that you are destined to do, but you have to keep doing it, keep showing up for your own life, and know that you are allowed to fall off, but you do have to get back up. I am done waiting for my life to happen to me, and in my glorious funk of emotions I will get up tomorrow and try to be better than I was the day before, because that’s all I can do, and I know that I am capable and worthy. Start today, because you may not have tomorrow.

(but you probably will, so why wait for next week?)