Are You Procrastinating Or Just Afraid?

A few days ago I was thinking about my life and excellence:

We like to say “I am doing my best”. Are you really?

— Gatwiri (@RookieKE) July 27, 2015

I have really been struggling with excellence of late. Last year, I left full time employment for a couple of reasons, top on that list being:

I was tired. I’d had a rather steep career climb (from trainee to CEO in 5 years), and as much as I was grateful for the opportunity, the climb left me exhausted, joyless and physically sick.
I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. There’s a popular saying about “getting to the top then realising that the ladder was leaning on the wrong wall”. That was me in a way. I was running a small business (does a team of 50 count as small?), the path ahead was defined: to grow the business into xx number of units in the next 10 years, make xxxx in profits etc etc. Knowing (1) above, I knew I was not the person for this. I was not energized for this section of the journey, I had done my bit.

So I quit.

And for the first few months I rested. A lot. While working on my farm which is what I needed.

Tomorrow will mark one year since I quit, and I think I’ve rested enough. I actually was done resting many months back, but I have been struggling with the struggle. When you get used to resting, getting by with the bare minimum (which is what I had purposed to do during my break), it gets very hard to get onto the fast lane once more.

It is even harder when your mediocre is excellent by most people’s standards, so there’s no external pressure to push you to do better, yet you know you are not doing your best.

I am online a lot. I tweet a lot (painful admission). I read articles instead of books. I “hang out” a lot. I cop out of exercising because I can do so without any visible effects, but I know lack of exercise affects my discipline and energy levels. I “feel tired”, and I experience the “writers block” often.

Why am I sharing this? Because we are growing up in a generation where it is not acceptable to struggle. Anyone worth talking about has conquered the struggle, and that is why we are talking about them. We do not appreciate vulnerability or imperfection.

Even this blog is about succeeding financially, we do not talk much about the struggle of sometimes borrowing to pay bills, or spending too much. It is not sexy.

I am not doing my best.

Why am I not doing my best?

Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea why I was so unmotivated and un-energized. I couldn’t figure out why it took me 5 days to write and publish a blog post, or I waited to the very last minute when working on an assignment. That is until I came across a section in Linchpin where Seth Godin talks about Resistance:

Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you’re avoiding the anguish, and giving in to the resistance….Your lizard brain…is working overtime to get you to shut up, sit down, and do your (day) job. It will invent stories, illnesses, emergencies, and distractions in order to keep the genius bottled up.The resistance is afraid. Afraid of what will happen to you (and to it) if the ideas get out, if your gifts are received, if the magic happens.It creates diseases, procrastination (fatigue) and most especially rationalization. Lots and lots of rationalization, some of which you might be experiencing right now

Seth describes what I feel perfectly. Excellence takes guts. It involves putting your best out and putting your heart on the line with the risk that your art will not be appreciated or you will fail. Nothing hurts more than failing at your passion.

So we procrastinate. We resolve to get it done tomorrow, or next week.

There’s no victorious ending for this story, it is still something that I am struggling with and working through.