Later – The Biggest Lie We Tell Ourselves
Today we’re going to talk about taking action…. 
“Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.” Jules Renard
The biggest lie we tell ourselves in the area of action is, “I’ll do it later.” As C. Northcote
Parkinson said, “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.”
I’ll Do It Later
Putting things off is known, of course, as procrastination. I know that “pro” means for, but I don’t know what “crastination” means. Maybe it means laziness. Maybe it means don’t go after your Dream, but kid yourself into thinking that someday you will. Whatever crastination means, I’m against it.
You could say I’m pro anticrastination.
(I looked it up: crastination comes from crastinus , Latin for pertaining to tomorrow. Pro
crastinus is “putting things off till tomorrow.” “Never put off till tomorrow,” Mark Twain said, “what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Procrastinus-crastinus?)
The interesting thing about “later” is that a statement containing it can never be proven false. One can never reproach us for not doing something. If confronted, we can always say, “I said I’d do it later. It’s not later yet.”
In this way, we can put off and put off and put off indefinitely. We only run out of laters when we run out of breath. Death is nature’s way of saying, “No more laters left.”
We know how many “later’s” we have stockpiled from the past. We know that adding another later to that pile is like adding a grain of sand to a beach. Somehow, we know we’re probably never going to get back to that particular grain of sand. We know “later” is a lie.
“If you trap the moment before it’s ripe, The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.” William Blake
If you can do something now, do it. If it can’t be done now:
- Decide if it is going to get done. If yes,
- Choose when it will get done.
If something doesn’t get done, and you decide you will still do it, reschedule a specific date and time. Write it in your appointment book. If it’s not worth the amount of time it takes to schedule it now, it’s probably not going to get done “later.”
“He who hesitates is poor.” Zero Mostel – The Producers
When we put necessary activities off until some mythical Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday’s incompletion’s is a heavy load to carry. Don’t carry it.
A Dream is an ephemeral thing. In traveling to it, you have to travel light. “I travel light;”
[color-box]Free ebook, “How To Make Change Easy! Click HERE to get your copy[/color-box]
Christopher Fry wrote, “as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value.” Getting in the habit of doing what needs to be done as it presents itself to be done–whether it needs to be done in that moment or not – creates aninner freedom for the next moment, the next activity.
Such as pursuing your Dream.
We’re Not Perfect–We’re Human
“Have no fear of perfection you’ll never reach it.” Salvador Dali
How do we learn? By doing. As Aristotle said, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” Yes, everything is best learned by doing.
A primary reason people don’t do new things is because they want to do them perfectly—first time. It’s irrational, impractical, unworkable–and yet, it’s how most people run their lives. It’s called the Perfection Syndrome.
Whoever said we had to do it perfect?
Our parents.
And if not our parents, there were those bastions of perfection–school teachers.
(The ones who would point out that the last paragraph should read, “Whoever said we had to do it perfectly?” They would also point out that paragraphs should be more than one sentence long.)
For the most part, we weren’t taught to set our own goals and to achieve them. In addition, we had to achieve someone else’s goal in “the right way.” Merely reaching the goal was not enough.
The goal had to be attained the way someone else (whoever was teaching us) thought was the “best way” (that is, their way).
I say, don’t worry – just DO IT!
Don’t worry about “right way”; don’t even worry about doing it “my way.” DO IT! When it’s all said and done – when you’ve reached your goal – you can look back and discover what your way really was. As Margaret Mead said, “The best way to do field work is not to come up for air until you’re done.” Amen.
“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.” – Cynthia Heimel
Most people have an ideal image of themselves. If they can’t perform according to their own imaginary standards of perfection, they “take their ball and go home.” As Cardinal Newman observed, “Nothing would be done at all if a man waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.”
“Men would like to learn to love themselves, but they usually find they cannot,” Gerald Brenan explained. “That is because they have built an ideal image of themselves which puts their real self in the shade.”
This “ideal image” of ourselves – the one that’s “perfect” and won’t let anyone see us as other than perfect – we must send on a long field trip somewhere. Maybe Alpha Centauri.
The only way to even approach doing something perfectly is through experience, and experience, as Oscar Wilde observed, “is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
Mistakes are excellent teachers. Sir Humphrey Davy wrote, “I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.” Make as many mistakes as you can, as quickly as you can.
“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad,” said Rene Auberjonois, “and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” Set out each day to look foolish, stupid, blundering, awkward—anything you consider the perfect representation of imperfect. In this way, you shatter the false image of a “perfect self,” and get used to being a stumble-through – it, catch-as-catch-can, make-do, seat-of-the-pants, mistake-making human being – just like every other successful dreamer.
After all, it’s not perfect being perfect.
Learn to create the “do it” attitude and request your Introductory Consultation today.
