Betty1

{Sweet Betty on the beach earlier this month}

When there’s too much to be done, I tend to do nothing.  I’ll have a to do list as long as my arm, and every evening more gets added, as tasks from the day are carried over to the next. I could provide an equally long list of things I can’t stand about myself, my lack of motivation being one of them.

As luck would have it, it’s about this time of the month when my hormones start to take over and my mood plummets, down into the cosy basket of the black dog – you could set your watch to my cycle it’s so regular. But this week I’m fighting back, this week I’m trying something new. Enough with the to do lists and procrastinating and excuses. Enough with the fear of failure.

I’ve made a deal with myself – I will do either one thing, or work for one hour, towards my dream, every day. That’s it. Just one thing or one hour. The idea is to break through the fear, push past the inertia and overwhelm, and do something, anything, that takes me one tiny step closer to what I want. The rest of the day I can lie on the sofa if I want to (which obviously I wouldn’t do) so long as I do my one thing.

I started this cunning plan at the weekend, and I’m pleased to report that so far it’s working really well. I can’t do everything; I can’t create what I want in a day. But I can do one thing (one thing which morphed into several things today before I even realised what I was doing). I’m also noting down what I do each day in my journal at night, to make the point to my subconscious that it IS possible to do things and move forward, and not slide down into the ‘I’m not good enough, so why bother’ crap that my mind spews out so easily. I’ve had thirty-four years of this fear and it hasn’t worked, so now I’m trying something new.