Tag: potential

The future is scary

Posted on by philipdodson

It’s the joy of the doing in this moment and not the outcome that matters.

When we give our energy and thought to the outcome then we enter the psychological time dimension of the future and all that brings is uncertainty as it is not real, it is just in our mind. So we suffer psychological fear which we can not deal with now. Present-moment fear we can deal with now, but fear of what might be is suffering.

When we just do, we actually enjoy it now, step by step, free from the fear of the outcome so we create our best. All of our energy and focus on the doing and, of course, each small step is a step nearer to the destination but without needing to keep looking at the map, we are just enjoying the road immediately in front of us.

Future is just a mental construct, but if we want to have a particular future, we can only have it now as when we get to any future moment, it will be still now. Now is the only time and when we stay away from the mind-made time dimensions of both past and future then we step away from suffering.

What we do now is the future we will have and if we do it now, it is not scary. The fear comes from thoughts of beyond now.

If we are present, then what we do is free from fear as we have not imagined an outcome that we can fear not achieving, all we experience is the pure joy of each tiny step. We create better when we are conscious.

We create very little of our truly amazing potential when we are consumed with thoughts of what might be.

Just be, just do and the future will take care of itself.

Do bad work

Posted on by philipdodson

Do bad work, it is the only way we get to good work.

If we are too frightened to do anything as we fear it will not be perfect, then we will never get to doing work that matters, we will never learn and improve, and we will never do even better.

We will hide behind perfection and fear, we will not show up and we will make excuses as to why we can not do.

Doing is a thing of this moment and it requires us to step away from thought, from the mind and its sabotaging fears. We have to be vulnerable enough to try and trying means we will not be sure of the outcome, so we just have to do and that will mean some bad work and that’s OK. When we do things that fail or are not right then we learn and we do even better next time.

If we keep doing the bad, then the good comes, if we never do the bad, we never get to the good. Being prepared to do without concern, means we will get better and better. We will overcome the fear of doing and that is the breakthrough, that is the key to unlocking our true potential to create our very best work.

Keep doing the bad work and being brave enough to share it. Sooner rather than later, we get to even better work. The more we keep going the even better the work gets. It removes the block, it takes away the fear and builds a habit of being vulnerable enough to share the best we can do right now. As we ship more and more of what we can do we learn and improve.

Or we can stay stuck with fear, too frightened to do and then we’ll never learn, we’ll just hide behind perfectionism and put our shields up to prevent any exposure to risk. We will not reach our true potential because we didn’t show, we didn’t take the plunge, we stayed safe and avoided uncertainty.

Bad is good.