My wife came home from her yoga class the other day and she was really excited.

Wife: “I did really well in class today!”
Me: “Really, what’d you do?”
Wife: “I was doing baddha konasana [bound angle pose] and I went to my usual spot and stopped. Then something told me to ‘just keep going’ and I did!”

My first thought was, wow, it really is that simple. What if we did the same more often in our lives? What if, every time we reached some self-imposed limitation, we simply “just keep going?”

Think of how often we create our own barriers in our careers, relationships and personal care. You’re not going for that promotion because “you’re not smart enough.” You’ve stopped looking for the right person because “you’re not attractive enough.” You just aren’t getting to the gym because “you’re too tired.” Motivation, determination and will-power are great—if you have them. The “something” that we all can use to move forward, and you’ve heard me say this before, is choice.

We’re choosing machines. Our lives are full of choices, big and small. We can fairly easily decide what to wear each day, what we want for lunch and whether to watch TV or read a book in the evening. These are easy choices because there’s little risk. What makes some choices really difficult is fear. Fear of failure and disappointment.

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

Our fears of failure and disappointment originate from some twisted reality we’ve created in our mind. Let’s take the gym thing as an example. Quite often when working with clients, together we uncover that the “I’m too tired to go to the gym” is really “I’m afraid to go to the gym because everyone is looking at me and I’ll be embarrassed.”

False Evidence #1- What’s the likelihood that everybody really is looking at you? What’s their purpose for being at the gym?
False Evidence #2- Whose choice is it to be embarrassed?
False Evidence #3- OK, what if everyone was looking at you and you did feel embarrassed? What choices do you still have?

It’s that third one that really instills the fear. Many people feel they wouldn’t have the fortitude to stick it out and they’d chalk it up as one big failure on their part.

It always comes down to choice. Are you going to stop at your usual spot or just keep going?

Photo credit: zen / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA