0031 – identify limiting thoughts + avoid excessive safety

I went up to shower and I was so overwhelmed with thoughts I’m not sure if I can capture all of them:

limiting thought, why am I doing this

having had so many conversations with a person that they inhabit a part of your mind and you can actually intuit what they would say in a given setting

limits, never an hour more

fuck I can’t remember the rest so I’m going to elaborate on the first two.

I was having a limiting thought earlier while I was in the shower, I was thinking- well I did one word vomit

oh wait here’s the third one- I forgot to save the earlier word vomit I did onto my blog, but luckily the program I use (called Write or Die) saves your work into a .txt file once you click the “Done” button- but I was thinking, meh, it doesn’t even really matter if I lose an occasional vomit here or there, what matters is that I done it. That was a nice realization to have.

Limiting thought: I was thinking, “eh, why are you doing this, you can’t really do this… you’ve only done 30 so far, you’re aiming for 1,000, that’s 1,000,000 words, that’s crazy, what’s the point, it’s kind of silly isn’t it, how are you so sure that it’s actually going to amount to anything, you can’t be sure of things like that”

Yes I actually had those thoughts and I recognize them very well because they occur in other spheres of my life, too- why bother studying, what if you don’t do well? Why bother working out, you’ve always been a skinny bitch and you’re always going to be a skinny bitch, aren’t you- and this is when and why I procrastinate out of fear, or maybe even out of a lack of faith, or even out of RATIONAL REASONING- which is fucked up! It’s completely rational to believe that you’ll never amount to anything in life, because so far you haven’t, and for the most part, nobody does, so you’re safer where you are if you don’t try.

Fuck that, what’s the point of being safe? Is safety a priority for me? When it comes to physical health, yes it makes sense to take precautions, to wear a helmet when you get on a bike, to avoid doing things that might jeopardize your health. (But still, I smoke, so that’s not fucking logical or consistent… but I suppose it is because the effects aren’t immediately obvious, or the pleasure overrides it- so we’re fucking broken, really, we’re fucking weak. Oh well. We have to accept that, we can’t resent ourselves for it.)

Anyway- why bother with psychological safety and comfort? Why is it a priority to NOT face our real potential, our real potential greatness? SO FUCKING WHAT if we fail? Fail then fail lah! We are not our failures. Failure is something that happens en route to success, and we are not our failures (neither are we our successes).

So fuck it, even if this doesn’t amount to anything EVER, I’m still going to hit 1,000 word vomits. Hell, I probably hit it a long time ago, several times over, I just never really quantified it. I notice my friend numbers her blog entries and she recently hit #1200. Sure, she doesn’t go for raw quantity each time, but still- things add up, and sooner or later I’m going to hit 1,000.

I was imagining the voice of another friend who would say- all of this is so fucking pointless, why do you even bother rationalizing anything to yourself, why do you bother with all this pointless reasoning- if it matters just fucking do it, otherwise it doesn’t fucking matter so just get on with your life instead of all this needless pontification. And to that I say- you’re absolutely right bro. But you also say that we should do what we want to do and right now this is where I am and this is where I want to be and this is what I want to be doing so fuck yeah. Doing.

It’s 6:22am and the sun will be up soon and waking up early after going to bed early is pretty much the best decision ever, because all these beautiful thoughts and ideas just naturally come to mind when you’re up ahead of the world. I was in the shower and I literally thought, quite naturally, “Hmm, I should go for a run.” So here I am in my running gear, sitting here, and once I’m done I’m going to put on my socks and shoes and head out for a run. There was no rationalization or bargaining involved, I just felt like I ought to do it. And that’s the magic of getting up early, I think- we have time and space to “just” feel what we want, the world is quiet so we hear our own minds, but the fantastic thing is- the day hasn’t started yet, so we have the time to actually do things- instead of waiting until the world sleeps, coming up with fantastic ideas and then going to bed feeling edgy and restless because we have all this mental energy but no real physical energy to execute on these ideas. And holy shit I’m at 900 words and it’s been less than 10 minutes. Wow.

I definitely have millions of words in me, so there is no question. The limiting thought is just my saboteur inside my head who’s afraid of greatness, afraid of trying, afraid of anything different. Sure, I may never be great. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. What matters is that I try, and that I’m alive, and this moment- this moment- this moment it exists and it existed and I will chase it and I will breathe it and I will REALize it and it will be all I ever wanted. All I ever wanted was a taste of magic and magic is everywhere if we just Dare.

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