All the reasons for not doing

I haven’t really been motivated to do much in the past couple of weeks. It’s an unusual state of being for me, as I’ve been someone who does things for the past 8 years. Being the one who’s always got a side hustle or three, always been involved in student activities. I’ve had something or other going for me.

I never did it because I had to, but because I needed somewhere to put my energy. It needed to go somewhere other than being stuck inside of me. That has been enough motivation for a very long time.

I’ve had some shorter down time periods over these past years, but almost never for weeks on ends. I’ve always taught the summer break is too long and that most of the other 1 week breaks are either to long or ill timed.

For me, there’s always been reason to doing rather than not doing.

And I realised that there are so many people with the exact opposite feeling. That there are always a bunch of reasons to why they don’t do.

It’s bugged me a lot more than it does now. Today, I’m only bugged with the people who say they want to do something, or even know what they want to do, but have fallen in to the trap of seeing all of the reasons not to do it. If there ever was anything like fuel to a fire, that’s the fuel to mine.

There are always going to be reasons not to do. Period. But what I’ve realised from doing is that I’m doing despite of the reasons and therefore don’t see them as clearly anymore. I’ve become blind to a certain type of obstacles because they’re simply not big, dense or important enough for me not to do.

I think that’s the first thing people who want to do need to realise. The obstacles are there for everyone, you’re just paying far too much attention to them.

The reasons are there because we as a society have become comfortable with what we have, and a lot of the doing that we get on to risks the things we have. Either it costs money, or time, or energy. That’s a risk.

If you ever want to do, you need to become comfortable with that risk. Only then will the obstacles seem smaller and less significant.