When it’s hard

If you ever come to visit my office you can tell instantly if I’ve had some emotionally hard work to do lately or If I’ve just been busy with busy work.

You can tell by looking at my desk.

If it’s covered with piles of papers, pens, water bottles, receipts and sticky notes everywhere, I’ve just been busy.  But if it’s spick and span and organized without a sticky note in sight, I’ve had some hard emotional work to do.  It’s because I clean and organize when I’m trying to avoid work, when it’s hard.  I tell myself that to do hard work, I need a tidy space to have room to think, among other things. 😉

But it’s really because I’m procrastinating.

It’s because it’s our nature to distance ourselves from doing hard things.   It’s especially true if the outcome of doing the hard thing is unknown or potentially negative.  We may give it all our time, heart and soul, only to find out that it didn’t work or worse, someone laughed, or it made them upset.

Often times the hard things reveal things about us or our lives that we’d rather just go on pretending we didn’t know.  Afterall, pretending that everything is fine is temporarily much easier than facing the truth of what is.

I’m writing this today from a desk that’s still a wreck, but it looks  a million times better than yesterday.  I did a lot of organizing yesterday.  Apparently I needed this reminder today, so I thought you might too.

When it’s hard, it’s important.  Show up and play your song.  Do that hard thing so you can free yourself to move on to the next important thing.

We need you.

“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.” ~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

I’m walking into the arena.

Come with me.

to more love,

Crystal