How to Do The Things You Dread

So when it comes to doing things that we really don't want to do, the things that make us feel a sense of dread inside of us, when we think about those things, you know, you've probably heard of the swallow the frog thing, which is, you know, the first thing you do every day is that thing that you really, really don't want to do. And after you've had the courage to face that thing, everything else after that will seem much more doable. And I think there's a lot of sense in that. It makes a lot of sense to me. One thing I think that we can add to it is kind of a law that I've kind of come by, if I've developed it, but it's something that I've certainly incorporated. And it is the law of boundaries around these things that we really, really dread. Okay, and that can be on like, maybe just a whole bunch of things that you really dread. The more dread you have on it, the stricter and tighter the boundary needs to be with that thing. That's the law. Okay. The law is just the more dread you feel towards any given thing, any given action or project that you're working on, the tighter the boundary has to be around it. So these things that we really dread, there's something in us that's saying, don't do it, stay away from it. It's overwhelming. It's going to suck. It's going to be an awful experience. Stay away from it, right? And the problem with that is that we listen to that voice and we do stay away from it. We go into denial about it and we just put it away. And of course it's not going anywhere. In fact, it just gets worse when we go into denial about it. So we want to have a solution here where, okay, we're not in denial either about the fact that I'm dreading this. I do not want to do this. And because of that intense dread, I feel there's every possibility that I could go into denial about it and put it away and just not think about it, or it's going to fester away in the background, in the shadows and get worse and make real drama for me. So the law says basically, okay, the more dread, the stricter the boundary. Another way of saying that is the more I dread doing something, the less time I should spend doing it. Okay. Now notice, I'm not saying the more you dread something, the more eager you should be to forget about it and not do it. Okay. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is the more dread you have, the less time you should proactively tell your nervous system, which is the thing that's holding you back, telling you, sending you to those danger signals, tell your nervous system, it's only going to be a short experience when we do have exposure to this thing that we're really, really dreading. Okay. Now on a practical level, that can look like, okay, there's a whole bunch of emails I have to get to today. Oh my God. I do not want to send these emails. I don't even know what to say in these emails. There's going to be people angry with me when I send these emails. Okay. I've been ignoring this now for three days and it's not getting any better. Okay. I'm going to sit down for 15 minutes and do these emails. Okay. I'm given, I have this resistance in my nervous system to actually doing it. Okay. So it's not about going into denial and it's also not about having an open-ended boundary, unlimited exposure to it because you have to kind of meet your nervous system halfway with this. And that goes with everything. The degree of resistance or dread you feel towards doing something, the tighter and shorter the boundary should be to it. And of course, when we have that approach, we'll find it much easier to stay consistent and stay consistently exposed to these things that we don't like. And hopefully not everything in our life is going to be something that we dread doing. Usually it's, it's maybe one or two little things in our life. An interesting thing is these things in our life that we don't want to do. I think it's not mature for us to have a goal here of getting to the point where there's never anything in my life present in my life that I don't want. You know, I get to this point where everything is just bliss or following my bliss. I think there should be a definite goal of following your bliss, doing what you want to do more and more. But I think also we need to recognize that there will always be these, these things in life that I don't really want to do them. There'll be all these little, like even if you're really following your purpose and you're doing what you love and you, you really are passionately engaged in it, probably still going to be little things that you're going to do in your life that are super annoying, not fun, make you feel huge resistance to doing them. Okay. So again, it's just remember, convince yourself if you're going to stay consistent and if you can stay consistent, there's a less, less of a tendency for those things to build up and become big problems that we have to deal with. When we go into denial about things, that's always what happens. It just comes later, comes out of the shadow at a very inconvenient time in the future and it really jumps all over us. So the takeaway from this video here today is keep strict, short boundaries with those things that you're dreading. Try and get them done quickly and with little exposure to them, but consistently over time. And it just, it's going to be a way to handle these inevitable little things that we dread in life. And the good thing is when we do that, we're then freed off to be much more present and focused on the things in life that we actually do care about and enjoy. And there's not this niggling, nagging little voice in the back of our heads saying you should have done this. This problem is still there. You know, that annoying thing is there. So very quickly on a practical level, maybe 15 minutes a day on these little super annoying things. Okay. If you need to do more than that, okay, that'll be a personal choice. But if we can do 15 minutes consistently on these little things, it makes such a huge difference. And ultimately when we're exposed to them more and more, we'll realize actually, you know, it's not that bad. Things seem a lot scarier when they're put in the dark. So we take it out of the shadow. We look at it. We recognize, okay, it's, I'm not going to try and convince myself I want to do it, or this is going to be fun because some things in life aren't fun. Okay. And they don't have to be, but there does have to be some things, a big, big chunk in my life that should be rewarding and meaningful. So I hope that's useful guys. They're my thoughts on doing things you don't really want to do. And I hope it's a kind of a realistic approach to it and that you find it. I'll talk with you guys in the next video. Take care.