Can’t?

But what if you could?

What would your Life look like if you did that thing you keep telling yourself you can’t do?

Ok, stop. 

Don’t just keep reading. 

Stop and think for a minute. 

Breathe deeply.

Read it again.

What would your Life look like if you did that thing you keep telling yourself you can’t do?

Sit with that for a minute.

Technology.  It’s a silly thing that comes so intuitively for so many, and yet this past week it was my absolute demise.  Even making posts for the Soulprints with Lori Facebook page can sometimes frustrate me to no end.  I KNOW it’s not that hard.  I KNOW it should really just be a click here, a delete there, and drag over and voila!. 

But it just never seems to work like that for me. 

 This week I was excited to move into planning my first online course.  I’m overflowing with ideas and excitement and energy, and then I had to do “the stuff”. 

I had to find a way to host it, I had to have widgets and hyperlinks and all these other foreign concepts. 

And so I quit.

I quit.  I got frustrated, I had a meltdown, I pouted, I commiserated with a friend, and I quit.  I spiraled into how yet another idea “failed” and would never reach fruition and what a mess I am, and I quit. 

That night, after venting to my husband, who’s stable and steady logic is so often the perfect balance to my exuberant emotion, he simply said, “So, once you figure it out, what will it look like?”

Wow.  Ok.  That wasn’t a place I’d gone. 

I’d just hit the wall and stopped.  But as an engineer, his brain is wired to see brick walls, and figure out how to knock them down, go around, or go over.  They never stop him.

Once I shifted my energy away from the brick wall to the other side of possibility, I lit up like Christmas Eve, full of ideas and vision, and plans for the Soulprint community. 

I felt excited again, back in my creative space, ready to put good out into the world.  It felt like opening the wardrobe into Narnia or opening the gate to the secret garden.  Suddenly excitement and possibility existed again…on the other side of the wall. 

I can promise you figuring out technology has not been the most challenging obstacle of my life.  There are too many times to mention when the wall felt too tall, too thick, too impossible to get around.  Starting a business, being a single mom, and having the faith and fortitude to make sure the said business could single-handedly support my kids and I was only one of them.  There were some walls even more challenging than that. 

 I can only imagine your life has been filled with some of the big, messy, thick walls, too. 

Compared to what so many of us have been through or are facing today, technology should be a cinch, right?

But is it really about technology, or is it about the power of the messages we give ourselves?

I don’t know when I began telling myself the story that technology was something I “can’t do”,  how many times I’ve called myself a techno-phobe, or how many self-depricating jokes I’ve made about my ineptitude.

 But what I do know is it’s a story I tell myself every day…here is something I can’t do, an obstacle that can make me quit instead of learn. The thing I allow me to stop in the middle of a dream.

What is the difference between quitting when you reach the brick wall and finding a way through, over or around? 

The ability to remember or imagine what waits on the other side.  The knowing that you can’t do without what lies there, on the far side of the brick.

We all have stories that we re-read to ourselves on a daily basis, almost ritualistically, like the nightly reading of Goodnight Moon to a child.

I can’t.  I can’t.  I can’t.

We are SO quick to tell ourselves what we can’t do, and SO slow to breathe deeply and remind ourselves why it’s worth the risk, effort and frustration.

 Why is it worth it? 

Because of what it will look like when you do it! 

I can’t lose those 30 pounds.  It’s too tough.  I quit. 

(But what will it look like when I do?)

I can’t go back to school, I have too many other things to do, it’ll take all my time.  I just can’t.

(But what will it look like when I do?)

I can’t quit my job and start a new path.  I’m too old, it’s too hard, what if I don’t succeed?

(But what will it look like when I do succeed?)

The difference between quitting and persevering is the belief that the end result will be better and more beautiful than the frustration of the struggle of getting there. 

The difference between quitting and persevering often lies in the realization that staying where you are is simply more painful, more soul-sucking than the energy required to push that brick wall over.

The difference between quitting and persevering sometimes involves having a little hissy fit, a moment of total self-doubt, a comin’-apart (as we say in the South), and then a pep-talk to get back up and keep going.

I don’t want to limit my Life with self-imposed can’ts. 

Life imposes enough things on me that I have no control over.

I want to live Life empowered and encouraged, knowing I can do hard things, even if those things aren’t hard for others.

I choose not to live with my self-imposed can’ts.

Because, really….what’s waiting for me when I finally can?  That’s the stuff I’m all about.