In my last blog post, I talked about the differences and distinctive elements between our passions (the what’s in our lives) and our purpose (the why) behind our decisions and behaviors. When it comes to moving forward in life, making progress, and creating significant changes in the patterns of our daily living, there is a three-letter word that often finds it’s way into our psyche and thought processes. In fact, this bad word can keep businesses underground, novels buried in the sand, beautiful voices silenced in the arena, and creative ideas sitting on the runway. This word ranks right up there with can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and didn’t. It may be more subtle, and seemingly not as negative as it’s counterparts…but it’s impact can be just as lethal. 

Ok, no more suspense! The word I’m referring to is how. Even when you put in the work to clearly identify your passions, then follow that up with an effort to seek out clarity of purpose, you can still be defeated by the question of how. Here is why I believe this to be true. Passion and purpose so often spring from our intuition, imagination, our subconscious minds, and our gut. To the contrary, the how so often emanates from the ego. The ego can be overly rational, judgmental, stringent, and lacking in imagination. I often find that when I focus too much on how I’m going to be a great writer or a successful coach, my attention is drawn to all the ways that I currently don’t measure up. For example, my adoption of a how mindset can steer my mind toward obsessing over the the low number of clients I have, the lack of readers on my website and blog, or the fact that I will never have time to market my business with a new platform I’ve recently learned about. Essentially, my thought processes look more at what is currently wrong and spend less time and energy focusing on what could be.

I’ve found that when I become too consumed with the how mindset, I experience strong surges of inertia. Webster defines inertia as the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. Don’t underestimate inertia. It is defined as a force. When we decide to do nothing and we justify remaining the same, then we guarantee stagnation and lack of growth. For some, a fear of failure is the root cause of putting too much attention on the how. If we never try at something, then we can also avoid the pain, suffering, and humiliation that we believe will likely accompany that miss. The how thinker often tells herself that I’m not enough. She believes she is an imposter and nobody will ever buy her course or purchase her art. The how thinker is also often paralyzed by comparing his work to others or thinking that work has to be perfect if it is to have value. Finally, I’ve also observed that many folks stay grounded in the how because they want certainty above all things. In other words, they want to know the result or the outcome before putting in the work. This is like saying I don’t want to invest in buying stock in Amazon or Apple unless I have a guarantee that it will continue to go up. Tony Robbins believes that certainty and uncertainty are two of the six basic needs that we have as humans. While certainty definitely has it’s place in our lives, a mindset that justifies action based only on certainty will leave us in a perpetual state of inactivity. To fully embrace our passions and exercise our purpose, we must get out of pre-launch. We must depart the harbor and set sail. We can leave the safety of the chutes and fully enter the race. When we commit to action, we will figure out the how through learning, community, trial and error, and by summoning our own creativity.