I’m starting my first official series on House of Dreams! I’m using my Word of the Year as inspiration and focusing each month on one area to DO THE WORK.
The past few months I have really been wrestling with a lack of motivation and tenacity and gumption. If I want to strive for my dreams, I need a whole lot of guts and “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” if I ever want get off my couch and out of my head. As an Enneagram 7, plans are safe and fun and don’t hurt if they never actually come to fruition. But taking risks that can be seen by my little girls and friends and family and even you Reader, is SCARY. This may not be an issue for you, but this is the main issue I am trying to overcome in my life as of late.
Do you ever have a day that falls apart before it begins? (Imagine Lorelai Gilmore-like speed talking for the next run on sentence…) Like forgetting to turn on the alarm the night before and your whole family has 25 minutes to get dressed, eat and leave for school all while you are packing two lunches and dealing with a seven year-old wailing at you because “How dare you forget to wake me up! My day is ruined!” Anyone else besides me???
Well, after mornings like that, I have been crawling back into bed, turning on cartoons for my youngest, and hiding from the world. It’s like being on a diet and giving up because you ate one potato chip. So now you might as well just dive head first into the ice cream and forget ever trying to diet again, right? THAT IS NOT LOGIC. That is fear narrating your life for you.
I’M TIRED OF LIVING IN FEAR.
One of my first blog posts is called High Dive Dreams. (If you haven’t read it, go check it out!) I used the image of a high dive at a pool to explain reaching for our dreams. The encouragement was to take one step up the ladder, to just keep moving. The step I chose was to try to write every day to work on pursuing my dreams.
It has been 10 months since I first posted High Dive Dreams. I feel like I climbed a couple rungs, and then had second thoughts and climbed back down, afraid to move. But I realized there was something I forgot:
I. GOT. ON. THE. FREAKIN. LADDER.
I didn’t walk away. I just have been hovering, staring up at that high dive. Where are you at when it comes to pursing your dreams or reaching your goals? Have you walked away, too scared to start? Are you inching your way up the ladder and putting in the work of overcoming your fears? Maybe you are standing at the top, nervous to take that glorious leap.
Wherever you are at, praise God, you got on the ladder. Now it’s time to DO THE WORK.
DO THE WORK might look different to you than me. Maybe for you, the work is slowing down and being still. Maybe it’s challenging yourself to dive in and embrace the season where God has placed you. Maybe it’s really focusing on your Word of the Year and finding ways to incorporate it in your every day.
Since I chose DO THE WORK, I realized I want to be more intentional about taking steps up that ladder, even if it is one sloooooooow step at a time. I haven’t decided month by month what my focus will be, but you can come back to this post as the year goes on and I will update the links to each month’s DO THE WORK post.
Who’s with me? Want to join me in my efforts to DO THE WORK, even when it’s not fun and exciting and easy? I’d love to hear how you overcome fear and becoming stagnant in the big and little things. Let’s do this!
House of Dreams 