Fortuitous Intervention
I’m hardly an expert. My family and I landed in Spain just over a month ago. The local language is coming along. Daily routines that initially felt different now feel normal. From the first 40 days, what I can tell you is:
Every sunrise draws my attention from whatever I was doing at the moment.
Every loaf of bread has been baked to perfection.
Every run comes with a million dollar view.
Every grandmother who leans out her upper story window to say Bon Dia to me, is my connection to a real human in real time.
These are the things that make for a gratitude-filled honeymoon phase of a move to a new country.
It’s also fun to share these experiences. Maybe one photo or story might move someone to ask themselves, “Could I do THIS?”
Over the past few weeks, I have heard from a dozen or so friends and clients: “I want do to THIS too” or “THIS is the dream” or “I wish I could free myself up to do THIS.” Such sentiments are born out of life’s critical questions like:
Where is my life going?
Is there more?
Why not THIS?
Maybe “THIS” isn’t necessarily picking up and moving to another country. But, whatever your “THIS” might be, the resistance that holds you back may very well be created by the same force that frees you to initiate.
Let me explain.
Resistance and Freedom are born from small steps. One from wrong. The other from right.
Nearly every idea I share on Sunday mornings is underpinned by the Small Steps Forward Every Day process. Create incremental and positive investments in yourself and repeat them daily. These are the small *right* steps.
But what about the barriers between where you are today and your “THIS?”
Here were my experiences with resistance. I know you will be intimate with one or more of them:
- Unconsciously placing fast food in my mouth, often finishing it in under a minute or two.
- Checking my phone every 1–2 minutes as it lights up or buzzes with a response, reply, notification… a like.
- Becoming emotionally engaged in statements from a toxic email.
- Watching the talking heads on the news as they say the same thing a different way each and every hour.
- Attempting to win an argument on Facebook.
These were my small *wrong* steps.
The weight of these small *wrong* steps is hardly noticeable until they pin you down, and lock you down. These small wrong steps, done daily, are more damaging than you can imagine.
Similar to a rising path, a downward spiral doesn’t happen overnight. In my world, the spiral was the product of these incremental negative engagements repeated too many times.
They kill your “THIS,” and they kill your belief in ever achieving “THIS.”
If I ever felt that there was a fortuitous intervention, it was simply the speed of the small wrong steps slowed down just long enough for me to find the presence to ask a better question:
Why not “THIS?”
Then I replaced each negative engagement with one small right step. Then another. Then another. Then Spain. My THIS.
With gratitude,
Joe
Hi, I’m Joe, the owner of 5 With Joe Performance Coaching. My clients are leaders, organizations, and teams who utilize my Olympic Gold Medal performance strategies and 40 years of navigating whitewater river rapids to streamline decision making and actions when engaged in complicated river currents of business and life.
The best way to interact with me is though Sunday Morning Joe, my weekly newsletter that explores the art of improving performance, overcoming challenge, and aligning with purpose for Sunday readers in search of more depth and motivation. Subscribe HERE for free.
