In a small group of my friends, there is a potentially unusual compliment or encouragement we pay each other. “Well done for doing the thing”. Doesn’t sound like much does it? But it acknowledges that “the thing” can be big or small, complicated or simple, big work or little work. None of that matters. What matters is that there was a thing that needed to be done and you did it. Because no matter how small the action, sometimes it leads to a big reward.
There’s a corollary to this of course: just do the thing. Whatever “the thing! is, JFDI* is an approach to take, in fact the smaller the thing, the more appropriate JFDI probably is. And it needs saying that what one person might think is a very small thing, another might think is huge (this is why my husband does most of our take-away ordering, I hate ringing people up and asking for food, while I do more of our banking, since he hates dealing with banks).
What I didn’t expect this morning was my deity to throw “do the thing” in my face though. I have committed to myself that I will write a post in this blog at least once a week. Not too often compared to other blogs, I know, but with a full time job, plus the bits on the side I do, once a week is achievable while being a stretch. I had aimed to write this weekend, but I needed to rest. During meditation this morning, she was definitely yelling “do the thing” at me. Interesting experience given the nature of this morning’s meditation (more on that another time).
During meditation, sometimes I wonder if it’s herself at all that’s communicating with me or if it’s just my own sub conscious mind throwing things up at me. There are times I wonder if what I’m coming back with is useful or just the wanderings of my own mind and heart. I’ve come to the conclusion that discernment is important here. If I come back with a message to kill someone, I’m probably going to ignore that. But coming back with a message to “do the thing” – that’s a bit of a slap upside the head to get moving on something. If it’s something that’s important to her AND to me, well what’s the point in not doing it?
I use Michael Hyatt’s goal planning system to help me in work and home to get things done. He’s also a big proponent of “do the thing”, although he words it differently. And one of this things is to set three things every day to bring you closer to your goals. These can be very little things or very big things. Sometimes my list contains making phone calls, sending an email, buying a book… sometimes they involve moving massive (to me anyway!) amounts of money or spending hours researching or reading something. But they all get a tick when I do them. For example, I’m trying to build a habit of going to a personal trainer right now, once a week, so that makes it onto my daily 3 once a week. I’m also building a habit of writing for 30mins a day. That one, as yet, doesn’t make it onto the list because currently there are priorities above it. After this morning’s meditation, however, that may change.
Sometimes we set ourselves goals and targets that seem insurmountable, obelisks of achievement that need advanced experience in mountain climbing to attain. But every day, we can take one more step towards that goal, and every one of those steps is one step closer to achievement.
This is my thing for today. I’ve done the thing. What’s yours?
*JFDI – Just Fucking Do It 🙂
I have to make sure I devote 30 minutes this morning to continue working on a scope of concern list for a meeting this Thursday of my state’s lead poisoning advisory board- before I see my psychoanalysis patients today.