GarthBox

You can react to someone. It’s usually snappy and your answer isn’t always right or what they want. Reactions use judgement and stereotypes and shortcuts for the sake of speed.

You can also respond to someone. It’s usually more thought out. You’ve processed the event and can act and feel better about it. There’s often flow in a response, but it may not always be right.

You can also see and hear someone. It usually means you’re asking another question, repeating the request and truly listening. It requires empathy and removing your internal dialogue and ego from the situation. Your action is usually right because it’s about them and not you.

If you think about yourself being in the situations above–the one who is being reacted to or responded to or seen and heard–can you imagine in which space you’d prefer to be?

Stay Positive & Others Are Just The Same

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Believe it or not, watching motivational videos isn’t what gives you confidence.

Promising others that you’ll take a specific action doesn’t give you confidence either.

Nor does being completely prepared.

They all might give you hope and encouragement, but not confidence.

The only way to have confidence is to do something you think a confident person would do because confidence is the result of an action taken – it doesn’t precede it.

Stay Positive & Enjoy The Outcome

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Then list absolutely everything you have to do to make that project you’re working on succeed.

If the evaluation isn’t enough to get you to stop moving forward, then certainly seeing how long of a list it ends up being will.

If you want to get unstuck, it pays to prioritize, to focus on a few key to-dos.

Having a few enables you to select a combination of easy (drip, drip, drip) tasks and larger scarier ones (the leaps, if you will).

And if you’d like to get stuck there too, either select all easy tasks or all massive undertakings.

Crazy to consider just how easy it is to get stuck.

Crazier yet to realize all it takes to get unstuck is action.

Stay Positive & One Step After The Other

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Fear and shame and vulnerability don’t arrive so you can run from them.

Nothing meaningful would get done if you did that.

Rather, they arrive to remind you that you’re onto something.

The best action you can take is to dance with the resistance.

Sure, it might step on your toe while you tango, but if that’s what you need to go through to make the change you seek then it sounds like a worthy trade-off to me.

Stay Positive & One, Two, T-A-N-G-O

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The thing about the gauntlet is that the more you go through it, the better you get.

The other thing about the gauntlet is that once you stop, once you’re out, it’s quite scary to get back in and it’s unlikely you’ll pick up from where you left off.

So they say, if you’re going through hell, keep on going.

Stay Positive & Hopes Up High, Head Down Low

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Deadlines don’t need to only be for projects in progress.

They can be for meetings or emails, too.

They can be for connecting with others and having greater empathy today than you did yesterday.

Deadlines don’t just drive progress in work, they can drive progress in life, too–so long as we set them.

Stay Positive & Ready SET Go

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Our default setting is to seek reassurance and it’s strongest when we’re uncertain about something or when there’s a feeling of risk.

We needn’t ask around for others to offer us any certainty, though.

Clarity can be found in recalling who it’s for, who is the target, who is being impacted by the change you seek to make.

When you can make it about them (because that’s how it all started, anyway), you won’t need all that reassurance.

If it’s right for them, then it’s right.

Stay Positive & Back To Work

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