The Shift

I recently went to an event with people from my past.

I hate to say it, but from what I was told it would be, I'd already constructed the evening in my mind.

Who would be there.

What they would say.

How they would act.

I am ashamed and also happy to admit I was wrong.

Everyone had changed.

People who I assumed would be there were not, and those who were were very different.

The context of the event does not matter, but the lesson does.

We spend so much of our lives living out scenarios and so little of our lives just living.

No one wants to go to the gym because they don't want to be sore. But some exercise is better than no exercise.

You don't want to start cleaning something because you don't believe you'll have the time or the energy to finish the task. But once you start, it motivates you to keep going, or it takes less time than you had anticipated. Or better still, someone sees you doing it alone and they come over and help.

You end up spending time making a memory you hadn't even thought would happen.

So many times I have played out things in my mind and I've been wrong.

It's not a bad thing. It's a human trait to anticipate an outcome.

Good or bad, come what may, we do it.

I'll start a business, then I'll be rich. Or get stuck working all the time.

Or I'll start a business and it will fail.

We just won't know the real outcome until we get out of our heads and out of our own way.

It's easy to get caught up in the what ifs.

But you won't know for sure until you go through it and truly see the what is.