Sometimes life is funny in that it gives me something and then doesn’t let me forget it. Recently I heard a thought, which unfortunately I can’t give credit because at the time I didn’t know it was important so I didn’t write it down. Over the course of a few hours, then a few days, then a few weeks, I basically can’t get this out of my head. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve heard it in other contexts multiple times over the course of pondering it either. I’m not sure if other people have the same problems or not, but at least in this case it’s something that I’ve found myself changing a lot, which is part of the reason I haven’t written as much recently.

You see the thought is fairly simple. It goes like this, “We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about what we don’t want, but we don’t always focus on what we do. When in reality the do is more important than the don’t.” It seems simple. Yet as I explored so many different things going on in my life this tended to be one of the bigger issues. Obviously it’s easy to point out problems. It’s harder to always have solutions to those problems.

When it came to setting goals or resolutions for the year I immediately went into what didn’t work the year before. I also thought about things that I didn’t want to do. Yet I was constantly avoiding what I actually did want. Similarly when looking at somethings that I want to work on learning this year it was easy to pick things that I didn’t want to or wanted to avoid, but not always what I was keenly or passionately interested in.

Moving forward I’m trying to figure out how to focus on the do. How do I start giving myself more of the autonomy that I know is important for motivation. Focusing on things like “what can only I do?” or “what do I want to do?” seem like a quick way of changing the equation. I mean sure there are things that I might not want to do but that I probably have to do, that is what it is. However, there are also trade offs where I’m allowed to say that I would rather do something for me that I want to do, then just do something else that I don’t really care about that I’m not really required for.

What these trade-offs look like, I’m not sure yet. Whether there are going to be immediate changes that are huge, no clue. I just know that this change in frame of reference from don’t to do is a fairly big change at least for me. So it’s probably going to take awhile. However, I think the dividends are going to be pretty amazing. I mean I already know of a few areas that I see working out for me in changing. I’ve even had a few promising conversations with others about things that I probably wouldn’t have had before changing. Whether anything comes of those I’m not sure, which is why it’s slightly vague.

However, the reason I bring this up, is that for me this year seems very much like a Do kind of a year. For most of my focuses this year, a lot of them are verbs, a lot of them include other people, and most include learning in some form or another. They’re all also very scary, very challenging, and very exciting. Which is awesome but also means that lots of messes and successes are probably coming this blogs way. Which since I’m working on doing things, I thought I’d like to encourage you to join me.

What are you Do-ing this year or right now?