I could do anything… Part V

Do you now have your perfectly corrected scenario? Does it feel right? Are you nodding your head thinking, “You know, I think I could really do that!”? Good. Get ready. Now, if you haven't done the previous exercises, please don't jump ahead. Go back and do those first, please.

Part V: The Temporary Permanent Commitment

“Now I’m going to play a dirty trick on you. I’m going to insist you promise to do it! Yes, that’s what I said. No more looking back, your decision-making is over. Your career destination is clear.

Before you panic or decide that I’ve lost my mind, let me finish my instructions: I want you to do this for only an hour.

For a little while, I’m going to take away your freedom, because that freedom can be a killer. The very words ‘You can do anything you want’ create a private hell all their own. Anything? That’s too many choices! Sometimes limitations can be an incredible relief, and right now you’re going to get that relief.

The only thing that’s kept you in this free-fall of endless choices until now is the fear that you’ll make the wrong choice and be trapped. Well, right or wrong, I want you to believe that you’ve made a choice and you are trapped.

You’re going to make a total commitment to that scenario, the one that was so right you couldn’t make it any better. All other choices are now closed to you, and you must roll up your sleeves and get started making your scenario come true. For an hour.

Now, just a minute, you’re probably thinking. You’re not ready to make any commitment. Not even for an hour. For one thing, you didn’t know that’s what we were doing. If you’d known, you’d have been much more careful about the project, wouldn’t you? You bet you would have been more careful. And you (likely) wouldn’t have come up with a thing.

By commitment I mean I want you to stop the debate. Give up all your ‘what ifs.’ Your future is a done deal. I want you to say to yourself, ‘Okay, there’s no point in thinking about it because there’s no turning back. I will become a stand-up comic, or buy an island and become a telecommuter, or join a kibbutz. Now, what are the first steps I have to take to get there?’

Then I want you to actually look in your phone book, call a comedy club, check out the newspaper for island real estate, and phone a neighbor who lived on a kibbutz! For the next hour I want you hot on the track of your goal. Set the alarm clock for one full hour from now (take more time if you can stand it), and you can stop when the alarm rings.

During the hour, I want you to experience what it’s like to be irreversibly committed to something – and this scenario you have created will do as well as any other.”


Shared from Barbara Sher's "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What it Was", published by Dell Publishing