With every new iteration of upping your game, you always start out at the same place – sneaking up on the idea, stretching your thoughts as to what is possible. I had talked to Adam about riding Viv out to Tahoe, for like a second – he’d said, enthusiastically, “Go for it!” That was great for my confidence. It lent me his to me enough to open up the space of possibility – not enough to dive in head first, but enough to affirm that it’s a possibility.
Then, I talked to Mando about it a couple of days ago. Still, sneaking up on the idea. Rolling the thought around, being comfortably uncomfortable JUST with the task of thinking about an idea is, in and of itself, a stretch towards next steps.
I told Mando how I approach things, with the RSTPesque method – small, manageable steps, practiced over and over, aggregating to a final outcome, with as many safety nets built into the process as is doable and reasonable. He told me towards the end of the conversation that he had started out our chat trying to figure out a way to talk me out of this adventure. He was certain I was going to get myself killed. By the end of the conversation, he had complete comfort in the feasibility of my plan. That’s a pretty big gap – to go from the certainty that it was impossible, that he was going to have me talk to his special ops high school bud, presumably to talk me to my senses, to feeling like it was really something quite attainable.
Today, I told Michael and Serena about the possibility of what I was thinking of, strongly using the qualifier that I’m simply in the thinking about it stage, and in no way committing to it. That helps me to ease into the idea without feeling locked into it, feeling like my ego is on the line because I committed to it. It helps me to just poke around and get comfortable solely with the idea, the possibility, nothing more.
I’ve read a couple of forum responses to “can you ride across the country on a 250cc.” The “of course you can” comments just added to the feelings of do-ability.
Lessons: even small, bite-sized mental exercises become comfortably uncomfortable stepping stones towards your learning objectives
Smarter-Not-Harder U 