First, You Must Decide It Matters

Does it matter?

This thing. Whatever it is that you're doing or thinking about doing. Your goal. Your work or your workout, your relationship, your education, your parenting, your dream, your life. Does it matter to you?

Because if this thing you're doing doesn't matter to you, progress is going to be slow, if it shows at all.

So, first you must decide it matters.

Like my horrible double-unders.

Single double single. If I had decided they mattered, I'd have practiced like a mofo and I'd be stringing those things together now like Christmas lights. But I have not made that decision yet. Have not committed. And so I flail myself with the plastic cord, in a twisted Penance that was never given to me by a kindly old man in crinkly black vestments on the other side of a wooden screen in a quiet New England church.

So first, you have to decide this thing matters.

Then rush through planning.

What? 

Planning is important. It shouldn't be rushed.Yes and no.

See, planning is safe.

No one gets hurt during planning. So many people get lost here. And I don't want you to get lost.

Do what planning you must, but rush a bit if you can, because action is waiting for you to grab it by the collar and make out with it.

This action you take might be practice or it might be the real thing, but either way it's the actual doing of that thing that you decided had merit. It's the test.

And it's all terrifying. 

Good things are, because you give a damn. Never expect it to be any other way. Throwing your heart on the table is always frightening. If it wasn't, you would do it all the time for everything. But you don't need to do it all the time for everything. Everything is not worth it.

But some things are.

Find those things. Ferret them out. Suss them from the gentle fog that blankets the world of ideas and emotions.

Only the brave chase down their dreams, daring to keep going when all seems lost, after most people have returned to safety and nothingness, snoozing in their armchairs until too many years of chimichangas and repressed desires strangle the arteries to their real and imaginary hearts.

Don't be them. Be the brave.

But first, you must decide it matters.