I'm back in Southampton, my home town, speaking at a property networking event. It's a Sunday evening in June 2017. These days I live in Cheltenham, a town that lives and breathes horse racing. So tonight I'm starting with a horse.
Picture a jockey on a racehorse. The jockey decides where they go, when to push on, when to ease off and when to jump. The horse does as it's told.
Except it doesn't, does it? You've seen a jockey come off at a fence. The horse doesn't stop and wait. It carries on running wherever it fancies. The jockey was never really in charge.
The jockey and the horse
Your logical brain is the jockey. Your emotional brain is the horse. The jockey thinks it's running the show, but most of the time we're along for the ride.
You'll know this one. It's Monday morning and someone walks into the office and announces they're on a diet. Then they walk into the kitchen, and somebody's brought in a cake. The jockey says we've decided, we're getting healthy. The horse says I'll start tomorrow. Guess who wins.
The same thing happens with anything that feels a bit exposed. Writing a blog post. Recording a video. The horse tells you it isn't good enough yet, that people will laugh, that you've got a cheek. And the post never goes out.
At the end of that evening in Southampton, the host records a quick video for social media and fluffs the line. While talking about done beats perfect, of all things. It's far from perfect. It still goes out. That's the whole point.
Should or must
The other thing holding most of us back is one small word. Should.
I should get fitter. I should start that business. I should ring my mum more. Shoulds are wishes with a guilty conscience, and they can sit on the list for years.
A must is different. When something becomes a must there's no debate, and somehow it gets done. Think about a time you signed up for something on monthly payments and then wondered if you could really afford it. Once the contract was signed, did you find the money? Most people do. It stopped being a should.
Anything I've decided I must do, I've done. My first marathon was a must (the story of that is in What marathon training taught me about big goals). So was 100 kilometres in a day. The fear didn't go away for either of them. I still worry about how I'll look if I can't do something. But a must points the horse the right way.
The horse still wins sometimes
The horse still wins more often than I'd like. (Usually where cake is involved.) What's changed is that I notice it now.
When I catch myself saying I should, I ask whether it's really a must. If it isn't, I drop it and stop feeling guilty about it. If it is, I stop saying should.
First published June 2017.
