#1632 Stop F**cking Waiting - Harps

the message goes as follows, stop fucking waiting. Stop waiting for the magic, stop waiting for the opportunity, stop waiting for the right time, stop waiting for an invitation, stop waiting to feel confident, stop waiting to feel good enough.

Just stop waiting. Stop waiting. At two conversations with people today who need to change stuff, one in person the conversation, one on the phone the conversation, both of those people know that there are things that they really need to be doing, not want necessarily, but need to be doing, Like there are a shit going on in their life

that can't be more specific than that. But let me tell you that they are fucking waiting and to their own detriment on some level, like many other people, waiting for some kind of better time than today, Like so many people that I talk to, it feels like whatever day that I talk to them on. No, it doesn't matter which day, any day of the week, any week of the year, any fucking year of the decade. But no matter what day I talk to them, it's never

the day. It's always soon. It's tomorrow, it's next week, it's next month, it's when the kids are not on holidays, it's when the ankle's better. It's when. But it's not now. It's never now. I don't think that we should be reckless, but I think that for many people this whole fucking it's not the right time. It's not the right moment. I need to get my metaphoric ducks in a row. I think it's bullshit. I honestly think it's bullshit. I think we need to be strategic, and I think timing is,

at times, no pun intended, an issue. But I think for more people, timing is an excuse. Now, I'm not instructing. I'm not instructing on any level. I'm not suggesting that you be reckless, that you don't think, but I am suggesting that if you have been in the waiting for the right time, brigade or group, for let's say a year or more, then I might suggest to you that, depending on what the thing is that we're talking, it might not be a timing thing. It might be a

you thing. Sometimes on this journey of personal development and growth and improvement, we need to own things. We need to be self aware. I said to one of the two people today who happen to be a dude, doesn't matter. I don't know why I told you that they're both dudes, but I just said to him, honestly, this is coming from a good place. I feel like you're fucking kidding yourself. I feel like you are calling your excuses reasons, and I don't think they're reasons. I think they're self created,

perhaps unconsciously, but they are self created avoidance strategies. And I fear that if you don't make a decision, and you don't start today, or you don't start soon, that there will be a dire fucking consequence that you can't undo, or it will be much much, much harder to address than it currently is. Here's the thing about change, especially when we're talking about personal change, we're talking about habits and behaviors and outcomes on planet US. Here's the thing.

It's uncomfortable nearly always at the start at the very least, it's inconvenient. It's often not practical, it's often disruptive. It often disrupts our plans, or our patterns, or our current comfortable, familiar, easy operating system. We don't need to wait, but we want to wait, and we find a way to justify the waiting, and we get really defensive when people go,

are you sure you need to wait? Because when things happen in our life, when dramas happen, when catastrophes happen, when bad things happen, that we just need to deal with. Timing is never an issue because we don't have the luxury of time. You have the heart attack, you just have to deal with it today. You break your leg, you just have to deal with it. Today, your partner walks out on you. You just have to deal with

it today. And there's no chance of not dealing with it on that day because it's out of our control. We can put our head in the sand, of course, but that only makes it worse. Imagine if that thing that you've been putting off, you said today is today the day that you are listening to these words this podcast. Even though even though some of you right now are quickly creating a list of reasons as to why today is not the day. What if you fucking did it anyway?

What if you just what if you saw this as an opportunity, not a problem. What if you went this interruption from Harps, this fucking poking and prodding, this challenging of me. What if you said, this is not something to avoid again, this is not something to put on a shelf again. What if you went, not fuck it. This is an opportunity. This is an opportunity. Yes it's hard, but it's an opportunity. I don't know if I've mentioned this on the show, but last week I was demonstrating

something in the gym. I did something. Anyway, The problem, the bottom line was I injured myself reasonably badly. I fucked my shoulder. I ended up in hospital. I don't think I've told this story, but anyway, X rays the whole shooting match didn't break anything but some significant sholder soft tissue injury. Blah blah blah, doesn't matter. It's okay, I'll get better. Told not to do any strength training

for six weeks upper body strength training. As you can imagine, that went down well on Planet me, the somewhat obsessive weight trainer. My immediate response was, fuck him, I'm training. My other immediate response was, woe is me? Life's not fair? Why does this happen to me? I've da da da

da all the self pity and the bullshit. But when I got over the emotional stuff, the anger and the self pity and the bullshit, kind of after I'd gotten home from hospital, which was a six hour visit, and it was eleven o'clock at night, and I could have eaten a dead rat. I was so fucking hungry. But anyway, I started to think about, Okay, I have this thing. I can't wake up tomorrow and this injury is gone. And so this happened. What is tonight? What is today?

Today is Sunday. So this happened about nine days ago. I think it was a Thursday. So I started to think about how I could make this problem an opportunity. And one of the things that I don't do enough of, and one of the things that I've avoided is stretching. And so I said to myself, self, why don't you use this time to improve your shit flexibility in your sixty year old raggedy ass fucking high tensile body, your violin string fucking body, your ceramic tile body that is

quite strong but also quite brittle. Why don't you make that body more flexible? Why don't you use this time where you're not using your shoulder and your upper body so much. By the way I talked to him, down to four weeks, You're welcome. What don't use is to improve your flexibility. So from the next day until today, I've done it. Today, every day I've done thirty minutes of stretching, which and me doing it every day for

nine days, and me doing thirty minutes a day. And yep, I'm a little bit frustrated, if I'm being honest, because of my shoulder, but not nearly as frustrated as I could be or would have been in the past. And also I'm using this time out still training my lower body, still training core a little bit, not training my upper body. That's okay, I'll recover, I'll get back there. But what I'm doing is I'm using this time away from strength

training my upper body to increase my overall flexibility. In fact, today I did forty five minutes. I looked up at my phone and I was at thirty eight minutes and I went, fuck, I'm going to do it to forty five minutes, and I stretched forty five minutes. So we turn the problem if we want, even if in the middle of the problem, even in the middle of the adversity, we can find some kind of light in the darkness

if we look for it. So this problem of not being able to do one thing has opened a door for me to do another thing, which I'm now doing and I feel better. I feel looser, I feel more flexible, obviously, and the stretching for me is something that I'm going to maintain moving forward. The challenge for us is to get out of this inner dialogue of circular conversation for years, if not decades, of rationalizing why now is not the time. It's not a good situation for me, it's not a

good time for mehaps you don't understand. And of course there will be times where literally it isn't and I get that, But let's differentiate between when there is a real, genuine, authentic problem or reason. Right, Let's put that to one side as five percent of the time, and that's cool. Now, let's focus on the ninety five percent of the time. Where you and I know that we're just not starting because we just don't want to. We don't want to.

We're going to start soon. And then we look up, and as I've said many times before, we look up and it's now December twenty twenty four, it's now July twenty twenty five. At six months later, it's twelve months later, and we're still having the same inn and dialogue. We're still not doing the things that we should do. And what's interesting is when we lean into this where we go, fuck, don't procrastinate. I was listening to Andrew Schuberman, neuro scientist extraordinari.

I was talking to him. I'll talk to him. I'm trying to get him on the podcast, but fucking a long shot. But anyway, but I was listening to him talk about what happens in our brain when we actually just do things that we don't want to do, when we we go fuck it. And this is an example where we go, yeah, I know I could do it today, but I don't have to do it today. I can start tomorrow. And the I don't have to do it today, I can start tomorrow becomes a default setting sometimes forever.

But when we go, fuck it, I could do it today, I don't want to necessarily. I don't feel like it's not going to be comfortable, quick, easy, painless. It might be hard, it might not be sexy, it might not be super enjoyable in the moment, but nonetheless, I'm starting. When we do that, there's a thing in our brain called the anterior mid singulate cortext say that ten times

fast the anterior mid singulate cortex, and that changes. That builds stronger neural pathways and neural connections, and according to some research, some late, some recent research, that part of the brain actually grows. It hypertrophies, it gets bigger like a bicep does when we do bicep curls. It's fucking incredible. And so when we decide that, look, today is the day, or or when we decide that we're going to do

the thing that we could put off. We could put it off, we could rationalize it, and people would go, well that makes sense, I totally understand. But nonetheless we decide to not put it off. We decide that today is the day. We create some momentum, and every day we just get up and we just keep doing despite the fact that it might not be fun, quick, easy,

or painless today, or convenient today. We might not be motivated today, we might not have a cheer squad today, we might not be getting great results at the moment. But nonetheless, we're going to keep stepping up and not giving up. We're going to step up when most would give up. We're going to look for solutions not problems. Yes, we're going to be practical and realistic, and yes we're going to have good and bad days because we're human, but we're not going to keep giving up. We're going

to stop fucking waiting. So many people that listen to this show, that listen to pod, that come to my workshops that and I mean this in a loving way. If I was all about popularity, I would just tell you that you're all fucking amazing all the time. But you know that you're not all amazing. You know that you're not doing great stuff every day most of you, and you know that there are things that you need

to hear but don't want to hear. And if I was one of many of the coaches, mentors, personal development people on Instagram, I would be saying all this fucking hyperbolic bullshit self help fluff, this fairy floss kind of motivation, but it's just not valuable for you, and it's just not real for me. Some of you don't need to hear this because you're on the path, you're on the journey, and you're doing great and truly for me to you,

fucking well done, you, super proud of you. But there are some of you that are your own problem and you know it. And if me saying this bothers you, that's okay. But of all the problems you've ever had in your life, you were there for all of them. You were there for all of them. That doesn't mean you were always the cause, but there's a fair chance that you're a common denominator with some of the fucking

shit that's going on in your life. I'm not interested in making you feel good for three minutes with rubbing your back and pumping up your emotional tires. I'm genuinely interested in helping people to help themselves. And I'm interested in what you're capable of changing in the next three, six, twelve months, the things that are on your to do list. I'm interested in your plan, I'm interested in your resilience.

I'm interested in the work that you can do. I'm interested in what you will do today because you've listened to this. See you next time.