Jordan Harbinger

First of all, thank you for being so open with us about all this and for sharing so much of your struggle to stay committed.

I've dealt with this exact same thing in my life.

I know Gabe has too.

We've talked about it a bunch and I think everyone listening right now can relate to how hard it is to A, know what to get excited about and B, stick with what you're excited about.

Which it almost always does.

Yeah, that always happens.

I would imagine everyone listening right now is like, yeah, I did that with, and then just fill in the blank, like some hobby or some sport.

So a few general thoughts, and then let's talk about this new career of yours.

If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that whenever we get questions about procrastination, avoidance, losing steam, we often end up talking about how we're not actually avoiding the task.

We're avoiding the feelings that the task brings up.

We're avoiding an experience, which is always an experience of ourselves.

That might be anxiety, it might be frustration, it might be shame, it might be fear, it might be disappointment, and my experience is usually some mix of all the above.

And so we turn away from the task, and then we go, oh, I'm procrastinating, or I have trouble concentrating, or I guess this really isn't the thing for me after all, when really it's usually resistance.

And it's not even resistance to the thing.

It's resistance to the things that the thing brings up in us, which is always some form of distress.

And then we're back to that shame piece again.

I think the shame is usually the most distressing of the distresses, but maybe that's just me.

So if we really acknowledge that deeper stuff and decided to tolerate those feelings while we kept at the goal and worked hard through them, I mean, that sounds great, but that is hard, man.

I don't know about you, but I'll do a lot to avoid getting angry with a problem at work.

I'll do so many mental gymnastics to avoid confronting my creative limitations.