Self-Trust: Got Any?

One sentence, that’s all I have to write. There, I wrote it. And now there are two — wait, three. I’m an overachiever!

Photo by Alice PopKorn

Leo Babauta calls it the Art of the Start. Just start, and you’ll most likely keep going. And if you don’t, you can still chalk up a success for the day and build on that.

I need to start writing every day and get serious about it. Or silly about it, as long as I write. The thing is, this free-writing thing (or Morning Pages, or 750words, or whatever) feels like just one more avoidance technique, another way to put off the Real Writing Which Scares Me. The book, the other book, the blog, the other blog — don’t ask why it scares me, it just does. Well, it’s too much, obviously. I’ve always had a problem with focus.

Right now, I’m thinking, ‘Damn, I forgot to wash the dishes. They’re sitting in a sinkful of rapidly cooling water. I should go wash the dishes and clean the kitchen, and then do laundry and water the plants. And the carpet is FILTHY — I really should vacuum. And what about that horrible bathroom?’ Of course, the thought of actually doing all that — or ANY of it, to be honest — is enough to make me rethink my position on writing. It doesn’t sound so bad now after all. Let the dishwater cool. It’s easy to replace with hot water after I’ve finished writing.

Maybe that’s the solution to procrastination: make your avoidance technique something that you hate to do that you’ve been putting off too long. (Like THAT’S gonna work, says my inner critic.) Either way, something gets done that needed doing.

I’m taking Leo Babauta’s Unprocrastination course this month, and I’ve already fallen behind on the super-easy assignment of keeping track of when I want to procrastinate. All I have to do is keep a tally of every time I feel the urge, and then mark whether I’ve kept the tally for the day in the course’s habit-tracker.

But Leo says not to feel guilty when you fail, just make note of it. So I’m making note. And keeping tally again.

And it turns out that I only missed a couple of days, not that bad. I thought it was more like a week, probably because I’d set it in my mind that I didn’t want to do it any more. I even thought about giving up altogether because it felt hopeless. We do tend to over-react to small failures, don’t we? All-or-nothing-at-all is not the best life strategy.

This week in the course, Leo had a great interview with a blogger named Tynan — who, it turns out, wrote a Kindle book about living in an RV that I bought and enjoyed a while back. Tynan had some great suggestions for building self-discipline, and better yet, self-trust. That’s been a huge bugaboo for me. As a kid, I learned from over-critical adults that I can’t be trusted to do the hard stuff. That belief has been so ingrained that it’s become part of me, but Tynan just may have persuaded me that I can start trusting myself again.

He says to start by making uber-easy commitments that you KNOW you will keep — like, “I will eat lunch today,” or “I will drink that cup of tea on the desk,” and gradually move up the ladder of difficulty as you learn to trust yourself.

I didn’t realize it, but I started doing that around the time I started this blog, three years ago. I committed to little things, like brushing my teeth first thing in the morning (when you’re not going to work every day any more, it’s easy to put off) and keeping the bathroom mirror clean. (Yes, I have issues with cleanliness. I like clean, I just don’t like cleanING.) Slowly, I began to build confidence that I COULD trust myself to do the dishes every day and use the greens in the fridge before they were slimy. But I put off writing for last.

I’m still struggling with the daily writing habit but I have learned to trust that when I do sit down to write a blog post or a book chapter, I can turn out something that doesn’t embarrass me too much. Progress! Now I just need to sit down to write more often. My dream is to someday be considered a prolific writer, to churn out book after book, like the two Stephens — King and Pressfield. (Pressfield is Steven with a V, but I’m going with it.)

I’m going to make a commitment to myself right now: I will write at least one sentence every day, just one, because one sentence always leads to another. And if it doesn’t, there are always the dishes.

So — self-trust. How are you learning to trust yourself? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.