If you have a look at the dates of the posts that I have published, you’ll see that my last post Visualizing – Helpful Videos  was posted back on the 5th August. Egads!!! That was over five weeks ago!

So to help me get into the of rhythm of writing regularly and to focus my writing, I am taking part in Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 1. The purpose of the challenge (in Natalie’s words) is, “so you can take one small action each day that will help you move forward, past any hurdles or challenges you may be facing and on the path to building the momentum toward living life on your own terms.”

Don’t know who Natalie Sisson is?

She’s an entrepreneur who’s been living life on her own terms since 2009. She runs online businesses and helps others to achieve freedom in their own lives. She’s on a mission to help 1,000,000+ entrepreneurs create true freedom in life by 2020. Her main online home is at www.suitcaseentrepreneur.com.

Oh, and she’s a kiwi. So yeah, that makes her awesome. 😉

So the challenge for day one, is to write about 2-3 that you feel are holding you back from your ideal lifestyle.

In the Day 1 video Natalie shares three common challenges (excuses?) that hold people back; they are time, money and freedom. I almost wish I had one of those excuses, then I’d know what I need to ‘fix’, right?

Time

I’ve got plenty. I have no kids. I don’t know how you parents do it? You’re like, busy. All. The. Time.

Me? Not so much.

I work full-time, start at 7am, finish at 4.30pm usually, but often not until 5.30-6pm. But I live 5 minutes drive from work, so there is no commute time.

Roller derby used to take up a lot of my time. A LOT! Training 4 nights a week (8 hours on skates, one hour cross-fit) plus a meeting, plus commuting to the other side of Auckland in peak hour traffic, plus fundraising, plus events, plus games. I gave it up because it was taking up too much of my life, and I really wanted to be able to commit time to this blog. :-/

And we live in a tiny house. A garage that has been converted into a one bedroom unit. Hardly a mansion that requires hours of cleaning or upkeep.

Money

I’ve got plenty of that too. ‘Member how I said we’ve got no kids? Yeah, that probably explains why we’ve got money.

Also:

I work close to home = only one little car that my husband and I share.

I gave up derby = No fees, no commuting, no fundraising, no new gear, no travel to games. But it does mean getting unfit and (ahem) fat.

We live in a garage = we rent. It’s a garage. It’s cheap.

Freedom

Hmmm, I don’t know about this one. I have freedom. I think. I just don’t use it.

So, getting to the point of the blog post and the challenge for today.

What are the 2-3 things that are holding me back from my ideal lifestyle?

Fear

Oh man, I feel like such a cliche.

I feel like every one says “it’s fear holding you back from ……” What evs.

But, when I get up at 4am (which I do most weekdays) to meditate and write, fear is the only word I can use to describe how I feel.

It’s not so bad with meditating now. I’ve got past the hurdle of just letting my mind calm down and sitting still for 10 minutes.

But writing. Oh… I feel sooo much resistance. I don’t know what’s going on in my head, but it’s like my skins crawls at the idea of needing to reign my thoughts in for long enough get a coherent thought into a sentence. How do I corral all the divergent thoughts in my head into one theme, one topic, one article. The pure effort required to do that freaks me out. So yeah, fear.

Procrastination

I really do think that the procrastination I indulge in has a lot to do with the fear I talk about above.

The Solution

There’s two parts to this solution.

1. My Head

This fear of writing, it’s in my head. I know I’m not the greatest writer, and geez, I’m a baby at it. I’ve never written more than the required essays at school, procedural documents for work or personal emails to my girlfriends back in Australia. But I think I do okay at writing. So I ‘can’ write. It’s my head telling me I can’t, or that it will be too hard.

So, I’m working on my head.

I do a visualization every day (well, most days.. okay, okay… SOME days. :-P). I’ve been meaning to add affirmations. And I am learning to meditate (I use the headspace app and have been doing this every day).

What I’m trying to achieve is to get my subconscious to believe that I’m a good writer, that I love it, and that it adds value to the world. Once my subconscious knows this to be the truth, then it will lead me to writing.

2. Focus

I just realised this part as I was writing the first half of this post. Things like this blogging challenge narrow my focus down to answering one, simple question. (And I manage to make the answer a 1,000 word behemoth!):

By narrowing the focus, I can forget about the gazillions of things going on in my head, and just talk about this ONE THING.

As an example; I had thought that ‘visualization’ was a narrow topic. But it’s not; it’s HUGE! Narrow is: ‘How many times a day should you visualize.’ To the seasoned writers out there, that is probably blatantly obvious. It is to me too, now. Thank goodness.

So in the act of writing a post title ‘Finding Focus’, I find focus for my writing. Who woulda thunk it, huh!

#10DBC #freedomplan