Are you retreating?

Not in the sense of meditating in a cabin in the woods.

What I mean is, are you running away from battle?

“What battle,” you cry. Excellent question—it’s the battle between want and need, fought every day on the battleground of your to-do list. The moment a task, creative project, or workload gets tough, we tend to throw up our hands and scream “nope!” and then tumble into the familiar arms of our comfort zone. 

Many of us are anxious creatures. We pop on our phones and soak in an avalanche of short-form content. Then we feel mildly better…

Until we put that phone down. 

Because all that stuff we’re stressed about—the next shift at work, the sink of dirty dishes, the laundry on the floor—those still remain. The stress still remains. So is the “relaxing” actually helping, or is it just distracting us from worry?

I’ll  let you in on a little secret:

Binging a comfort show instead of putting away your pile of folded laundry (which has been sitting on your bedroom floor all week) will not result in your clothes being put away.

Shocker, I know.

The irony is that the little voices in our heads that are constantly yapping at us to sit and relax, and constantly complaining about the list of chores that need doing, never actually let us relax until we ignore them. 

“But Lucy,” I hear you ask. “Why are you saying that we shouldn’t relax?”

On the contrary! Humans need rest—they need it just as much as those dirty dishes need washing. Just like those dishes, we definitely don’t want to get all smelly and neglected.  

What I’m talking about is a re-ordering of the system—putting the doing first, and the resting second. 

Imagine a bounty hunter in the wild west.

Say he wanders into a bar, and the bartender there wants to hire him to retrieve his seven ale mugs (I’m going with video game rules, here). But then he pays the bounty hunter in advance, in full. 

That bartender is never getting his mugs back, and never seeing that money again. 

So often, that’s the plot-line of our every day. We are literally conning ourselves. How roguish of us (and not in the fun way)!

But that doesn’t need to be our fate. 

Just like with writing or painting, the hardest part about the to-do list is starting it. But once we start it, it only gets easier.

When I put away my laundry before I sit down to watch a movie, I always enjoy that movie more. 

When I wash the dishes before hunkering down to play video games, I play without the lingering sense of dread.

Those little voices are lying to you—you don’t need to retreat. Take a breath. Don’t overthink it. If you don’t think and just start doing, you’ll go so much farther than you imagine.

Isn’t that wonderful?