Seven Jacobs
I'm a Communication and Confidence coach, and the only Emotional Fitness & Self‑Discovery Practitioner. This newsletter helps you make personal power, philosophy, and emotions practical. I'd love to have you here!
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Hey Reader! I've been thinking a lot about hesitation today. You see, I'm the kind of person that needs to take time to make sure I'm making the right decision. And while leadership sometimes requires split second decisions... I bet a lot of you are like me. An emotional high will come, and it helps to ride the wave instead of making an emotional decision then and there. As a result, one of my rules for myself is "Have patience. Wait to make the important decision until you're in the most helpful state." But there is a fine line between consciously choosing to wait so you can process an emotion, and avoiding making a decision. When we unconsciously use avoidance to make a decision, we don't grow. When you know why you hesitate, you can understand the root cause, and move into an emotionally-fit, conscious journey of your own evolution. It isn't about judging. It's simply about moving from unconscious hesitation into conscious patience. But why does hesitation matter so much? The logical mind can get in the way, and make up LOTS of excuses to not do the hard thing:
On and on. In fact, in my TEDx talk, I discuss the concept of The Region Beta Paradox - which is a concept that appeared online to describe the "Comfortable middle", caused by us coming up with reasons and excuses to keep us from making hard decisions. Here's what I wrote in my original speech script specifically: [W]e resist change. Some clues [this resistance] leaves behind are procrastination, avoidance, or a fear of failure.
There are a few reasons we do this. Neuroscience shows that the brain perceives uncertainty as a threat, activating stress responses. So of course, you tense up and want to avoid it.
Meanwhile, we get comfortable in the life and circumstances that we know, even if that means not striving to reach our greatest potential.
Online, this has become lovingly known as the region-beta paradox: where even if we’re feeling numb and stagnant, we’ll stay in the place where we’re familiar, as long as things don’t get “too bad”, whatever that means. [For example, the relationship isn't right, but they aren't abusive - so we stay. This is the comfortable middle ground, and ironically life would actually be better in the long run if things got worse, because we'd be pushed to make a change.]
So resistance keeps us small. And it keeps us stuck.
Here’s something to tattoo into your brain: “Life is change.” The cycle of life, evolution, the expansion of the universe – everything that is life is changing, all around us, all the time.
And here’s a question: What happens if life doesn’t keep flowing?
If you’ve ever seen a small pool of stagnant water out in the wilderness, you might notice that the colour looks kind of funny and moss starts to grow, there are some suspicious bubbles floating around… You probably don’t want to drink that water.
That’s because when it stagnates, it starts to become poisonous.
And we humans are not so different.
In other words, if change is life, then stagnation is death.
Hesitation causes stagnation. One of the little deaths within the big death that is stagnation itself. I notice last-second hesitation before more than I care to admit. Thankfully, I now know how to handle it, and being a practitioner in this, I have the tools to do the self-discovery work to understand why. Unless we've worked together, you might not - so here's how you can get started now. Cutting through hesitation requires action. Make a decision - even a really tiny one - that will create a compounding return in a way that shows trust in yourself and your purpose. For example, you might not know if you should come to my event in central London tomorrow that will teach you more of this. Are your reasons to come, or not come, born purely of those kinds of thoughts I listed above? Something that is fundamentally shutting yourself or someone down? Or, are you curious and expansive? Are you calm and patient, or agitated and therefore probably hesitating? Either way, I implore you to put some time into building discernment (a topic for another day) about whether you're consciously choosing patience, or whether you're actually hesitating. And a final practice is to reflect, write, meditate, even visualize, reflecting on the following question: What is hesitation costing you, Reader? I implore you to consider that this week. Lots of love, and here's to your success! - Seven (PS if you want to join us tomorrow, the event has a couple of slots left open. Hope to see you soon!) |
Seven Jacobs
I'm a Communication and Confidence coach, and the only Emotional Fitness & Self‑Discovery Practitioner. This newsletter helps you make personal power, philosophy, and emotions practical. I'd love to have you here!