Just Do It

This has been my theme this week. Ignoring Nike’s overuse of the phrase it has been very helpful to me. I have found life to be much easier if I "just do it" rather than think and overplan and psych myself out. I recently used this idea when working on my practicum for next year. I have three counseling centers to call and inquire about their application process for accepting practicum students. I know I need to do this. There are about 50 other people from my school and numerous others from the 7 other MFT programs in the state who are currently going through this process as well. What that means is I need to get on it in order to find a site that hasn’t already accepted another student. Yet, when I think about calling I make myself sick worrying about all the "bad" things that could happen during the process. Yesterday I decided to just do it...and I am still alive. Nobody was mean to me, nobody yelled at me, nobody laughed at me. It was actually pretty easy to make this initial call. This is the same story with housecleaning and homework as well. I think about and dread doing it but once I get started it’s really not all that bad and I feel so accomplished after it’s complete.

My first thought when I woke up this morning was "I don’t want to run today". I then stopped thinking went downstairs, put on my running clothes (I leave them sitting out the evening before in case of events like this), and walked out the door. I continued to not want to be running for most of the run and cut a few blocks out (after all I am only supposed to be running a mile this week and I have been doing more, right?). Then an amazing thing happened, as soon as I saw the block with my house on it. Maybe it was the Foo Fighters song that came on my ipod, maybe it was the fact that I could stop if I wanted to but I had a burst of energy. I made up those few blocks that I had cut out and came back home satisfied with my progress for the day. Now, I just need to remember this for the future...