Why is it so hard to do the things we want to do?  Or at least to stop doing the things we don’t want to do?

I know this in my own experience.  It doesn’t matter how true something is, it’s only really true when we give expression to it – only then do we truly value it.  And here is the problem.  We measure all things by what we already know and experience.

Let’s add Dan Ariely’s helpful Human quirks of ownership to this:

We come to love what we already have.

We focus on what we’ll lose rather than what we can gain.

We think others will value what we have as much as we do.

This is why the first step towards something new – in regard to ourselves, others, and our world – is to suspend or interrupt how we see and understand.

This has been my own experience.  I had to discover more than I knew, but that wasn’t enough.  I needed to resonate deeply with something in what I was discovering and begin to imagine what I could do, but that wasn’t enough.  I had to try out some of those imaginings, to experiment – and then things began to change.

It’s not easy.

It’s not impossible.

But it is worth it.