The woman in this session believes there’s a “big ass thing” she has to solve before she can start her business. Joe reframes the whole structure: the elaborate problem, the psychologizing about why she’s stuck, the “what’s wrong with me” — all of it is a way to not start the business. The complexity isn’t an obstacle in front of the work; it is the avoidance itself.
“Even like the psychological what’s wrong with me what I’m distracting myself… all that is also a way to not start your business.”
Joe points out she has even built her business model as a roundabout workaround — selling shelves so she can eventually become an interior decorator — instead of just doing the thing she wants. The detour is engineered to look productive while keeping the actual goal safely out of reach.
“Even business that you aren’t doing that’s easy to do, you’re doing so that you can get somewhere else instead of actually going to the place you want to go.”
Watch for this move in yourself: when the path to what you want suddenly sprouts prerequisites, references, and “first I need to” conditions, the complexity is often manufactured to delay. The antidote is to name the simple version of the thing you want and go do it directly.
Related Concepts
- “Should” is shame, and shame stops behavior
- Just do the thing you want to do and stop asking permission
- Procrastination is the avoidance of an emotional state
- Feeling your essential nature dissolves avoidance behaviors
- Asking ‘how do I stop’ keeps you in the doing loop
- Shoulds are a cage that reinforces the problem they try to solve
- The story about how you’re broken is the problem, not the brokenness