The All-Or-Nothing Trap

It's not a block for everyone, but it's a block for me, and that is that I have wanted to write a book for, let's say, most of my adult life, okay? And I know lots of people harbor this dream as kind of like a wispy idea, like, "Wouldn't it be great to write a book one day?" But I'm not talking about that kinda thing.

Like, I have seriously wanted this for so long, um, in the way, like you've thought about what it would be called, you've thought about what it would be about, and who it would help.

And I have had tons of ideas, candidly, too many ideas.

I think that's part of the problem.

I have had material, like I have so much material.

I have 15 years of material that I have written or recorded that I could draw from, right? By every measure, everybody who has a business like mine has a book.

Like this book should exist, and it doesn't.

And for a long time, I told myself that the reason was I didn't have time.

Like, that was a pretty easy excuse.

Um, but I know that's not true because I spend a lot of my coaching efforts, like, helping people find time for the things that they really care about.

I've told myself that the idea wasn't ready, you know, or that the market had changed and people aren't buying books anymore, which is not true, or that the timing was off, right? Any number of things that kind of sounded reasonable enough that I could buy myself some more time to not do it, and feel like just okay enough about it that I didn't feel just compelled forward.

But here's what's actually true.

Like, as I've thought about this and really tried to diagnose, like, what is actually going on, I haven't written it because I couldn't figure out how to write it the way I wanted to write it.

You know, I had a vision in my head that was clear and compelling and, like, just exactly right, and I knew how it would land in the market, and it felt so specific, and it felt like so demanding almost that I couldn't figure out how to start without already knowing exactly how I would get to the finish.

And not being able to guarantee that I could get to that place, like to the sort of photo finish that I'd imagined in my mind, where, you know, the book launches and it's successful and it's well-received and well-reviewed.

Like, if I couldn't guarantee that, then that was enough to keep me from starting at all.

Just not gonna do it.

No guarantee of perfect? Great.

We just won't do it.

Nothing, right? And that's the trap that I wanna talk about today.