Jess Lively

UPDATE: I found the video that inspired this post!

Last week I watched a video about the Sean Stephenson, author of Get Off Your “But” and though I haven’t read the book itself, I think the title is pretty freaking awesome and it applies to today’s THINK ABOUT IT topic, moving forward past fears.

People have asked me how I stay motivated, move forward, and generally grow Jess LC. And the answer is that I just keep going and eventually progress is made. Anything you do for 9-10 hours a day, five days a week, is bound to grow.

Except when I get stuck.

Getting stuck happens to us all. Sometimes we get stuck because we don’t know what to do next, sometimes we don’t have the resources or time to move forward, and sometimes we freeze from fear. It happens to everyone – absolutely everyone.

The difference between successful and less successful people, as Sean Stephenson mentioned in his video clip, lies in how long we stay stuck. He calls the reasons we get stuck our “buts.” And our buts leave us sitting… on our butts.

The question is: how do we get off our buts?

Here’s how I got off my but yesterday:

In the next few months I will be debuting jewelry at some pretty big-time retailers which have specific vendor requirements. In order to work with these companies, I need to make sure I follow their protocols. If I don’t, I’ve heard stories of charge-backs and penalties that decrease my check. Not fun, right? So I felt the need to do everything exactly right. But since I felt intimidated by the process, I avoided opening the Excel attachments with the information because I thought it might be hard to understand or execute perfectly.

Avoiding the task actually caused additional stress. I knew I was procrastinating, and that made me even more frustrated on top of the fear I felt about the contracts. Needless to say, my anxiety around both orders increased. I found myself with a little nagging voice in my head saying, “But I don’t know what to do. Geez, if only I had a boss to show me how to do this, my life would be so much easier. All my friends with bosses get taught how to do new things. I don’t get that at all. Blah. Blah. Blah. But. But. But.”

Then, I calmly and firmly responded to that nagging voice, “Get over it, Jess. It’s true, you don’t have a boss. But every time you’ve needed to learn something, God has put someone in your life with the right information. The same will happen today.”

So after swallowing that reality pill, I called my friend, Kristin, and told her about how I was avoiding the next steps to working with these new retailers. She listened and serenely told me that I had a ton of things on my plate and these new partnerships’ delivery requirements were adding stress. She said that I just needed to drop off the orders in my hands at the post office, go back to the studio, write down everything I have to do this week, and then divide it up day by day.

Hearing her objectively assess the situation and give me direction helped immensely. She acted as my “boss” and told me what I needed to do next. So I promptly went home, wrote down all my tasks, and started checking them off. And when I got to those shipping requirements, I printed them out and read them. Sure, I still have some questions. But I know that I can call the buyers at the companies and they will help me do things correctly.

Like our posteriors, the longer we sit on buts, the bigger they get.

So let’s go bust some ass, shall we?