Showing Up: What is it and why is it so hard to do?

There’s a common phrase that you hear among professional minded people, and it’s “how are you showing up?” And like most common phrases, their potency can get watered down when applied too indiscriminately. So the other day I decided to revisit this phrase about showing up to see what I could find, and what I came to is that half of goal setting is about literally showing up to the space where work gets done. And since the prospective outcome of a task is always the motivating factor behind starting it in the first place, means that if we’re to accomplish our goals, we’ll need both an unemotional work habit and organizational system that can promote our ability to show up for the work even when we don’t feel like it.

A few simple examples of this are going to the gym, doing your taxes, making a home cooked meal, practicing an instrument, having an uncomfortable conversation with someone, or even putting thought into your appearance when leaving the house (if you live in Portland…just kidding…sorta). And as you can probably imagine, once you begin a task you’re generally fine. But it’s the mental and physical strain that’s associated with the thought of doing a task you don’t really want to do. Therefore, the key to short-circuiting this energetic thought train is to force yourself to physically show up to the location where the work has to be done, as doing so will create the momentum needed to get started.

The misnomer to being disciplined is that it requires some kind of special intestinal fortitude for doing hard or inconvenient things. But the real truth is that when you optimize your environment for being able to show up with few obstacles in the way, it won’t feel like a 500 pound deadlift every time you have to do something. For example, I can’t run 25 miles an hour, but I can drive my car much faster and without exerting any real energy. Also, I’ve never really needed much discipline to practice music over the years, as my instruments have always been out in the open for easy access (even as I write this my keyboard is to my right, drums in front of me, and saxophone to my left). So again, the point of any kind of structure or system is that they allow the mind and body to operate at capacities that otherwise would be impossible to sustain, let alone attain without them. And the first part of this system looks like the curation of an environment that presents little to no friction for showing up to do the work we need to do when we need to do it.

Suggested Takeaways…

a) “Showing up” is literally half the battle.

b) The better you optimize your environment for accomplishing a task, the less energy you’ll need to accomplish it.

c) Resistance to doing a task has less to do with the task itself and more to do with getting into the proper position to begin the task.