Eleven days in...
a rodent moment, the circus, and a very late haiku
There’s this teeny tiny moment when there’s a shift.
It’s so small, so quick, so infuriatingly undetectable.
Yet it has the awesome power to change the trajectory of your life.
And it’s in that exact moment — when our attention to what’s possible subtly shifts to the effort entailed - that we lose the excitement and dip into the fear.
And that little moment? That little rodent of time that runs underfoot, undetected, can dismantle human potential faster than a circus disappearing in the middle of the night.
You know it was there — you could feel its presence — but now all that’s left are peanut shells, and the faint smell of animals and cotton candy — which also is the smell of deflated hopes and dreams. (Not totally factual, but the spirit of it is.)
When does something go from being exciting to dreadful?
It’s when we think the good feelings, the things we’re hoping to feel, are only available to us once we accomplish the goal. Once we log the 100 workouts, the 100 days without bread, or the 100 miles run. It’s the moment we think about all the space and time that lies between now and those good feelings. As if those good feelings that we imagined feeling, that got us started in the first place, can only be felt once we do all the things. Put in all. the. effort.
That’s the singular moment it shifts.
We just went from possibility to probability, and when the mind pulls from the past all the data that supports all the other times it didn’t work out, that’s when things shift.
And we’ve all been there:
At the start: “This is going to be SO GREAT! I’m going to buy so many new things/feel so proud of myself/show them once and for all/prove my worth/know that I’m smart enough…” yada yada yada.
The rodent moment 🐀: “Wait, I have to do this for how long?”
The conclusion: “Oooh yeah, I don’t feel so good, I think I have a stomach bug coming on.”
This moment has a name. It’s called our Upper Limit.
And this shows up in many different and unsuspecting ways. It could be a kid home with the flu, a late night at work, a stressful week, a pulled muscle, a busy weekend, or a vacation. Any deviation from our new routine signals to the body that it can finally relax. And relax, exhale, slump back down onto the sofa, it does.
This is because the moment arrived, unannounced, when it became more about the effort than the joyful possibilities.
A Haiku a Day
This moment can take days, weeks, or even months to show up. It can sneak up on you when you have a 247-day streak, or catch you when you’re only 24 minutes into a new habit.
My intention and goal that I set at the start of this month during my Substack Live goal-setting club (shameless plug - tell your friends!) was to write one haiku a day, which is a short poem only three lines long.
I thought it would be a fun way to trigger my creativity, to have a little fun with words and feel a little artsy 🌺. Low stakes.
Yet immediately, I resisted. I entertained the fun possibilities for mere moments before it became more about the time (who’s got time for something as odd as writing a haiku a day when you’re not even a poet?), and space — there’s a lot of it from here until April. An entire month.
You see how quickly logic can runneth over possibility.
This is too uncertain it said. It serves no tangible purpose. It won’t make you any money. You don’t even know what a haiku is, and you’ll insult the people who do!
So I wrote the haiku. (Which you can read here.)
Eleven days into March. I wrote it on Substack as a quiet nod to the power of accountability, because I’d been watching the days tick by and doing absolutely nothing about it.
And I liked it. Like, actually enjoyed the process.
Not because it was brilliant (jury’s still out), but because something shifted the moment I stopped negotiating with myself and just... did the small thing. The tiny, low-stakes, nobody-is-watching thing.
That’s the whole secret. You don’t have to feel ready. You don’t have to feel inspired. You just have to be slightly more committed to the feeling you’re chasing than you are to the comfort of the sofa.
This week’s episode on my podcast, Aging Fiercely, is all about that shift — why it happens, why it’s not your fault, and what to do the moment the rodent appears.
Hit play. It’s a good one. 🐀
Until next week, my rodent-dodging friend!
❤️
am
P.S. Life gets wild, weird, and hectic — and next thing you know, it's three years later and you're still chasing the same damn goals. Cool story. Let's rewrite it. Join me for my next Substack Live and let's dance with our dreams. Thursday, April 2, 9 am. Come say hi. 👋