Zen of Doing

"Move and the way will open."
- Zen and The Art of Happiness

You know that you should exercise, and eat lots of veggies and less fried, salty and sweet foods.

But knowing something and actually doing it are two very different things.

You know you should stop procrastinating. You know you should watch less TV or go to social sites (or news sites, or your email program) less often. You know you should be writing, or learning that language you’ve always wanted to learn, or practicing guitar, or decluttering your house. Knowing isn’t the problem. It’s the doing that gets us every time.

In business, there’s a concept called The Knowing-Doing Gap, where companies study all kinds of ways to improve, hire consultants and hold endless seminars, start a new Big Program every year … but don’t actually change anything. They know what to improve, but don’t actually implement it.

Why is implementing so hard? How do we put knowledge into action? What’s stopping us, and how do we overcome it?

The answers are both simple, and difficult.

Doing vs. Not Doing

It’s not knowledge of what to do that’s stopping us. That’s usually fairly simple:

• If you want to lose weight, eat fewer calories and move more.
• If you want to be healthier, eat more veggies, beans, nuts, seeds, fruits and whole grains.
• If you want to be in better shape, exercise.
• If you want to write a book, just write it.
• If you want to learn a language or an instrument, practice.

But that’s not what we do. Here’s what we do instead:

• We read about various programs.
• We talk about it a lot.
• We put off doing it and go do something else.
• We feel guilty about it, and then push it to the back of our minds.
• We finally decide to take action, so we read and talk about it some more.

Reading isn’t doing (unless what you want to do is read more books).

Talking isn’t doing (unless you’re learning to communicate better or become a public speaker).

Doing is doing.

The Little Thing That Stops Us

There’s something going on here that stops us from doing what we know. It’s hidden, it’s a mystery. We all have it, but rarely know what to do about it, and worse, rarely acknowledge it.

It’s fear.

Prisoner : "He says the leap to freedom is not about strength."
Bruce Wayne : "My body makes the jump."
Prisoner : "Survival is the spirit. The soul."
Bruce Wayne : "My soul is as ready to escape as is my body."
Prisoner : "Fear is why you fail."
-The Dark Knight Rises

Why don’t you write the chapter of your book, or write your blog post, but instead go and check Facebook, Twitter and email?

Because you’re afraid you’ll fail. You’re afraid you’re not good enough. You’re afraid of the task because you don’t know where to start.

Why do you eat fried foods instead of veggies? You’re afraid of change. You’re afraid of things that aren’t comfortable. You’re afraid of looking like an idiot when you go to dinner with friends and they’re all eating fried cheese and bacon and you’re eating carrot sticks and kale. Why do you not talk to your girlfriend when things are difficult between you? You’re afraid of rejection, of looking stupid, of injuring your pride.

We’re afraid, and so we do some rather brilliant things to avoid the thing we’re afraid of. If we’re afraid of failing as a writer, teacher, language learner, runner, weight lifter, guitar player, manager, leader … we create all kinds of unconscious strategies to avoid that failure. We aren’t “sabotaging” ourselves … we’re trying to help ourselves not do something we’re afraid will hurt us!

We are very good at finding ways to avoid this pain. We go to great lengths to avoid it, and then we wonder why we can’t do what we “know” we should do. No, we don’t really know we should do it — in the backs of our minds, we know we shouldn’t.

And so, to get to doing, we have to beat the fear.

Fear is not the determining factor in our lives. It doesn’t tell us how our lives will go. It is only a little child’s voice in the back of our minds, trying to get its way, trying to avoid discomfort. But we can learn that discomfort isn’t horrible. It is the feeling of exploring new territory, climbing a new peak, pushing to new levels. We can beat fear.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
- Master Yoda (Star Wars)