You have never done it before.

There is trepidation.

There is apprehension.

There is fear.

If you listen to the fear, you give it power.

Conversely, you could face down the fear.

If you do, you gain the power.

What you’re about to do is scary.

That’s why you should do it.

“An individual develops courage by doing courageous acts.” – Aristotle

“Everything worth doing starts with being scared.” – Art Garfunkel

“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.” – Tim Ferriss

Sometimes you won’t have the solution straight away.

You might need to let the problem percolate.

Leave room to think on it a bit.

It’s perhaps a difficult problem.

That’s okay.

You have solved difficult problems before.

You will solve this one too.

It maybe doesn’t feel like it right now.

So that can be frustrating.

Do something else.

Take your mind off it.

Go for a walk.

Exercise.

Do some gardening.

Go fishing.

Have a swim.

Take a shower.

How many ideas come in the shower!?

Relax.

The solution will come to you.

“It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else.” – Stephen Hawking

“We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.” – John Cleese

The old process was working well.

It produced reliable and consistent results.

The process had a rhythm.

Then something changed.

The old process didn’t work so well.

It began to wobble and falter.

Workarounds were introduced.

The rhythm had been lost.

Yet, there was unwavering dedication to the old process.

It still produced results.

Though now it was hard work.

Persevering with the process introduced stress into the system.

There was a perfectly good replacement process waiting.

A newer process requiring the smallest of adjustments.

Once adopted, it would again produce reliable and consistent results.

The rhythm would return.

Transitioning to the new process has no downside.

There’s no reason to hold on any longer.

Just change the process.

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

If we are not getting to the core of the issue.

To the crux of the matter.

If we are not comfortable raising the brutal truths.

Then how are we going to deal with them?

If we pretend they are not there, they don’t go away.

They will continue to remain unresolved.

They will still be there.

Ready.

Waiting.

Until we are willing to tackle them.

If it is constantly swept under the carpet, then it never has the chance to be better.

We need to uncover the brutal truths so we can then deal with them.

How comfortable are we with raising the brutal truths?

“You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t”

Everything is maxed out.

You are redlining.

There is no slack in the system.

You are producing and delivering.

It feels awesome.

You’re busy.

You’re getting stuff done.

Which is great … until it’s not.

Along comes the unexpected.

An unforeseen event.

Now you’ll have to find some slack.

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” – Socrates