One of the biggest, most whipping, full-sized, vastest
skirmishes I have ever gotten into with my significant other was over two simple
words: “I’m gonna.” However, I shouldn’t have been fighting with him, I should
have been wrestling with myself.
It went a little
something like this….
Him: “You’re brilliant.
I know you are talented and gifted, but you have far too many ‘great’ ideas and
take far too little action on them. That makes it hard for people to believe in
you. Even me sometimes.”
Naturally, myself, being an utterly irrational girl at the
time, I was outraged. I mean like Italian-housewife-with-a-frying-pan-and-the-mouth-of-a-sailor-who-was-willing-to-fashion-a-toothbrush-into-a-shank
sort of livid. There was a little yelling, a few tears, a slammed door or two and
a man (who was right all along – by the way) choosing to be exiled to the sofa
for his nightly siesta.
Yes. It’s true. I can really be a girl sometimes. And also a
mammoth pain in the a--...but that is another story for another day.
But why was I so
choleric about a stupid statement, you ask?
Because he was right. And oh my God, I hate when he is right…I
mean, who did this guy think he was? It’s my job to be right. Not his. Pffft.
But he was. He was a thousand percent in the right. I had
been so overwhelmed, so depended upon, so tugged at my skirt where I was at the
time that I lacked follow through on my dreams. The “I’m gonna’s” in my life had
begun to the eclipse the “I dids.”
And, as mad as I was at him that chilly December evening,
the truth is, I was really mad at myself.
Furious even.
So here we go….
Being a writer, I replayed the entire conversation in my
head about a million (or so) times over the
But he already knew that. He knows me better than I do
myself most days.
He knew precisely what he was doing. Never has this man had
a laissez faire attitude when it came to me. He knew I needed to be pushed – and
sometimes kicked squarely in the bum. I hadn’t been challenged in a while. And
he knew I thrived on that.
So I sucked it up, told him he was right (oh he loved that) and then I did the solitary
thing I rarely do….I asked for help. From him. And he was more than willing to
give it to me.
Building dreams….
When I told him what I wanted to do, what I needed, he said,
“No problem. I will make it happen. We will work on all of this together.”
So we did. Of course, as we always did, we bantered back and
forth, got frustrated with one another throughout the creative process (if you
can believe it, I am horrible at communicating in this area…because I am a
control freak of the worst proportion and he actually wanted to be told what to
do), but he would still give me the progress he made on helping me build MY dream as the days and weeks
progressed. Despite some (cough) creative and intellectual differences. Well,
and him getting mad at me because I wouldn’t tell him what to do – which still
shocks me to this day -- we still moved forward. But, then again, that is what we do. We have evolved a lot in the last few years. More than what folks know.
Then, I changed my mind on how I wanted to showcase my model
(I told you I am a girl – we change our minds). I wanted to (as I would often
tell him) ‘go big or go home’. But, he wasn’t even mad, he was all aboard to press
on, and to redo the work he had already done to help me get where I wanted US to be. After all, he isn’t just my
partner in life, he’s also my business partner. We compliment each other on the
areas the other is weak in…both personally and professionally. And, despite our
differences, we have always made a dynamite team.
All because he believed in me. But even more than that, he
believed in what we were doing, not what we were “gonna” do.
But he didn’t believe in me because of the I’m gonnas that I
was feeding the world…. But, more importantly, because of what he had already
seen me prove myself capable of.
The last time I said “I’m
gonna” with no follow through.
One humid May afternoon, as I was agonizing over a decision,
he took me out for Mother’s Day. And I remember this day vividly, because I
made the command decision that it was the last time I would ever let “I’m gonna”
fall out of my mouth and hit his ears.
He looked at me, straight in the face, and said, “I love
you. No matter what you decide, I love you. But this is killing you. It’s
sucking every ounce of you down with it. Go. Quit. No notice. No nothing. Just
go. Because you are never going to be able to do what you are amazing at if you
stay there. They are sucking the life out of you. You are always tired, upset
and angry. Every day lately. You are stressed out and frustrated and overworked
and underpaid. And my girl is better than that.”
So I didn’t tell him I was “gonna”. I just did what I had to
do, and told him about it after the fact.
And you know what? He was proud of me. Not because I was “gonna”
do something, but because I did something.
So what have you done
lately?
Ever since that day, he still wants me to build my dream, to
build a dream with me, and we don’t talk about what we are “gonna” do….we just
talk about what we have done. And I am back to doing what I LOVE. What I was
BORN to do, and it’s the best thing I have ever done; something I would have
potentially missed out on, over a few misplaced and misguided “gonnas”, that if
he hadn’t kicked me in my arse about, I would still be doing – still a master
of justifying my own bullshit.
I tell you to beware of “I’m gonnas” because I know there
are many of you out there who say you are “gonna” do something tomorrow, next
week, next year…but you never do it. You lack follow through. You have the best
of intentions, but, at the end of the day, nothing ever gets done. The days
turn into weeks, the weeks to months, the months to years and then one day you
wake up and you’re still working that shitty retail job you hate, surrounded by
people who do nothing but party and live paycheck to paycheck…and they are 40.
They have gotten nowhere, they spend their lives on “gonnas” and let their
dreams die….because they were too afraid, too cowardly to take action. Will you
choose that same life? Or will you do something better? The thing you were BORN
to do?
Here is the scary thing: People notice this; they can see
straight through your I’m gonnas. They notice this more than anything else. The
constant “I’m gonnas” make you appear like a joke. Because the road to hell is
paved with good intentions. Because accolades are only given once the work is
done, the sweat wiped from your brow and the mission accomplished, not over flowery
words and shallow, empty promises.
After all, “I’ve done” is a far better qualifier than “I’m
gonna.”
So do yourself a favor, and drop the I’m gonna’s from your
vocabularies of promises and daily conversations. Instead, think about, “What
can I say I have done by the time
the sun sets on this day?”
“I’m gonna” will kill you, it will poison your life and bury
a stake in the heart of your dreams. Because you will find every excuse, every
distraction to turn the “I’m gonnas” into yet another tomorrow, further letting
what you are supposed to do slip away, causing the loss of the one commodity no
one can make more of: time.
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