Imagine, for a moment, that you walk up to the door of your home, put your key in the lock, and it sticks, just a little. What do you do? Most of us wiggle the key, maybe take it out and try it again, or move the the door knob a tiny bit until the key turns the lock and we walk inside. And then we forget about the sticky lock until the next day, when we repeat the process.
This is practical in the short term, since we get inside as quickly as possible. But it’s also ineffective in the long term because by repeating this day after day, we begin to train ourselves to overlook the sticky lock, to tolerate tiny amounts of stickiness. Eventually, it’s possible that the lock will get worse — maybe even become totally stuck.
Where in your life might you be overlooking a little bit of stickiness? Tiny amounts of stickiness can eventually build up and create stuckness or blocks in our energy, productivity, and vision. These big blocks can take a lot of effort to remove.
So, here’s this week’s suggestion for clearing away one little bit of stickiness that might be holding you back. It should only take about 5-15 minutes.
Send One Email. You Know Which One.
That’s it. Pick one email that you’ve been putting off writing. Set a timer for 15 minutes, write, proofread, and hit send. Don’t turn it into a big production. I’m not asking you to clear out your whole inbox. It’s just one email.
Maybe you’ve got a couple emails in your inbox that you know you need to respond to, but you’ve been delaying. Maybe you need to make a difficult request of someone. Maybe you need to apologize for something. Maybe you need to set a deadline for your work team. Maybe you need to finally say thank you to Aunt Trudy for last year’s Christmas gift.
It doesn’t matter why you’ve been putting off sending this email, whether you think it’s a good reason or a silly one. All that matters is that you’ve been just a tiny bit stuck around this email.
And once you send it, you’ll feel some relief.
Go ahead, try it. And then let me know in the comments how you feel once you get a little bit unstuck!