What's stopping you getting started with something you want to do? Are you sure you really, really want to do it? There's always a good reason not to do things - especially the things you don't really want to do. This week I've had to force myself through several things I didn't want to do, my brain was telling me I had good reasons not to do them but they weren't reasons at all, they were EXCUSES!
Clicks And Leads is a "tongue in cheek" digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.
On the blog
Turning Pro
Learning New Stuff
Learning Means Failing
When You Fall Behind
Learning In A Group
Do The Work
Self Validation
Things & People We Love On Valentine’s Day
Deep Dive Learning
Prefer to read?
Hi everyone, Nicola here. Hope you're all well.
So, what's been happening this week? I've been booking flights to Australia. It's a terrifying thing, I can tell you. I've had to book a flight from England to Australia and Australia back to England. I've had to book flights from Athens to England and then from England back to Kalamata because we're in the period where, when I'm away, it's the period where they change over and you can actually get direct flights to the local airport.
I don't know why I find it so terrifying, booking flights, I think it's something about the commitment of it all and the thought of being in the air for all that time, I've got to say. I'm not very good at long-term committing in advance, I much prefer to do things on the spur of the moment so typically, I've left this to the very last minute.
Luckily, I didn't have too much extra to pay, there was very cheap flights available with Air China but they were something like 32 or 38 hours long, meaning a very long stop-over somewhere like Bangkok. And I didn't really fancy that so I decided to opt for paying the extra couple hundred quid and having a 21 and 23 hour flight instead, so while I'm not looking forward to it, I think I've made the best of it.
It's with a decent airline and it's laying over in Dubai which, you know, is really quite a pleasant airport. So yeah, I made myself do it the other day. It was quite hard, psychologically, to make myself do it but I just got on with it and finally, I've got all the confirmations and everything.
I also had a little bit of a thing where you had to wait, I wanted to pay on my debit card but I didn't want to do that because if, you know, my airline went bust just before Christmas so I thought I'd better hang on and do it on my credit card instead, so that's what I did.
Apparently, you're covered. Still trying to get my money back from the one that went bust, though. Anyway, let's get on with the show, shall we?
So, you may notice this week I'm a little bit red in the face. That's because I have just had a rather hot shower. That's because it gets a little bit cold in these houses in the winter, unless you've got the fire on, which I haven't, I don't tend to do during the day.
So, hot shower followed by getting dressed, followed by blow drying hair because I'm talking to you guys, equals red face. So I was thinking to myself, oh, I better hang on till my face goes down a bit and then I thought no, don't do that because I'm already late with this vzine and I need to get it to Phoebe so she can do the editing.
And she won't be happy if I give it to her late and then expect it done on a quick turnaround. So, even though I'm bright red and that's not the ideal scenario, I thought no, I've got to just press on, because if I don't get started, I won't get done and I need to go out soon.
So I was thinking about this in conjunction with the whole thing about booking my airline flights and hanging on as long as possible to do that. It's a combination of being reluctant to commit myself, trying to wait for the most ideal set of circumstances, but then the pressing deadline comes and you have to get the thing done,