A Spell for Taking Action Already
Why “already?” Because there’s something you've been wanting to do,
that you've been intrigued by,
that sounds like it could be great for you,
that would be taking you in a new direction,
and you keep talking yourself out of it.
This spell will help you summon the courage
to do something with that impulse
rather than denying it or stuffing it away.
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Mentioned:
Join Crucible, a supportive container to help you turn your idea into action! https://timewitchery.com/crucible
Make Magic:
When this intriguing impulse comes back around,
don’t squash it down, push it aside, or let it dissipate.
Think about why you feel like you can’t do it.
And let that can’t guide you to the reasons why you must.
Transcript: A Spell for Taking Action Already
Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I'm your host, Natalie Miller, and I'm so glad you're here.
Hello, my darling. I'm glad that you're here today. We're having a little slew of fiery spells, so this is definitely one of them. And truth be told, I had a little bit of a tough time naming this one, so I settled on “A Spell for Taking Action Already,” but I want to just explain a little bit when and what it's for. I'm not entirely satisfied with the title, but it's good as I could get.
So, the operative word in this spell is “already.” This is a spell for whatever that thing is that you keep talking yourself out of. Do you know that thing? It's that something that you've been wanting to do, that you've been intrigued by that sounds like it could be great for you, that would be taking you in a new direction, and you keep talking yourself out of it. So, this impulse keeps coming back around, and you keep either letting it dissipate the impulse or squashing it down, or pushing it aside, right?
So, the Spell for Taking Action Already is the spell that helps you to summon the courage to do something with that impulse rather than deny it or stuff it away. Yeah? I'm gonna give you so many examples today so that you can really even see and feel how it works, but first off, I'd love for you to, just for a moment, think, like, “What is that for me? What do I want to do that I just keep talking myself out of?” This might be in your personal life. This might be in your professional life. I don't know, but I know the signature of it. I know that it is—there's this like growth-oriented desire, this sort of, “Ooh, do you know what would be great? Do you know what might be amazing?” That sort of thing. And you're not taking action on it, probably because the status quo either of your life or of your world makes it difficult to say, “Yes,” makes it difficult to say, “Yes,” to this thing. So, that's what this Spell for Taking Action Already is all about, is helping you to say, “Yes,” or even say, “Mmm, maybe.” Right? Even to just take a step or two toward the thing that you really want. Yeah?
Okay, so here's the spell, and this one did not come to me, kind of like, in my own head. I have heard this in many places, but I love it and I use it a lot, so I just want to not take credit for it. I have no idea where it comes from or where it came from, but here it is:
Why you can't is why you must.
This is the Spell for Taking Action Already:
Why you can't is why you must.
All right, this is best illustrated through examples, so let me just show you some, okay? So, I was testing the spell out on one of my kids. [laughs] I was just kind of seeing like, all right, let's see, like, you know, “How does this go with someone that I'm not actually coaching, usually?” And I asked my daughter, “What is something that you've been wanting to do, but talking yourself out of?” And immediately, she was like, “I really want to start a garden. I want to have my own garden.” She's been, like, very into learning about native plants and permaculture; she's just cool as hell. So, I said, “Okay, so why can't you? Why can't you start a garden?”
And here's the thing, when you're asking yourself, “Why I can't,” you gotta indulge and go to the part of yourself that is like the leader of the committee in yourself that's shutting it down. Right? So, probably the more growth oriented you are, the more likely you are to say, “No. I mean, I can. I know I can,” right? I don't want to talk to that part of you. Let's talk to the part of you that is like, “No. Tabled. Not a good idea,” right?
So, when I asked my daughter this, “Okay, so what is your mind telling you? Why can't you?” She was like, “Ugh, because school is just so much.” She didn't use this word. I offered it to her. It is consuming. My schoolwork consumes me. And I said, “Okay, well, here's the spell: Why you can't is why you must. School consumes me, so I must start a garden.” And it was, like, so fun to watch her head tilt and her eyes look out to the horizon. She's like, “Yeah, that’s right. I need some balance, and that might help me balance, so starting a garden is a necessity.” She must start a garden because school is all consuming, and she wants more. Okay, so that's example one.
Example two is something that I myself have worked through, and a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, especially newer entrepreneurs, work through. I want to invest in my business, and this might be, “I want to invest in help marketing,” or “I want to invest in business coaching. I want to invest in my business, but I can't because my new business hasn't made enough money yet.” And so, why you can't is why you must. My new business hasn't made enough money, so I must invest in help. I must invest in some coaching. I must invest in some marketing assistance. Can you see?
I had this, actually a version of this, right before I hired my very first business coach. I was telling her, “Oh gosh, this program sounds wonderful, but here's the thing…” At the time, my coaching practice was brand new, and actually, the majority of my time and effort was going into my old business, a yoga studio. It's like, “I just can't. I can't do this program because I'm trying to step down and detangle myself from this old business.” And as I look and feel back to that moment, I remember my convictions. Like, “No, you don't understand. I would love to put time and money into growing my new business, but I can't because I have to keep detangling myself from the old business.” So, that was definitely a “Why I couldn't, was why I really needed to.”
In order to detangle myself more fully from the old business, I needed a stronger foothold in the new business. And of course, right, 20/20 hindsight, now I'm like, “Oh, yeah, I can totally see that.” Luckily, I did, actually, in that moment, I did take the leap, and I did invest in the business coaching. Obviously, it was key to getting me here to where I am now, but in that moment, the coach said to me, “How long have you been doing that?” Meaning, “How long have you been trying to step down and detangle yourself from the old business?”
And thankfully, I was able to see in that moment that it had been too long, that the status quo—the unsatisfying status quo—the roles and responsibilities of the old business, I had been kind of maintaining them. I had been transitioning so slowly that I was practically stuck, and so I was actually able to say, “Okay, yes, you're right. It's been years, and I don't want it to be more years, so I must. I must invest in some help, so that I can create a foothold in a new business, so that I can truly detangle myself from the old one.” Yeah?
Okay, here's another example. I have a friend who really wants to write erotica. I just think this is the most fun thing. [laughs] She's a freak. She has all these freaky fantasies, and she's—I say that with, like, love and reverence. And she’s always wanted to write—so, she wants to write erotica. Now she keeps talking herself out of it, because she says, “I just—I have no idea how to do that. I can't do it because I don't know how.”
So, why you can't is why you must.
You want to write erotica; you don't know how. Well, how else do you learn but by giving it a try? How else do you learn how to write a story but by writing a story? How does one take a story out of their head and put it onto a page? I mean, I don't know. I actually haven't really ever written any stories, but I do know this: Actually doing it is one way to find out.
So, why you can't is why you must.
Here's another example. I have a couple of friends who are wanting to do more things alone—like, take themselves out for solo dates; like, travel alone a little bit. And if you ask them, “Why can't you?” Right? Now, again, there's a voice inside that is like, “No, I can,” right? But that's not the voice we want to talk to. We want to talk to the voice that's like, “Oh no. Yeah, you can't do that. That's a bad idea.” And so, why can't they, like, take themselves out for a date, dinner, and a movie on their own? Because “I’m so self-conscious. Because I just—I'm worried about how weird that might look.”
So, why you can't is why you must.
I must take myself out for a solo date because I'm so worried about how weird it will look, because I'm so self-conscious.
This can pertain to any way of being more visible in a way that makes you a little self-conscious. Like, this might be about having yourself on video, on social media, more often. This might be about standing up and speaking more at meetings, right? It's like, “Ugh, but I'm so self-conscious.” Yeah, that's why you must, because moving through, growing beyond this self consciousness, part of how we do that is we allow ourselves to feel it, right? We expand our capacity for the discomfort that goes along with it.
That makes me think of a client that I have that I worked with for quite a while, and she really wanted this extremely high-profile, high-power position in her organization. The person who was in the role was retiring, and she wanted the role. And this position was much more visible, much more kind of like, organizationally powerful, and she knew that this was a growth arc for her.
And my love, this is key here with this spell: When there's something you've been wanting to do but it is outside of your comfort zone or outside of your status quo, it is something to grow into. It's something to expand into. So, this position was something that she would need to expand into. She would need to do more public speaking. She would need to take more stands from a leadership perspective. She would need to grow into it, and thankfully for her, thankfully for that organization, she said, “Yes.” She took all of those, “Why I can'ts,” and turned them into, “Why I musts,” and I cannot wait to see what happens.
On that note, I have one final example. It's a personal example; it's about my mom. It's about my mom. So, once upon a time, when I was a teenager, my mom was an EMT. She was an emergency medical technician, and she worked for the city. And this is a small city. I lived in a little, tiny town in New Mexico.
So, the city had decided to consolidate emergency services, and everyone who was an EMT had to also become a firefighter. And at the time, I guess my mom was, I don't know, like, in her 40s, right? So, perhaps you already know this, but to become a firefighter, the training, and then, like, the test that you have to take to achieve firefighter status is A) incredibly rigorous, and B) designed for people in, like, able-male physiology. So, like, how much you need to be able to carry and drag, like, how fast you need to be able to run, all of that, it's designed around bodies that are not middle-aged women's bodies.
So, this is, like, the 90s. In the 90s, there are scarcely any women EMTs in this town, and there are zero women firefighters. But my badass mother, my fucking incredible mother, my mother who is an Aries—her birthday’s next week—and my mother whose courage is something I'm so honored and grateful to have inherited or learned—my mother was like, “Why I can't is why I must. There aren't any women firefighters, so I must do it. I must become one.” And she did! And she did.
And in becoming a firefighter, she expanded the scope of what that meant, because it turned out that her smaller body came in really handy at some points in firefighting when they needed to get into a smaller space. Her approach to firefighting, which was much more centered on the victims in the situation, turned out that that was a whole new way of helping people—not just by extinguishing a fire, but by giving care to the people who just suffered through it. Why she couldn't—because women aren't firefighters—was why she had to. She became a firefighter, and yes, she did it by meeting the male-bodied standards, which, you know, was some bullshit, but she did it.
So, this brings me to the last point that I want to make here, which is that when we are expanding into what's possible, when we are on the growth arc, when we say, “Okay, this limitation is not why I can't do it. This limitation is exactly why I have to figure out how to do it—why I want to figure out how to do it.” Yeah? When we do that, when you do that, when I do that, honey, it is for everyone. It is for all of us. It's for all of us.
When my daughter figures out how to maintain a garden, even with her rigorous school responsibilities, when she figures out how to do that, she's not just doing it for herself. She's doing it for her friends. She's doing it for me. She's doing it for her future—I was going to say children, but it might just be pets. I don't know. These kids today, [laughs] right? But she's figuring it out for everyone. As she figures out how to have more balance in her life, that's her contribution to the whole. Yeah?
When you figure out how to write erotica, how to get it out of your head and onto a page, then A) the erotica isn't just for you; you get to share the erotica, but B) you get to figure out a piece of the puzzle—work on the piece of the puzzle that is like, “Yeah, how does a human write something?” Like, you get to contribute to that.
When you invest in your new business, you're investing in your ability to help people in this new way that really lights you up and excites you. You see, it's like, never just about us. It's always also about the collective. And listen, the collective is immersed in a status quo that is white, and patriarchal, and crushed under the weight of late-stage capitalism, and it's abelist, and it's fucked! So, almost all the “Why I can'ts” come from the status quo, come from how things have been. But the reality is, you and I, we are co-creating how things are. And we can step toward how things could be, but in order to do that, we gotta take action already. We have to learn how to honor that impulse, that desire, that keeps coming back around. So, why you can't is why you must.
Why you can't is why you must.
So, see how that might be true for you, and then from there, allow that “must.” Allow that, “Yeah, I gotta do this,” to impel you forward to take just one step. Just one step. And that's important! To “Take Action Already” means to take just one step at a time. But taking a step in the direction of what you want, that changes everything. That creates the very possibility that you’re drawn toward.
So, do it already.
All right, my love, as always, thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I'm offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday letter at MindWitchery.com. If today's episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammie D. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K. O. Myers, Executive Producer, and I am Natalie Miller. Til next time.
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