are you experiencing trouble at the border?

have you ever found that the idea stage of a project is light and easy, but when you get to the carrying out of the idea, you run into so many roadblocks and difficulties that you begin to question whether this idea makes any sense for you? 

if so, you’re not alone.

maria nemeth, sacramento-based author of the energy of money and mastering life’s energies and infinitely amazing master coach, uses the term “trouble at the border” to describe this phenomenon. she says that the metaphysical realm, the realm of ideas, is light and breezy and effortless. at that point, it’s all in our heads; we’re spitballing, throwing ideas around, having fun, and getting excited. all things are possible. we are geniuses. we are going to make this happen.

then comes the border crossing

then, as we begin to actually move the metaphysical into the physical realm, we encounter what i think maria termed “the dense reality of the physical world.” everything gets literally heavier, slower, and harder. we encounter obstacles; people don’t return our calls. there are laws, oh my, and it turns out we need a permit to do what we’re doing, or we need to hire someone and it takes a minute to find the right person and have them be available. 

i’d turn back now if i were you

at this point, nemeth says that what the buddhists call our “monkey mind” gets activated. the monkeys start swinging from fear to doubt to worry and back again. they whisper (or out and out scream) “i’d turn back now if i were you. you can’t do this. this is too hard. this isn’t going to work.”

why am i telling you this?

at one point in my life, i finally said yes to an idea that had been dogging me for years. i began spending time thinking about, writing, and focusing on this concept. i talked to people who knew how to bring something like this to fruition and i did what they advised me to do. in short order, it felt like the gears of my life had molasses poured over them. everything went a lot more slowly than i wanted it to, and i started to believe that i had made a big mistake.

then i remembered

trouble

at

the border

even steven spielberg has experienced this phenomenon

i once heard, maybe from maria, that even steven spielberg, after directing and creating dozens of movies, reaches a point in virtually every production where he becomes certain that the whole thing was a mistake. he starts to consider scratching the whole thing. spielberg says the only way he can persevere is to be more interested in making the film than he is in the voices in his head. imagine if spielberg had succumbed to “trouble at the border” and stopped making e.t., saving private ryan, or schindler’s list!

(don’t look up the list of spielberg films, though…

don’t, i caution, look up, as i just did, a list of all 34 of spielberg’s movies ranked it’s enough to make me give up my dream and spend the rest of the week eating popcorn and streaming the ones at the top of the list that i somehow never saw. can someone please remind me why i never went to war of the worlds, or munich?)

nevertheless…

nemeth coaches us to tell the worries, doubts, and fears in our head, “thank you for sharing, nevertheless.” and then pick one thing on the list of things that needs to be done to bring this project into reality and do that. that’s essentially what spielberg continues to do as well. 

fly below the radar of your mind…

nemeth says that what separates successful people from unsuccessful people is the ability to do the next indicated thing regardless of worries, doubts, and fears. to find a way to fly below the radar of our mind, the most successful people coach us to avoid grandiose statements or being focused on the whole thing. so, we’re not writing the great american novel; we’re writing for one hour today. we’re not chiseling the david; we’re buying a hunk of granite to start sculpting. we’re not cooking on a reality tv show; we’re just preparing one small dish at a time.

well, what do you think?

have you ever created a big goal/idea/project in your mind only to have it bite the dust in the real world? 

does your mind ever sabotage your dreams by focusing on worry, doubt and fear instead of the next indicated thing?

are you willing to say “thank you for sharing, nevertheless” to it? 

if so, or something else, please drop a note in the comments and let me know how this applies to your life.