Why do I hesitate on the things I want most?

A woman I coach wanted something badly enough to give it four years. Every curriculum in it, and every method tested separately until she had narrowed it down to the three she trusted. Four years of that, no results, and no explanation she believed.

Asked what was stopping her, she didn't say fear, or discipline, or that she needed a better method. She said "hesitation", and she called it the most dominating feeling she had. Then she got underneath it.

I was fearing failure, because if you go all in, if you give 100% to something, then you become more vulnerable.

a woman I coach, on four years of learning and never going all in

She had the skill after putting in the time. But what she hadn't done was shown up in a way that really counts.

Why do I hold back so much?

Because if you don't give a goal your full effort, it can't really fail. Put seventy per cent in and it doesn't work, and you can tell yourself you didn't really try. Put a hundred per cent in and it doesn't work, and the only explanation left is you. So the full attempt, the one that would show you what you're capable of, never happens.

At a hundred per cent, a failure is about you.

The third row is the purpose of the holding back mechanism. And it works, which is why it survives for years.

I did this with money and with the business for years and I'd have called it being sensible. What changed it was a visualisation, five years ahead: getting the news that for whatever reason we couldn't have kids, and standing in front of my partner saying I'm so sorry, we put off having a family because I couldn't afford it, because I was playing a small game. I came out of that on the floor in a puddle of tears.

There's no holding back now.

Daniel Lawson

Why do I never fully commit to anything?

Often it can be that you're committing to the preparation instead. Learning is the most respectable way to not start. It looks like progress and some of it is progress, and you can keep at it for years without ever being tested on what you've learned.

A man in a group I run described the mechanism in his opening minutes.

The feeling of, yet I'm not good enough. So maybe I should wait a little bit and just do the work on myself first, and then start. So postponing the starting.

a man in a group I run, on why his business hadn't begun

He shared the rest himself: "I'm always spending time on learning. Learning about myself, about business. But I'm not putting in action." He said it in the first breath of the session and the learning carried on. Giving him another framework would have fed it.

Another has a decision he keeps not making, and he knows what the reasons are worth: "there's a million bloody excuses why not, and they're all really trivial." Knowing they're trivial changes nothing, because the reasons were never the reason.

Why do I have a lack of commitment?

A lot of what reads as low commitment is a goal so vague you can't fail it. Vague is comfortable, because a vague goal lets any amount count.

But if it's undefined, if it's vague, it doesn't matter. Whatever more is, you come in and say yeah, I showed up more.

Daniel Lawson

It's easy to hide behind what might have been. I asked a man in a group how many people he would approach and he said more, then that he'd journal on it, and on the third push he gave me a number, which was three. A vague goal can't be failed and it also can't really be achieved.

The woman at the start had a goal for four years that no-one could have failed either, and that is why she never reached it.

Four years on, you haven't achieved it, because it's not defined.

Daniel Lawson

Which commitment would expose you?

Not the biggest version of it. Going straight for the largest available version is still the avoidance, a single attempt that has to prove everything by itself, without a chance to learn anything along the way. The woman I mentioned at the start did this too. Rather than starting small, she went straight for the biggest and most expensive attempts at what she'd spent those years learning, five or six of them over three years, losing real money each time.

What works is something defined, small enough to be done this month, and exposing enough that you'd rather not.

It's hard to be vulnerable if we don't trust ourselves to have the boundaries to protect our vulnerability.

Daniel Lawson

Share a little, and if it gets trampled, say so. Then you can trust yourself the next time you're exposed. A lot of this fear comes from childhood, when there was no choice about being vulnerable and without boundaries you knew to communicate.

Going all in doesn't mean hitting every target.

I think hitting 80% with a good solid effort is better than hitting 100%. Because if you're hitting 100% every time, my belief is you're dreaming too small.

Daniel Lawson

So the hundred per cent belongs in the commitment, and seventy or eighty per cent of an exposing goal is a good result. Defining it is what exposes you to failing at it, and that exposure is the price of it being real.

What evidence do you already have?

More than you're using. The order many of us have is backwards, which is get the result and then believe it about yourself. The woman who'd given it four years found the other order, and she put it among the biggest realisations she'd had.

I really have to become it first, before I can see it in the physical reality. And that order I didn't understand before.

a woman I coach, on what changed after four years

Becoming it first isn't affirmations. They don't work on me. Say something flattering to my brain and it goes straight to "where's the evidence?", but say something I've done and it goes, "ha, you caught me". Hers ran the same way.

You find the real-life evidence, instead of just repeating some self-affirmations.

the same woman, on how the identity work ran

So what I'm curious about with my clients is what it is that they need to go and do, see or believe, to give themselves the evidence. And the evidence stacks. Intuition isn't magic, it's your body pulling on millions of data points, so a long run of small wins sitting close together is what gives it something to pull on. When the exposing chance arrives, the intuition goes: hang on, you've won all these times, you can win at this.

A woman in a group I run had been working on something in the background for six years without ever giving it a proper go, and then she did it, terrified: "I'm ready to give it the all in another way, just for the chance to give it a go and see what happens." Afterwards she described what the six years had been.

holding back and not actually just going in and doing the thing

a woman in a group I run, on six years of keeping it in the background

Common questions

Isn't holding back just being sensible?

Sometimes it is. The test is whether you'll be able to tell when the thing you're waiting for has happened. Waiting until you've saved six months of living costs before you leave your job is a plan, because you can look at your bank account and see the day you get there. Waiting until you feel good enough to start has no day like that, so it never arrives.

What if I commit fully and it fails?

Then you'll know what went wrong, which is something years of holding back never gives you. A defined attempt that misses leaves information behind about what you did and what you'd change. An undefined attempt leaves the question where it was, which is why you can make five of those and know no more than when you started.

Why can I never commit to anything?

Often it can be that wanting it is what makes it exposing, which is why this bites hardest on the things you want. Something you don't care about can be given everything, because the result says nothing about you either way. The things that would say something get the hedge.

How is this different from procrastination?

Procrastination stops you starting. This lets you start and keeps the effort under the level where a result would count, so there is plenty of evidence of activity and none of a real attempt. If the problem is not getting going at all, Why do I know what I need to do but still not do it? is the one to read.

If this is you

If you've put years into something and you're still at it, you already know how to keep going with no reward coming back, which is harder than starting. What comes next is a version of it defined tightly enough that it could be failed, small enough to do this month, exposing enough that you'd rather not, and then given everything you have. Describing it to other people is what takes the hedge off, because once somebody is going to ask you how it went there's no vague version left to retreat into. And what you get back is the evidence that you're someone who goes all in on what they want, whichever way the attempt goes.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.