It's not going to be any easier later. It might not be that hard right now.
Stop putting it off. Do what you need to do. It's sitting there, unopened in your inbox. And it's going to keep sitting there, because you refuse to look at it. You tell yourself, as Seneca says all fools do, that you're just not ready to start yet. You could do it today, as Marcus Aurelius says, but yet again you choose tomorrow.
That's the funny thing about the stuff you put off. When you finally get around to it, you realise you've been dreading something that was actually pretty simple and only took a few minutes. Sometimes the email you didn't want to open contains nothing at all, just the other person saying they need more time and they'll get back to you.
What Stoicism trains us to do is to have the willpower to bite the bullet: to count one, two, three and jump, and do the thing some part of us doesn't want to do. By training ourselves, from cold plunges and lifting heavy things to having the tough conversation and starting the project we've been dreading, we build an override switch. It lets us push through resistance, excuses and our lazier impulses.
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Now is for certain. Later is a lie. It's only going to get harder the longer you wait.
Become the person who does the thing now, not later.
TRY THIS TODAY
Open the email, make the call or start the task you've been avoiding, before you do anything else today.
Much of what I've learned about Stoicism comes from Ryan Holiday. Find more of his writing at dailystoic.com and ryanholiday.net.
While I have edited much of this content, there are some cases where I have taken Ryan Holiday's words directly. I've included them because I think they are powerful and will be helpful for you. They are also helpful for me, and I've put them here so I can learn and understand more myself.
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