If writing is not the thing you have a tortured, obsessive love-hate-love relationship with, I’d love it if you would substitute something that is.

You know, the thing that — when you actually allow yourself to think about having time to devote to it — makes you feel elated and miserable. Joyful and terrified.

Painting, photography, dance, playing the mandolin. I don’t know. But you do. The thing you’d be doing if you had all the time and money in the world and didn’t have to tell anyone about it. Yes.

I’ll let you in on a secret. People don’t come to you for expertise.

Like, if you really just wanted to know about blogging, you would not be reading this right now.

Because you know what? I’ve only been blogging for six months.

There are two ways we get support. Or anything, for that matter.

We have internal resources (thoughts, emotions, strengths, energy, ideas, epiphanies, concepts, reassurances, trust) …

… and we also have external resources (people we know, experts, authorities, information, even a higher power — if you believe in one — could be considered an external resource).

Wow, it’s the shortest Ask Havi question ever!

If only the answer could be just as short … hahahaha.

“Um. How did you quit smoking?
(she asked quietly and sheepishly)

Actually, the subject header of this woman’s self-described quiet, sheepish email said “quick question”. Which gave me a good laugh, because there is just no way that how I quit smoking could be a quick question.

Gather round, guys. Pull up a chair. Because I have stuff to say.

Apparently — and we’ll talk some other time about why you need other people to take care of your customer support email — I missed Anti-Procrastination Day.
Apparently, as an expert on the topic who has written an entire book on Dissolving Procrastination, I could have taken the opportunity to say something smart and anti-procrastination-ish [...]

It is the nature of roads that sometimes things will be blocking them.

Like this:
You have a plan.
You think it’s a genius plan.
You do the work to move through your fear, anxiety, etc about doing the plan.
You run with the plan …. and uh, oh, something is going weird with the plan.

This is a scenario I know pretty well. You know, from being alive and stuff. I imagine you do too.

We had some pretty intense discussion happening in the comments section of last week’s talking truth to fear post.

And not intense in a bad way. The opposite, in fact. Really good points being brought up, people showing up and respectfully debating ideas and, in some cases, respectfully disagreeing. I’m loving it.

These intelligent, compassionate conversations have been continuing in email exchanges and on other people’s blogs, and it was really cool to see how my thoughts inspired a ton of other blog posts which work with these concepts and take them in different directions.

One of the weirder things that’s coming up, though, is that several people have been writing in to thank me for getting them to face their fears.

And: the truth about fear.

A few years ago I took a course with some semi-famous biggified chick on getting over the fear of cold calling.

To be honest, I could not care less about cold calling. I was there for the fear.

I have to tell you a story.

All true. It’s about the second-worst summer of my life.

And to understand the second-worst summer of my life you really have to understand the week or so preceding it.

There’s this thing — yes, a thing, don’t make me get all specific — that invariably comes up when you talk to people about habits and how their habits work.

And this thing annoys the pants off of pretty much everybody.

Here’s what happens.

You work really, really, really hard to establish a habit. A new, healthy, good-for-you, good-for-your-life habit. Eventually, with effort, patience, and god knows what else, you reach the hooray point where it’s actually kind of happening.

But then … something happens.