Nobody ever praised their coach for being too easy.  This month in my blog posts I’ve encouraged you to look at your current life and compare it with the life you truly and deeply desire.  If you’ve done this exercise right, you should be feeling uncomfortable.

As Peter M. Senge, author of “The Fifth Discipline” points out, if you are uncomfortable, you are feeling the emotional turmoil that comes with acknowledging that your vision is at odds with your reality.  This realization can release emotions such as anxiety, sadness, discouragement, hopelessness or worry.  It is important to recognize that these emotions are a symptom but not the object of creative tension. Uncomfortable emotions are a good thing, while uncomfortable, the discomfort can be motivating.

Imagine the tension you have created as a rubber band stretched tightly between two points. The rubber band is under tension.  Tension seeks to be resolved or released. In the case of the tension between your vision and your reality, tension can only be resolved by either pulling reality toward the vision or pulling the vision toward reality.

The key to using this tension creatively is to change by bringing your reality in closer alignment with your vision. You do this by creating a strategy, a concert action plan, specific steps to change your current reality.

Of course, changing your current reality is often far more difficult than reducing your vision.  As Senge says, “Escaping emotional tension is easy – the only price we pay is abandoning what we truly want, our vision.

2018 is coming to an end.  The years pass quickly, and we only get one ride.  What will you do differently in 2019?

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash