“YOU DON’T WANT TO CHANGE! If you did, you’d be doing it! Call yourself out on this shit” (Bishop 201).
Gary John Bishop puts your shit on blast in his book titled “Unfu*k Yourself” and calls you out for sitting idle and thinking about making change rather than going out there and doing it. He strongly emphasizes actions over thoughts and he says that “You change your life by doing, not by thinking about doing” (Bishop 126). He claims doing is the quickest way to change your thoughts. If you always attack the task at hand, you will think less about how you procrastinate or how you cannot get things done since you’re tackling your shit. You will also have less time to think those negative thoughts that are bringing you down because you are busy being productive and moving forward through action.
Bishop also stresses that you cannot wait around for a good mood or positive thinking to act. Bishop asserts, “Fuck how you feel, ACT!” (Bishop 132). Stop procrastinating your life because you simply do not feel up to it. Seize the moment because you never know when you’ll have another. I am starting to realize for myself and through emphasis in this book that I cannot keep waiting around for the perfect moment since it may very well never come. I have been putting off and putting off applying for jobs because I do not feel confident enough however this needs to end today. I will never feel the confidence I am hoping for through positive thinking or through lack of engagement with the job search process. I may however, gain more confidence through experience with job searching and interviews. In order to get to that point I need to start somewhere. Tomorrow I plan to search for and apply to three job postings regardless of how I am feeling. We shall see if this yields results.
Bishop again states that doing is better than thinking, “If you want your life to be different, you have to make it happen. All of the thinking or meditating or planning or anti-anxiety medication in the world isn’t going to improve your life if you’re not willing to go out and take action and make changes. You can’t sit around waiting for the right mood to strike or for life to play out the way you want it to. Nor can you rely on positive thinking alone to transform things for the better. You have to go out and do” (Bishop 192).
We constantly think “I can’t” or I can once A, B or C is sorted out but in reality we’re just holding on to excuses to avoid starting actually doing something. The ironic thing is actually doing something may help sort those things out or feelings of inadequacies. If I just continue to not apply to jobs I will never quell the thought that I am unemployable because I will continue to be in fact unemployable. I am going to work on this and for now I leave you with a quote from Carl Jung:
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”