Even so, while I can’t shove you all the way across the knowing-doing gap, I can pass on a few things that have helped. One is to remember that making changes rarely feels comfortable at first. This can be confusing, because moments of insight generally feel good, so it’s natural to expect that putting them into practice would feel good, too. But they don’t, because worthwhile change is counter-instinctual: it entails pushing back against attitudes that have grown comfortably habitual, so it’ll feel, at least in the early stages, like putting on ill-fitting clothes. And so sometimes crossing the knowing-doing gap is as simple as not expecting the experience to feel good at first – and thus not being thrown into despondency when it doesn’t.
[…] The closest thing I’ve come to a master key here, though, is also the most ironic: the most reliable way to cross the knowing-doing gap is to realise you don’t actually need to change at all. What usually stops people crossing the gap, I think, is that they make the stakes too high. Somewhere deep within, you persuade yourself that your basic sense of adequacy or self-worth depends on becoming more focused, or finally getting round to the project you’ve been postponing, or getting in shape, or whatever it might be. No wonder it feels so daunting to get stuck in, essential to get it absolutely right, and horrifying to contemplate that it might not work out… and therefore easier, all in all, not to bother in the first place, or to give up at the first sign of setback.
[…] And that, at least in my experience, is when it’s suddenly much easier to cross the gap – because you’re no longer thinking of it as a terrifying chasm between high cliffs that you absolutely must get over, in order to escape the rabid tigers snapping at your heels. It’s just something to try jumping for the fun of it. You’re fine as you are – and you have the chance to get better. So why not try? On the days I’m successful at seeing things from this angle, Actually Doing It stops seeming like a heavy, difficult, forbidding, intransigent sort of problem; instead, it becomes a prospect too enticing to resist.
