Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done pdfdrive com

particularly dangerous. You see this happen to professional athletes and
child stars sometimes. From the age of six to thirty, football was your

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everything. Now, at thirty-one, you’re considered old and past your
prime. You get cut from the team and suddenly don’t know who you are
anymore. Then, even worse, you have to do commercials for Wrangler
Jeans. Fortunately for you and me, way back in chapter 5 we prepared for
this. You have an entire list of “what now” possibilities. Remember all
the next ideas you added to your list? Well, when you finish this goal,
you get to pull that back out. I get to work on a podcast, for example. The
finish line isn’t scary when you realize it’s also a starting line for thenext
thing. It’s not the end, it’s just a different kind of beginning.
I once stood on the edge of a Central American cliff wondering,
“What now?” I’d spent a few weeks during college in Costa Rica learning
Spanish for my minor. I went on the trip with thirty other students and
was overwhelmed by the reality that the trip was over. I knew that all the
cliques that had disappeared when we went on the trip would re-form
back at college. I’d never talk to the thirty people I had become friends
with. I stood on the edge overlooking the ocean, inventing the emo
subculture with my sadness. All around me, people were laughing and
having fun, enjoying one of our last nights together, and I was at a private
funeral for one.
This was not a moment I dealt with only once. I also feel this
sometimes when I speak at events. One day, I spoke to a thousand people
in Atlanta. It was an emotional event because it was one I had wanted to
speak at for five years. The peak of that moment was incredibly high.
After the event, I was supposed to eat dinner with the other speakers, but
got the wrong address. Ten minutes after stepping offstage, I found
myself standing in a Firehouse Subs parking lot. When I went inside to
order a sandwich, five people from the audience were already eating and
offered me a seat at their table. They looked at me with a sort of sad, sub-
shop pity. “What are you doing here?” they asked. It was an incredibly
humbling experience.
I’m not the only one who got crushed by a lack of “what now.” In the
documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, we watch Conan tour the
country after getting fired from his show on NBC. The entire film deals
with the difficulty of “what now,” but none so more than one scene in
New York.
Conan has just played a sold-out concert in Radio City Music Hall.
There’s a massive crowd of people in the streets hoping that he’ll come

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out after the show. One of Conan’s employees says, “You’re not going
out there.” Conan, looking stunned, says, “You don’t get it. I can’t go
from this, [performing] to doing what? Reading a Kindle?” With a shrug
he heads back outside to bask in some more adulation.
You need an answer to what now. That’s a legitimate thing to think
through, but again, don’t let perfectionism sneak in. It will tell you that
you need a perfect answer to what now before you finish. That’s
nonsense. You don’t need to have the next thing figured out before you
finish this thing. Finish anyway.
Don’t let the fear of what’s next steal the joy of finishing what’s now.
Don’t let perfectionism distract you with a fictional second goal when
you’ve got a real one almost done.
If one of those fears doesn’t stop you, simple reality will.
It’s easier to start a new goal than it is to finish an old one.
It’s amazing how attractive all our other desires get the closer we get to
completing one. The Sirens who wooed Odysseus had nothing on the distraction
of new goals that would shipwreck us in this moment.
It’s like watching a thousand movie trailers but never actually finishing a
whole film. You’ll get a brief burst of excitement but will miss what makes a
movie really special if you keep starting a new one over and over again.
Don’t lose focus. Don’t give in to the new in this moment. Don’t quit now.
We’re so close, and there’s someone you need to meet who will make sure you
don’t.