The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum is the moment when…

• You realize you’re in a poisonous, unsalvageable relationship…
• You’re doing work that is tolerable at best…
• You have all the information needed to make an important decision…

…but you’ve done nothing.

On one side is ignorance and rationalization–not knowing how to progress or telling yourself all the reasons you can’t. On the other is, well, everything. Action. Change. Success (or failure).

But the point that divides the two is critical. You’ve run out of excuses. You have enough information to act–but more importantly, you believe you should. Yet you haven’t. Eventually, fear and compromise erode your balance, and you fall backwards.

You see people live their entire lives on this cycle. They’re unwilling to trade short-term discomfort for long-term happiness. I see it too, when I look in the mirror. Not constantly, like before, but in some respects I’m still limping in, afraid to push my chips forward. With that in mind, I’m still pretty confident in giving my first piece of advice, from both personal experience and observation of the successful:

Minimize your time spent on the fulcrum. Ruthlessly. Quit fucking hemming and hawing. You know this feeling: it comes when you stop keeping your mind too busy to reflect. Next time it happens, instead of just dog-paddling in the malaise, use that moment to act.

In short, always be closing: