You didn't start yet.

People trying to make something for themselves need to overcome the dogma of genderized energetics.

You want to lose weight but with all the work you’ve done so far, nothing’s changed. You want to start your own business, but no matter what you do, it’s like you’re banging your head on a wall. You want to be stronger, but all the workouts you’ve done haven’t done anything for you.

You want real change, but you’re not getting anything out of the work you’re putting in.

So you think that there’s something else missing. Maybe your mindset is wrong. Maybe you’re misaligned energetically. Maybe there’s a secret behind weight loss, business success and fitness.

There’s a niche industry of folks who try to fix your mindset, realign you, and give you the secrets to anything you feel like you’re missing. And all of them, no matter how frilly and fancy the language, are trying to get you to the same place: Starting.

What makes the real change in our lives? It’s really just starting.

But wait, I did start, Dom! It’s just that I’m fighting uphill because there’s something that I need to really get going. I’m treading water because the breakthrough is going to happen, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe next year…

I’ve personally experienced the times when I’ve “committed” to projects, tasks, and work on myself, but the observed actual execution was non-committal at best.

This is why there’s so much money in mindset coaching: The gap in between our “doing” and our true “starting” can be huge. We do the diet, we do the gym, we do the business, but we don’t truly start because we feel like we shouldn’t. We are dragging ourselves up that hill because a part of us truly doesn’t feel like doing things we think we should do.

The mindset coach will likely say that doing what we want is the best antidote to that which we should do; our obligations to work, family, relationships that take our energy away and leave us feeling out of control in our life.

But what’s implied in the marketing speech is that the mindset coach it telling you that what you want to do is what you should do. This should be good right?

But they just said that you should overcome the shoulds and have tos in your life! Now why should you start a business to overcome shoulds?

We’re creating another baseless obligation toward the things we feel like we want, thereby associating our wants with the negativity we’re trying to leave behind.

It’s a paradox!

We need to get rid of this paradox by cutting out the decorations of mindset coaching marketing speech and zeroing in on its genuine outcome: Starting.

Let me briefly explain one of the greater trends of mindset coaching in the past decade: The creation of a dualism of energetics, divided into “feminine” and “masculine”.

A popular analogy of these two energetics help illustrate their differences:

Say you want to catch butterflies. Masculine Energetics will build a butterfly net, running around and catching the butterflies. Feminine Energetics will create a butterfly garden, letting the butterflies come to them.

From this explanation we can get a few things.

• Masculine Energetics is the “get out there and do it” approach, with short-term thinking and lots of physical energy expenses to get what they want.

• Feminine Energetics is the “wait and you shall receive” approach, with long-term thinking, and strategic use of physical energy to get what they want.

For the rest of this article, I’m going to call masculine energetics Yang Energy, and feminine energetics Yin Energy, because the most damaging aspect of this dual energy perspective is its genderizing of very non-gender approaches to life.

Genderizing these approaches makes it seem as though females should embrace Yin Energy and males should embrace Yang Energy. Once this implicit argument settles itself in people’s minds, they start creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of trying to live up to their gender stereotypes.

The Yin-Yang Symbol is called the Taijitu. Take a look at it again:

the taijitu

We see that the Taijitu gives away the truth of these archetypical approaches to life: That the Yin Energy can only be complete with a bit of Yang Energy, and the Yang Energy can only be complete with a bit of Yin Energy.

The wisdom of the Taijitu finds that there is no dualism, no line in the sand to step over to finally find the correct approach to personal development. There will always be a mix, there will always be nuance to what we need to do, and what we want to do.

Better mindset coaches admit to this nuance, but their go-to marketing speeches typically emphasize the Yin approach, because like a butterfly garden, it takes a lot more coaching to understand the dynamics of attraction/magnetism than the dynamics of cause/effect that the Yang approach leans on.

That is to say, traditional mindset coaching relies on a lot of decorative phrases like universal laws, manifestation, and alignment that feel like they make sense, but can be endlessly explained about because there’s no fixed definition for the mechanics of mindset and vibrations.

Each author has their own version, because it’s not a science but a visceral metaphor for our actions and behaviors.

And this is just fine, because if they can speak to you in a way that is visceral and meaningful, you will finally start the thing you want to do. You will finally grapple with the part of you that keeps putting up resistance to your desires, because it was never really convinced that you really did want it.

Beyond the mind candy: You need to start at the same time as you build your garden.

The mindset coach dogma is always worried about your burnout. If you start without alignment, you’ll burn out and quit doing what you want. This is not fully true or false.

In reality, you can’t know if you actually want something until you actually start doing it.

In weight loss, you will find out that you need to change your lifestyles in activity and diet to be at a lower weight, permanently. It’s not this race of losing 45 pounds and suddenly you’re there and it’s never coming back. Without the foundations of lifestyle changes, you’ll put back on that weight.

In fitness, you will find out that strength is a lifestyle; if you did a 6 week program, got ripped, and dropped what it took to follow that program, you’ll be back to the body you had in a few months.

In business, you will find out that business is not a website, it’s not an offer, but it’s the moment that you are working with or for someone for money. Business is not the marketing! Business is not what you do with the money after the service is rendered!

Business is your service to others. And some people getting into business don’t realize that, and they spend months on offers and sales pages and visualizing what they’ll do with the money they get, but they will completely stall out at the actual business part, actually providing the service.

So these people will stall for time and get a mindset coach to help them feel aligned with the lifestyle they’re going to have to adopt, as if their pre-preparation will finally make it effortless.

It won’t make it easier. You have to live the lifestyle first and understand what you like and don’t like—then get the mindset coach to optimize!

You’re spinning yourself out on your thoughts about the lifestyle, not the lifestyle as it is lived.

Start to succeed, get coaching support to optimize. Get out and grab the butterflies while the garden is still growing.

Start living the lifestyle—of weight loss, fitness, business, whatever. The blocks you’re having to starting are just because it’s new to you, not because there’s something inherently challenging about the lifestyle.

Some people love creating a bunch of rules for themselves before even starting, as if non-negotiables can be created without life experience.

Get the life experience! Truly start! Because I know you said you already started, but I know 90% of those who say they started are actually spinning their wheels with tasks, projects, and goals that aren’t actually making them lose weight, get strong, or make money.

They’re at the garden shop, making sure their seeds are the best quality, and their trowel is ergonomic, and they have a great sun dress. And the next day they’re back at the shop, because they just heard these flowers actually attract more butterflies… And the next day they’re back again… Overthinking, overdoing, overspending, for no butterflies at all.

Of course, spend some time at the shop, but keep it at 1 hour AT MOST each day. And then spend the next 7 hours catching butterflies with your net. So you can have the butterflies you always wanted.

In reality, the Yin and Yang energies need to combine, so we can become what we said we want, and we can better serve our inner selves when we run into resistance.

But boy do we have to start first.

—

Thanks for reading,

Dom

P.S.- I spent a lot of time building butterfly gardens, and it’s really fun. I grew up as a theoretical person that wanted to live in theory. I was scared of reality. I was awkward any time I tried to use the butterfly net, so I shied away and headed back to the empty butterfly garden, because apparently I actually had to start building it, not just writing the plans down in a journal.