We're All Experts at Other People's Homework

Conversations with Your Soul: The Hardest Thing

3 Dot Wednesday…

The woman at the book club confidently explains what the author "should have done," while her own novel sits unfinished in a drawer for three years... Understanding someone else's choices is always easier when you're not holding the pen...

To speak is easy... Watch any comment section... Listen to any coffee shop... Everyone has opinions about everything... Solutions for problems they've never faced... Advice for lives they've never lived... Words cost nothing... That's why we spend them so freely...

Overheard a man lecturing his friend about work-life balance... While checking emails during his daughter's soccer game... The gap between knowing and doing could swallow the Grand Canyon... We're all experts at other people's homework...

To act is hard... Your soul knows this... It watches you delay the difficult conversation... Postpone the career change... Avoid the doctor's appointment... Put off the apology... Action requires courage... Courage requires facing what we'd rather avoid...

The friend who gives relationship advice while staying in their dysfunction... The parent who preaches healthy habits while ordering takeout for the fourth night in a row... The coach who's never played the game... Speaking about the path is different than walking it...

But to understand... That's the hardest... Real understanding isn't intellectual... It's visceral... It's feeling the weight of someone's choices in your own chest... Knowing why they did what they did... Even when what they did was wrong...

Watched a mother lose patience with her toddler in the store... The other shoppers' judging glances... Until you've been running on three hours of sleep for six months... Until you've felt your sanity hanging by a thread... Your opinions about parenting are just theoretical fiction...

Understanding is empathy with experience... It's knowing that the coworker who seems lazy might be drowning in depression... That the rude cashier might have just lost their mother... That everyone is fighting a battle you can't see...

Once you truly understand... Action becomes inevitable... Not forced... Natural... Like water finding its level... Understanding dissolves the resistance... The fear... The excuses... You act because you can't not act...

The teenager avoiding college applications... Until he understands that fear of failure is just fear of being human... Then the applications write themselves... The entrepreneur stuck in analysis paralysis... Until she understands that perfect plans are procrastination in disguise...

Your soul has been waiting for you to understand... Not with your mind... But with your whole being... That you're worthy of love... That failure is just practice... That courage isn't the absence of fear... Once you understand... The hard things become possible...

The most profound understanding is self-understanding... Why you sabotage... Why you settle... Why you repeat the same patterns... Once you see the mechanism... You can change the outcome... Understanding is the key that unlocks action...

The beautiful paradox... The hardest thing to understand is often the most straightforward truth... You are enough... You are loved... You are here for a reason... Once your soul helps you understand this... Everything else becomes just logistics...

What three-dot observation would you add? Leave a comment…