Nancy L. Neff Mid-February 2018 Newsletter
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Nancy L. Neff Coaching and Healing

LifeForce Abundance Coach
Vision and Dreams Coach

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Email: Nancy@NancyLNeff.com
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Mid-February 2018 Newsletter

Hello, and a magical fantastic Mid-February to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue has an article about pushing ourselves hard to reach a goal, how that might be both good and bad. Enjoy!

Is pushing yourself the best way to get there?
 pushing limits quote If you grew up like I did, with 2 hardworking parents and plenty of chores of my own, as well as homework, you learned working hard was the way to get things done. We achieve "by the sweat of our brow", things aren't just handed to us! The culture around us encouraged hard work as the path to achievement, success, and happiness. And some of us, like me, might have taken this programming too much to heart.

When I started to recognize that I had a tendency to push myself too hard and be too obsessive about little things, I wasn't sure how to change it. The only alternative seemed to be to become lazy, and I knew I wouldn't respect myself then. I joked to friends that I believed "Anything worth doing is worth over-doing", trying to make light of my unhealthy pattern. A college boyfriend and I would discuss the meaning of Life for hours, and we both scorned any action we saw as taking "the easy way out".

 eyeball working out Though I still like to push myself both mentally and physically, I've become more discerning. Will the activity teach me something or grow my skills, or am I likely to have a lot of fun with it? Then it's probably a yes. I can push myself knowing there's gold at the end of this rainbow, a place I really want to reach. But how much pushing is too much?
That's the dilemma for me. When I really want something, I'll dive in and start striving toward that goal. And when the going gets tough and I keep on going, am I being tough and persistent, or blindly bull-headed? In my corporate job as a programmer I had to fold a software management program into our project. It would automatically keep track of our code updates, allowing us to monitor code fixes or back them out. I spent a couple of months working closely with that programmer, helping him identify and fix problems in his tracking tool, until I finally said it wouldn't work for us. I expected criticism for "giving up", when everyone else on my team asked why it had taken me so long to decide to do that!
 Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain In situations like this, when trying to decide whether to keep pushing forward or to change direction, I've learned my feelings can be a helpful guide. Initially I was optimistic about this tracking tool, based on its sales hype. Yet the more I dug into its actual performance and features, the more worried I became that it was too buggy and wouldn't do what we needed. I should have trusted my sense of foreboding sooner.

In my 20s I dated a man who often sang an old song about soldiers trudging through a river area called the Big Muddy, following a commander who kept telling them to "Push on!". They were ankle deep in the Big Muddy, then knee deep, then hip deep, and so on, with the refrain after every verse being "And the big fool said to push on". The soldiers wanted to turn back, and their commanding officer had too much pride to admit he had been wrong. When I'm pushing myself too hard, am I being a big fool? If I'm anxious and getting exhausted, feeling like there's no end in sight, maybe I need to rethink my approach. There's no shame in changing direction. It's better than being a big fool!

To read about how I pushed myself to improve my vision, then learned not to do that, click here.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning energy medicine or vision or dreams. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here. You're helping many other people! Enjoy the second half of your February. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!

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