Five Places “Not Today” Hides
Five Places “Not Today” Hides
I have a friend — I’ll call him George — who has more going for him than most people I know. He’s divorced now, still has decades ahead of him. He’s a devout man. He’s the kind of person a room warms up around. He loves adventure when he talks about it.
Most nights, though, he’s home. Kids on the couch, dinner on the table, a show on in the background. Comfortable. Familiar. Nothing wrong with any single night of that.
But there are five doors sitting open in George’s life, and he’s stopped walking through any of them.
The Five Doors
My kids don’t really want to go, so I won’t either. That’s church, most Sundays now.
I’m sure people are out there meeting each other, but I don’t have time for that right now. That’s every new friendship he hasn’t started.
Dating takes energy I don’t have left in a day. That’s every chance at someone new.
This job is fine. Going out and finding one I’d actually love is a whole project I don’t have time for. That’s the gift for people his current job never touches.
I love being with my kids. They’ve always been there for me, and I’ve always been there for them. Why wouldn’t I just stay in? That’s the door to anywhere but home.
Each one sounds like a good reason. That’s exactly the problem.
Why “Not Today” Feels So Safe
None of these are lies George is telling himself. His kids probably don’t want to go to church. He probably doesn’t have an extra hour today. His job probably is fine. That’s what makes this so hard to catch — a sales pitch works best when it’s partly true.
One of the main ways your safety system helps protect you is by pulling you toward what’s familiar — over time it can begin treating familiar and safe as if they mean the same thing. Home is familiar. Church, dating, new people, a new job — every one of those is somewhere George hasn’t been in a while, and his safety system reads that as risk, not opportunity.
It never asks him to give any of it up forever.
It just asks for today.
You can go next week.
You can meet someone once things calm down.
This job is fine for now.
It doesn’t feel like loss. It feels like love, and patience, and good sense. That’s what makes it so effective.
What It Cost
Picture George at eighty.
His kids have families of their own now. They’re busy. Just like he was.
Most nights, he’s home. Dinner for one. Television on. The same couch. The same familiar house. The same evenings he protected for thirty years.
Only now, there’s no one else there.
None of this means spending those years with his kids was a mistake — it wasn’t. The problem was never the time he gave them. The problem is that it quietly became the only door he ever walked through, until it was the only one still open.
He got exactly what the sales pitch promised him, every single day: comfort, no hard conversations, no rejection, no risk. He never lost any of that.
He just never noticed everything else it quietly cost.
Dreams rarely die from one bad decision.
They die from thousands of reasonable ones.
Take the Lead Challenge
Look at one door you’ve been telling yourself “not today” about. Not the biggest one. Just one. This week, walk through it. Small doors are easy to open. The ones you’ve avoided for years rarely stay that way.
F. Allen Scott is the author of From Safety to Success, where he explores the safety system framework behind why we stay stuck, and how to finally change that.
Related reading: Why Is Staying Consistent So Hard?