PART II: All Talk and no Action

Taking Action (on virtually anything) was one of the hardest things I have had trouble doing. I was lazy as the day was long. It’s not that I didn’t think things through. Heck, that seems to be all I did.  I would get stuck thinking too much but then doing nothing about it, because, let’s face, the more you think about something, the more time you can come with excuses not to do it. And it was like that when it came to my career, my relationships, my education, you name it. I didn’t know how to move from THINKING which I did incessantly, to MOVEMENT, which I barely did. In fact, I did what we all dread…ran around in circles and got nothing done. But, eventually, I figure it out. I took on certain beliefs that required me to realize the importance of movement and action (mainly that I will only live once, and that I am running out of time). I also placed the idea of being a “productive member of society” higher on my Values list. When I did that, I was far more inspired to take action, because, when something is on your Values list, you are bound to (if you love yourself!)  Here are a few more things that helped me get off my arse and start doing:

1. Start to brainwash yourself and think in terms of action as necessity. We take action to go to work. We take action to feed ourselves or shower in the morning. Right? We do those things almost on autopilot because we have no choice. We take those actions to survive. Well, we need to move away from the PoA to survive. And we need to get involved in other hobbies (so as not to think of PoA) to survive, and so on. Start to change the way you think about the Importance of the task you want to accomplish.

2. Write a list of things you want to accomplish. And further, give yourself a time frame to complete those tasks. Where do you see yourself in 6 months? 1 year? 5 years? Write out every detail of your plan of action. This because your road map.

3. Practice taking action with baby steps. If your goal is not stop talking about changing careers and actually do it, start with baby steps. Update your resume. Research your new career. Then, try to find a networking group in your area that has similar interests. The more you are around people who ALSO take action, the more likely you are to do so too.

4. KEEP doing something. Don’t worry about the importance of the action. This is how you build momentum. If, when you do something it exhausts you or disappoints you (and this was always my case) DON’T GIVE UP. Get right back out there and do it again. This is where we fail. This is why we procrastinate. Because the pain of doing something outweighs the pain of doing nothing. When we go out and do something ONCE, and it doesn’t feel right, we immediately want to stop and say, “That’s not for me.” And yet, this is the most important challenge we need to overcome. This sensation of awkwardness is what holds us back and what we have been avoiding all our lives. But remember when you first learned to ride a bike? It was AWKWARD. You fell off. But you had to get back on and keep trying. And now, it’s a smooth ride. Have that same faith in your ability to learn new tasks. 

5. Do a certain activity 3-5 times, even 10 times before quitting. Get used to the follow through. I had to take a kickboxing class 5 times before I started to enjoy it.

6. Lastly, and this kinda goes back to number one, change your brain! Change your perspective. Your mind is the ONLY thing keeping you from doing something. Not your body, not your emotions, nothing else but your brain. And guess what, your body and emotions will do virtually anything the brain tells them to do. Feed your brain negative thoughts (Nah, I can’t do this today, I’ll do it tomorrow) and that’s what it will believe. Feed your brain positive thoughts and that’s what it will believe.