Month: August 2020

Posted on

How to Freakin’ Dream Again

Turns out, dreaming up a great future is a skill… one you can learn.

Click play to hear the audio version of this week’s blog, read to you, by me. And yep, there’s a great intro.

It’s the whole blog, read for you… with riffs, rants and a rockin’ intro.

Hey! You! What’s the next big milestone in your life? The way you answer that question can tell you a lot about where you are in developing the skill of dreaming.

I’m not talking about dreaming while you’re asleep. I’m talkin’ about the day-dreaming future building kinda musing.

Do you have big, vibrant ideas about where you’re headed? The kind that make you want to get up in the morning and get crackin’? I hope you do. Having a future vision and a clear conception of what that future would take to build and the motivation to take action can mean the difference between a life full of growth and meaning, and … well, everything else.

If that paragraph has you feeling left out, hang in there. From working with my clients, I see that they fall into several camps. See if one of these is you.

“I have no idea what future I want to build. How can I? All I want is to survive my job today.”

“I have a million ideas, but I don’t act on any of them.”

“I’m working toward finishing college. (Or buying a home, or finding my life partner) but all my friends are further ahead than I am. I’m not even sure the American Dream can be mine, never mind my personal dreams.”

“I couldn’t list 25 things I’m moving toward if you paid me.” (See my blog on this – here.)

Look, we’re told from the time we can formulate a full thought that we can be and do anything we want.

And then? We’re told that what we want isn’t practical. We’re told that what we want isn’t the kind of thing we can do, because, hey, we’re not that guy. Or we just have a few things we need to get to first.

And then? Our American culture starts to hand us our list of milestones. Finish kindergarten, finish high school, college. Get a job. No, not that job. Get the one with the benefits, get a REAL job. Next, where’s your home? Your condo? What about a retirement fund? And by the way, where’s the 2.3 children and the spouse? Are you still working for peanuts? Get promoted.

For some of us, this is enough to send us into despair. We dream of hitting some or all of these and compare ourselves to our peers only to find ourselves failing. Discouraged and discontented, we struggle to just enjoy what we do have. That was me for a really long time.

By the time we manage to check off a bunch of those cultural milestones, we look up one day to realize that the children are out of the house and the only milestone left is the big 401K jackpot. A jackpot that we’re driving ourselves to fill up in advance.

Where’s our culture now? Happy to hand us a weak, second rate set of goals – a bigger house, fancier toys, upgrades on the stuff we already have. Eating tuna casserole? Try a tuna steak. Good stuff. Got a watch? How about one that can read your mind or at least your sleep patterns. Like to run? How about getting the latest cell phone and earbuds and serious shoes to make your run better?

No wonder my clients can’t think of a thing they want. Our culture has been doing it for them.

Here’s where it gets good. Turns out, you can use a dreaming process to start to lay out your own darn milestones. If you only do one thing today, do this first step – dream big.

To Dream – You Have To Go Big

This is always fun. Take off all the blinders. Put what-if aside. You ARE good enough and nothing has to make sense. Be impractical, be enthusiastic. Spend a whole commute or a whole exercise session or a whole hour on the porch thinking about all the fantastical things you might enjoy having, being, doing, or sharing. Dream up vacations. Dream up jobs. Dream lifestyles. Dream contributions. Dream salaries. Dream pets. Dream a body. Dream it all.

To Live a Dream – You Have to Pick One

This is the one that kills me. I always want to go after five or six at the same time. If this is you, get a coach. Picking one doesn’t mean you give up the others. Getting one done is the fastest way to get all of them. Every time I ignore this rule, things start to slide sideways. Pick one. Any one. Doesn’t matter. Achieving that dream will teach you how to get the next one done. Keeping them all going at once means that you’ll bail on one each time it gets tough. It’s a sure way to stagnate and prevaricate.

To Build a Dream – You Need Steps.

List out all the things that will stop you from getting to your goal. Then list out all the things you’ll have to do to overcome those obstacles. That’s your plan.

To Work on a Dream – You Need to Pre-Motivate

Pre-Motivate Dudette. You heard me. Waiting to feel motivated is the long-ass way around the dream building. Instead, list out what you are doing when you feel motivated. OK … and just before you do those things, what were you feeling? Uh-huh. And what did you think just before you felt that way? Turns out, we often feel motivated AFTER doing the thing we want to use motivation to get us started on. Why? Because once you’ve got your resume written, you start to think.. Hey, this is possible! And then? Well, since it’s possible, it’s pretty motivating. Pre-motivation is thinking the thoughts and having the feelings that precede taking action. Thoughts like “That’s it! I’m going to buckle down and do this!” and feelings like focus or commitment drive action. For some of my clients, it’s thoughts like “I don’t need to be perfect. I just want to see if I can do it” and feeling curiosity or excitement.

In all these years of coaching, I don’t think I’ve ever had a client say they felt motivated before they were already taking action. The feeling that I see most frequently preceding action? Curiosity. Second most common? Excitement.

Turns out curiosity motivated the cat. Waiting for motivation just drove it to the nursing the home.

If I confused you, sign up for a free 25 minute session here.

To Keep Going on a Dream – Dream Ahead

And here we are back again. It’s time to dream. Imagine yourself already having achieved your goal. How would that future person act if they were doing what you’re doing?

This is tricky one. For instance, if I want to be a full-stack developer, I’ll have to learn to code and stay current on the never-ending, always accelerating changes in language and design. Today, it’s quite daunting to consider taking the classes, doing the reading, lobbying for a chance to work on something new. But … if I actually was a full-stack developer, what would I think about the learning curve? Probably, I’d think it had been challenging, but I’m proud of what I did. If I had to take that angular class again, it would be no problem. I could retake it standing on my head.

That’s the magic dreaming we need to do in the middle of pursuing a dream. Really try to live today as if you’re already there. Not fake it ’till you make it. But rather, with the willingness and ease of mind that you’ll have, with the perspective you’ll have in the future. Spend a little time with your future you, getting to know her. After all, you’re going to be her soon.

WHY BOTHER? This dreaming stuff is a lot of work!

Here’s why. When my clients dream about their future, they set new goals and break out of ruts. Their lives get more interesting. Their zest for life and their confidence go up.

When I focus on a single goal and take action, I feel better that very day. Simply getting a bit of accomplishment under your belt and taking some concrete steps is a great way to beat the blues… and seriously, don’t we all have them just a little bit right now?

You can have a big, beautiful life. You can decide what milestone you want to achieve and you can live a life of continuous growth. It’s work. Sure it is. So is getting to the mailbox after spending four weeks on the couch. Which work do you want to have?

When you have goals, dreams, curiosity, a sense of adventure, and something to get up for? Man, that’s gold. That’s a dream. That’s your life with meaning and purpose.

And that? Is just a better way to work.

Posted on

Mind-Body

If your Work Life / Biological Life balance has been hit by a truck, read on.

I’ve got a deep-dark secret I’ve never shared on this blog. Basically, because I feel ridiculous to say it out loud… but hey, public embarrassment is what blogging is all about. Here goes. This blog is about the problem of not having time to eat lunch, and, er, other things.

Here it is, the whole blog, read to you…. with a brand new intro. Oh, yeah, and riffs.

I’m talking about the issue of mind-body disassociation. I initially noticed the problem when I was working with my very first private coach. I would talk to her every week and pretty-much try to impress us both with how difficult my work life had become. To show her the profoundly pressured existence I found myself in, I would get right to the most basic of bodily functions – using the restroom.

I didn’t have time for it.

I would find myself not drinking liquids for hours. My fingers would fly over the keyboard in a mad rush to finish one more thing, while my bladder tightened and my whole body was thrown into a tense and hurried race. God forbid someone came into my office to interrupt me. My head would jerk up, eyes wide and frantic. Suddenly aware I couldn’t wait one more moment, I’d start heading out the door as I talked to them, finally saying…

“I’ll be right back.”

This, I thought was a profound example of the extreme demands of my job and my need to keep producing every second. I also thought it was a bit wackadoodle and I didn’t want to confess it to anyone. Now, years later, I understand that I am not the only person to experience this. Just last year, I watched a woman who’d built a million-dollar business in a few years confess to the same thing. And she’s a doctor.

So let me ask you, are you disconnecting from your own biology? Do you –

  1. Find yourself not willing to get up and get lunch, and when you do, you gobble it down at your desk?
  2. Find yourself doing one more thing, one more thing long after you’ve realized you’re profoundly uncomfortable?
  3. Start work early and find that it’s almost lunchtime and you haven’t had your first cup of tea?
  4. Head into bed in the evening knowing you haven’t exercised or even been outside?
  5. Work later than you want, feeling more and more pressured to work even later?
  6. Miss dinner with your family, even as you rush to get finished?
  7. Find yourself working late into the night, while lights go out, your family crawls into bed, and yet, when you finally walk into the bedroom, exhausted physically, your mind races on?

Dude. You are so not alone.

And Dude – understand this – you’re a carbon-based life form with some biological imperatives you will really enjoy following. And yeah, stick with me here. I know I just lost you on that biological imperative thing.

Long before I sat in the convention room in Texas and watched a woman with a two-comma business confess to my deep dark secret, I’d already resolved the issue for myself. It still felt great to realize that she’d been just as misguided as I had been.

Here’s how I broke free.

First, my coach and I really dug into some of the underlying beliefs I carried around.

This is something it’s much easier to do with a coach, so please, if you want help with this issue, definitely sign up for a free 25-minute session. You, basically, are the entire reason I’m a coach and I want to help.

As soon as she asked me what I would tell a teammate about this issue, the answer was way clearer than my annual objectives. I would say… “Go take care of yourself. Be late to the next meeting, leave this meeting early. Stop typing for Pete’s sake. “

Ask yourself, is there anyone in the world you care about that you would encourage to keep working when they were exhausted, hungry, ready to bust a gut or missing their children’s bedtime?

Please tell me the answer is no.

So step one is to find out why the heck you think it’s OK to do that to yourself. I’m not even going to make you turn this blog upside down to read the answer.

It’s not. You’re not different. You are a biological creature. If you dry up to a husk and pass out in your chair, you’re doing anyone any good. At some level you understand this because you’d shut your buddy’s laptop lid if he was doing this to himself.

Once I got through that thought process, I realized there was another problem. I’d decided it was OK to stop and use the restroom, to eat my lunch, to dance a jig at 6 pm if I wanted to… but I wasn’t doing it. Why?

I was so used to stuffing down signals, my body couldn’t reach me.

My body was literally phoning in and getting a busy signal.

Time to send in the construction crew to re-run the cable between my body and brain.

I literally had to train for this.

I made a plan and gave myself a mantra – Biology Rules.

Biology Rules – because it does. I’m not a brain on stick with some fingers and a thumb. I’m a human being. I’m a creature. I’m a mammal. If I don’t follow the biological rules that being a mammal encompasses, I’ll die.

I can’t swim underwater for hours and I can’t survive without physical exercise.

I can’t jump off a cliff and fly and I can’t go without water.

I can’t crawl across the ceiling and I can’t go without hitting the john.

PERIOD.

And neither can you.

We can’t do without sleep, without connection to other humans and we can’t think well for hours and hours. We just can’t.

To restring the connection between body and mind, I made a deep pledge to myself. Biology Rules. No excuses. The minute I noticed that I needed something BECAUSE of my biology – I just got up and did it.

Turns out, the world didn’t end when I would check into a meeting and say – I’ll be right back.

Nothing fell apart when I started eating my lunch outside.

My boss did not call me into his office because he’d noticed I’d been getting eight hours. I mean what was he going to say, I think you need to be on line until eleven pm? Of course not. He had no clue how late I was working; he was having his own problems disconnecting.

OK let’s get back to you.

You are a biological creature. You have some rules to follow. If you ignore them, your experience right now is miserable and you cut your life short.

To remedy this, admit that you’re human.

Agree you deserve the same basic advantages as any assembly line worker – the right to regular breaks and a right to stop working at the end of the day.

Plan on a mantra and a rule. – Biology Rules: My body’s needs that trumps all other demands. Or try this: Use it or Lose it: I’m not willing to bust a gut, shrivel and dry up or have a lack of sleep induced psychosis for my employer, who doesn’t even want any of that either.

Notice your body’s demands. Are you angry? Is it because you feel rushed? Do you feel rushed because your body needs something? What is it?

Then give your body what it wants.

I promise you, when you do this, you will see a productivity increase. I’ve seen this for myself and client after client. It’s the cruelest joke ever. We think we have to double down on work to get through everything. It’s not true. We have to double down on bringing our A-game. To bring our A-game, we have to honor our biological mandate.

And that? Is just a healthy way to work.

Posted on

The Big Loop

Got a brain? Well, then you probably have a big loop.

I yelled at my coach yesterday. I told her than every time I look at the news, I get upset. I told her that when I’m upset, I don’t follow through on my plans. She smiled. Not a big “I hear ya, sister” grin, but a half-smile. She wasn’t buying it. I tried to beat her to the punch.

“Uh, uh. No way I’m gonna sit in front of the TV and feel all THOSE feelings.”

“Forget that,” I said forcefully and loudly. Yeah. I was yelling.

“Sure, but you’re jumping to the worst-case scenario,” she said. “And that’s what’s driving the feelings and that is what’s keeping you from the results you want.”

I folded my arms over my chest.

She kept her poker face. It was game on, which meant she brought out the big guns. “You’re giving away all your power,” she said. “Which is fine. Is that what you want to do?”

Ok. So I’m not a medical professional or schooled in psychology. I’m an IT manager and a life coach. But one thing I know is this: I do not want to give up on anything I can control. I had to concede the match. By assuming that what I see on TV must generate the same feelings it always has before, I’m basically abdicating on myself. I -for sure – don’t want Wolf Blitzer and Bret Baier running my emotional show. Double true! So, I did me some research on ways thinking, the thing I rely on to get my work done and keep my life moving, can get itself sideways.

I’m a human and I have a brain. My brain does a lot of looping. Looping is one way of describing thoughts that come back over and over. Another way of saying it is – repetitive thinking. I’ve got a lot of it. Turns out, we all do.

Repetitive thinking isn’t good or bad. Like most things, it has two sides to it. After all, we’re pretty efficient creatures and if our brains have this behavior, I’d like to think it’s adaptive; it has its uses.

There are lots of types of repetitive thinking – rumination, worry, cognitive processing, emotional processing, solutioning, planning ahead, what-if thinking, level-setting expectations, worst-case analysis, reflection, self-criticism, post-mortems, goal setting, and day-dreaming. All of it involves us running scenarios or sentences over and over in our minds.

Not all of this is bad. In fact, when you look at the list, you can see why repetitive thinking might give a guy the edge. Planning ahead, risk mitigation, goal setting, thinking options through, picking up better health habits, recovering from depression, and getting through emotional trauma all come from this type of thinking.

You can also see how this type of thinking can cause us problems. Over-analysing, habitual worry, snowballing from small events to large future worse cases, self-judgment, negative self-talk and repeatedly triggering the body’s stress response system with our thinking are all linked to some pretty depressing outcomes. The list includes, you guessed it – depression, anxiety, and flat out poor physical health..

So how do we keep our positive patterns and reduce our negatives? Well, it turns out that positive outcomes from repetitive thinking are linked to our emotional state and the direction we guide our thinking in. Basically, the more you think about negative stuff, without giving it meaning and direction, the worse you feel. However, if you apply positive intent, have basic optimism about your ability to achieve your goal, and have a positive emotional state when you begin, repetitive thinking can predict a good outcome.

What?

Ok …. let’s get into the concrete examples here.

Say you work hard on a project, turn it in, and your boss changes something on every single gosh darn slide. You might engage in a bit of rumination, running the feedback he gave you through your thoughts several times. You might start to feel a bit down. Then you might think about the fact that you feel like crap. After about an hour of noticing your low energy and disappointment, you might beat yourself up a bit for letting your boss get to you like that. After a short break and a chat with a friend, where you have a candy bar and complain, returning to your desk, might bring you face to face with worry. What if you’re one step closer to getting fired? Or what if every project you do goes this way? How are you going to stand going through the whole year with this boss? By the time you get home, you’re not ready to listen to your spouse, not wanting to put in any more time on work and basically, good for nothing but ordering pizza and snapping through channels.

None of this sets you up for a great day at work tomorrow.

Let’s rewind. You work hard on a project but you know your boss has more experience. So you collaborate with your boss, ask his opinion and sure enough, he has something to add to every slide. You take it back to your desk and evaluate the suggestions, accepting some, and rejecting others. You have a call and discuss it. Of the rejections, you change your mind and keep a couple and throw out the rest. You turn the project in and engage in a bit of rumination. You wish you had thought of some of the changes yourself. You reflect on how you could have known to make them before your boss told you. For the ones you should have thought of, you make notes for next time. Of the ones you couldn’t have known, you tell yourself that’s why he’s the boss. By now, you’re exhausted and you feel it. You take a break, have a candy bar, and blow off some steam with your friend. Back at your desk, there’s a mountain of work still to do, but at least the presentation is off your plate and your job is safe for another day. By the time you get home, you’re tired but you’re glad to hear someone else’s troubles for a while. You let your spouse vent and then together, you decide to forget about fixing dinner. You get a pizza and put on some harmless feel-good show and watch together.

After a good night’s sleep, you’re ready to take on another day at work.

In both cases, the boss had input for every slide. In both cases, you work hard, are tired, and don’t make good choices about everything – indicating some stress and will-power fatigue. But in one case, the negative emotional tenor and the assumption that the boss’s input means something negative about yourself, cause the repetitive thinking to take on a depressing tone and gravitate towards less constructive ways of understanding. In the other, a more optimistic attitude – assuming the boss has good intentions, finding an explanation for why you didn’t know some things, and taking proactive measures for the future by trying to learn from the feedback, lead to a much better mental outcome.

The key here is to notice when you’re indulging in repetitive thinking. Notice the direction of the thinking. Notice your overall situation and emotional state.

After a long day at my stand-up desk, when I come out to cook dinner, I’m pretty low on mental resources. Turn on the news and let them rehash the same three issues over and over, and my brain might just pick up on the iterative loop of negative data. (Talk about repetitive!) Toss in a bit of repetitive thinking about how all this will play out over the next 80 days, and I’ve got myself a nice set up for a miserable night. Just maybe, I’ll yell at my coach about it.

Noticing that I’m tired when I leave my desk, mentally tired but physically sick of sitting still, I can predict that I’m going to do way better listening to a Ted talk than listening to the 24/7 cycle. Later, after a break, some exercise, some time with my dog and my husband, I’ll be a much better place to catch up on what happened in the world. Then I can use my brain to ruminate on how lucky I am, to reflect on what campaigns I might want to donate to and remind myself that I’m still on track, even if the talking heads are doing their best to convince me the rest of the world, is not.

If you want to work on noticing your thoughts and figuring out what and when to switch up the process, sign up for a free 25-minute session.

And that? Is just a better way to use our brains.

For more on repetitive thinking, check out this informative link “Watkins ER. Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychol Bull. 2008;134(2):163-206. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163″

Posted on

Stay Fearless

Feel like hiding under your bed? While you’re under there, dig out that superhero costume from 1994 and check out today’s blog.

Fah- Fah- Fearless my foot. Right now, there’s like no reason in the world to feel fearless, and I mean, literally.

I’m going to share something with you – there actually is plenty out there to fear. I can sit here and say “don’t be afraid” but that’s not really what a life coach does. Mostly I ask questions. Things like “Is that true?” and “So what?” People pretty much pay me to be a pain in the neck. It’s possible that what you are afraid of is a real concern. And that’s good to know. Because, as Robert McCammon said, just because it’s real, doesn’t me we don’t act. I’m going to share here one of my favorite excerpts from his books. Basically, the townsfolk in the story are standing in the dark of night on the banks of a rising, raging river in a downpour. The boy and his father, join them, filling sandbags and slinging them into a wall, in an almost futile attempt to hold back nature. Here it is:

“There is something about nature out of control that touches a primal terror.  We are used to believing that we’re the masters of our domain and that God has given us this earth to rule over.  We need this illusion like a good night-light.  The truth is more fearsome: we are as frail as young trees in tornadoes, and our beloved homes are one flood away from driftwood.  We plant our roots in trembling earth, we live where mountains rose and fell and prehistoric seas burned away in mist.  We and the towns we have built are not permanent; the earth itself is a passing train. When you stand in muddy water that is rising toward your waist and you hear people shouting against the darkness and see their figures struggling to hold back the currents that will not be denied, you realize the truth of it: we will not win, but we cannot give up.” – Robert McCammon – from the novel Boy’s Life

Pretty intense. This week, mental health has been in the news. As we stay home longer, as we see the upsetting news about the pandemic along with the ugly campaign ads designed to frighten us, the real worries we have about sending our loved ones back to school and about what happens when grandparents and parents welcome them back into their homes, we wonder about the economics, climate change, the safety of vaccines, voter registration… all of it. And then? We have to show up at work.

This week, I cried at the grocery store because the lobsters waiting to be made into a meal were so pitiful. One of my team berated herself viciously for a small, forgivable lapse. We watch as the team pushes to hit deadlines, emails increase, tension fray. We were already overwhelmed… and the gratitude and thankfulness we started with in March are worn thin.

What’s the answer?

It’s the only answer that ever existed. In the dark, on the river bank, don’t give up.

But also, don’t just let the world pour fear into you. Ask yourself “is this true?”

The media says our democracy is about to crumble. Is that true? Really? Or do you just need to make sure you vote?

Our climate is threatened. We’re all going to fry by 2050. True? Who knows. But you can pretty easily switch your electricity supplier to 100% renewable. Lock in a one year rate, fall back to your current one if you don’t like it.

There’s more email than ever at work and you can’t keep up. So what? You might miss something? So what?

You’re starting work at the crack of dawn, stopping to home school the kids, going back to work in the afternoon, and making up time in the middle of the night and that’s the only option you can find. You’re exhausted and scared. What are you making this mean? How does that make you feel? How do you behave when you feel like that? Is that pattern serving you? What else could you make it mean and how would that feel?

Look, we’re all going to feel overwhelmed and fearful. Self-coaching is the way out of that. We can’t change the facts of our lives, we are still one flood, one tornado, one bad break away from real trouble. It was like that last year, the year before and all the way back to the beginning of time. You still have emails to handle. You have children to care for.

Here’s what you can control – the way you think about your situation. My job as a coach is not to talk you into believing things that aren’t true. My job is to help you see what’s going on in your head and how that’s impacting your world. But you can do it yourself.

Here’s how:

Give yourself five minutes at the start of the workday. Write out everything that comes to your mind on a piece of paper. Underline the hard facts, provable in a court of law. Everything else is in your control. Pick one of the controllable sentences. Doesn’t matter which one. Write it on the back of your paper. This sentence is a thought you had. Say it to yourself. How do you feel?

Write down the situation the thought is about. Make it fact. Refine it until it’s so bland that you have no emotional reaction to it. That’s your circumstance.

Read the circumstance. Read the thought. How do you feel? Imagine how you behave when you feel that way. Is that what you want to do?

Now, write down five other thoughts you can have about that fact. Try them on for feelings and actions.

Go through this, don’t just read it. Really try it out. Here’s what you learn – you can’t change the world, but you have a ton of control over how you show up in it. And when you do that, your actions change. And Actions are what drive the results we get for all of us.

Turns out, if you control how you show up – you might just change the world after all.

And that? Is just good to know.

If you want help with this, sign up for a free 25 minute session. Helping you is my way of showing up without fear. Let’s find your way.

Posted on

Action

Action is the antidote to despair – Joan Baez.
It’s also been touted as the fix for fear, anxiety, and doubt.
With an intro like that, who wouldn’t want more action?

Nothing dogs us like action, or rather – inaction. Facing fears, making a difference, and just plain getting through the workday, all require action. So why is that so many of us struggle to act? Let’s dig into action, decisions, and getting stuff done.

Today’s blog, read for you. Enjoy.

First off, let’s divide the world into two kinds of action. Tony Robbins called it massive action and passive action. Educators call it learning from resources and learning by doing. Either way, we’re talking about consuming information versus actively attempting something. Often, we postpone taking action by learning, reading, watching, talking. All of which are fine in doses, but don’t hold a candle to engaging with the world and trying something. In a sneaky, sneaky twist, our brains LOVE passive action. After all, what’s safer than reading a book or watching a movie? Our brains love safe; they love passive action.

So when I’m talking about action, I’m talking about massive action. Massive action, that has mass, movement, impact and engagement, is the action that we want to call on when we’re trying to achieve a goal. Whether that goal is getting your new cool idea noticed at work, or saving democracy – I think we can all agree that massive action is what’s required.

Do dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment.  Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be.  Not in the flight of ideas, but only in action is freedom.  Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of the living.  -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Ok, so our brains are totally against going out into a tempest. Things HAPPEN in a tempest, things CHANGE when we take action. As soon as you attempt to take action, your lazy brain, all chillin’ on the sofa with its tank top and stretchy shorts on, looks over and pauses whatever it’s binge watching. Why? Because its job is to stop you from getting hurt. What’s the easiest way to do that?

Depends. Could be it might frighten you. It might tell you that your idea will get you laughed at. Could be it might tempt you... chips and salsa anyone? But you are too smart to let that stop you. Be ready. And if your mid-brain wins this round, notice how it did it. I noticed that my brain could get me to skip my morning walk if it was raining. Can you spell treadmill? Boom. Then my brain told me that using the treadmill was selfish. After all, the dog needs to walk too. So for a while, I let that be my excuse. If the dog can’t go, I don’t go. Wait? What? Tricky. Turns out, the dog’s chill if I use the treadmill as long as I don’t make her use it with me.

He was a sociopath, I think, in love with himself and no one else, craving action for its own sake, and indifferent to any long-term consequences, a classic Man of Destiny.  – Hocus Pocus  Kurt Vonnegut.

Truly, that’s not the best quote for this article but I just love me some Vonnegut.

So action for action’s sake isn’t what we’re talking about. Running around with no clear goal or without thinking things through can be trouble. However, most of us take way too long to come to a decision. We want to make the perfect decision. In reality, making the best decision we can, in a reasonable amount of time, is all we need to do.

Check out my article on decision making – Beauty & the Beast

Once the decision is made, action is where it’s at. Taking real action sends a message to ourselves that we can effect an impact on our own lives. In fact, any meaningful results you’ll ever get come from taking action. We live in a world that feels out of control. We have invisible viruses, we have bosses that make decisions based on information that we aren’t told about. We use technology we barely understand to do our jobs. We have our retirement invested in a stock market that, from the looks of it, is disconnected from reality. Our brains don’t like any of this. We like certainty.

Action takes us out of rumination and engages us with the world. Want another bonus for taking action?

Dude, the day feels longer when you fill it with diverse actions towards meaningful goals.

Try it. Compare a day with no plans, when you engage in passive action to a day when you take five or six different actions towards a goal. Which day felt longer? Which one felt like a life well-lived.

Lady, I’ve just told you the secret to having a long life. No matter how many years you actually live, you experience more life when you’re taking action.

And that? Is just a good way to feel.

If you want to take more action and figure out how to get past the mental roadblocks to action, sign up for a free 25 minute mini session. We’ll discuss how coaching helps.