“ I really want to start taking action but just that my dog is holding me back!”
This is hilarious when compare with the universe’s common lame excuses like “what if I fail?” , “ I don’t have time and money.”or “ I don’t really know how.”
A few years ago, I was stuck in a rut and those were exactly my fallacies when I thought of starting a side business to break the 9-5’s curse. Looking back, I bet myself takes no action or even lose it all if a million transfers to my account at that point of time.
I stumbled upon blogs and watch video about it. My brain tried hard to absorb everything as if a dry sponge and it ended up became saturated with tons of information that I don’t really need at that moment.
And here comes the worst part. This info digging process forms a delusion of you being well productive and it makes you feel great. You will soon come to realise that you don’t even complete a minor task.
Your brain exhausted when being overloaded with garbage information. That’s the reason you felt overwhelmed and thus, led to inaction. Information itself has no value until you make use of it.
This is exactly opposite from being a student at school where they strive to achieve success by digest as much information as possible. It was just a pure battle of memory.
However, once you step into adulthood, you really have to unlearn that as nobody cares about what you know but what have you done by using what you know.
Sadly, average achievers practice thinking about changing their behavior but they don’t actually practice the changing of behavior. Key number one is to accept the fact that information itself has no value at all if you don’t apply. Action for key number one is to make it clear on what you’re searching for and give yourself a deadline for this process. Here’s the rule on setting a deadline.
Parkinson’s law explains to reduce the time allocated to complete a task to avoid time wasted as task expands to whatever amount of time allocated to it.
Treat info as if an apple pie that you should enjoy it while it is crispy and hot.
Inaction is feed by these monsters.
Let me acquaint you with them.
A series of self-devalue thoughts like “I’m not good enough for that” or “ I can’t make it happen”, or “ It’s impossible” spring in between your ears. If you continue to let them grow, they will soon become a fact for you. It happens all within your mind, strongly affect your emotion and trying to rationalize base on your past experiences or just pure imaginations.
It could think of all the reasons why you will gonna fail and even more reasons why you should not even begin. After all, no one enjoy being looked dumb and stupid.
It is even hard for you to take action when your brain goes a step further of telling you that you have to control every single detail of every single outcome so that you do not fail. Motivation and desire were depleted at least half when you think you have to run the universe.
We already know what we should do. Here’s the nuance. Humans are born to be ambitious and no one will dedicate to themselves or their loved one to achieve only a fraction of the results. It feels so great to think that you’ll achieve something huge and have your friends amazed. A perfectionist mindset of either doing nothing or achieve exactly the flawless outcome at the first shot is doing you a disservice.
Let’s look at the venture capitalists, they’re testing 25 companies to find one that might win. Why should you think that you’re brighter than they are? Why should you think you’re going to hit it on the first? You’re beating yourself up unnecessarily for holding this delusion.
I understand that your friends will roll their eyes off if you tell them you’re gonna make an extra 100 bucks a month but hey, you will never achieve 10k dollars without the first 100 bucks.
Key number two is to prepare to make it a lot easier at the beginning and make sure you increase the intensity level gradually. Action for key number two is to make the first step a no-brainer so that you have no reason for not doing that.
For instance, you want to become a vegetarian. Instead of imagine yourself say no to meat and go green for every meal at your first trial, why not just start eating green for one meal in every 3 days? After a period when your body adapted to this new habit, change it to 2 meals in every 3 days and so on.
If you just take the leap and go green in every meal, you can still be able to make it for a few days with burning desire and motivation from reading blogs, books and watching videos. However, you’ll struggle when the motivation level subside. At that point of time, giving up is the comfort choice of all. Your brain then connects bad feelings and negative thoughts to become a vegetarian. It takes at least twice of the efforts, desires and motivations to restart the plan.
How to not give a damn?
It’s easy to just deal with yourself. However, it’s humans’ natural instinct to desperate for acceptance and love.
Here’s a fact that most of us tend to forget. Those who blended in, being forgotten while those who dare to stand out attract the same minded people. This could be your treasure as we all need support to beat the monsters that drag us down.
If you are observance, you will soon find out that most action taken by top performers are exactly the opposite from the average. Be very careful on who you take advice from and take advice only from those who make it to where you want to be. Bear in mind that it costs nothing to give advice but it is on your own to choose.
Rules are breakable and it changes according to different people. Break it for as long as it’s not against the law. When you get rejected (where this is not something will or will not happen, but is a requirement in success package) tell them that you’re going to do it anyway with your own method. Most of the time, you don’t really need permission from anyone but yourself to start something.
Key number three is to accept the fact that your life will only change from the moment when you become responsible on it based on the concept that rules are breakable. Advice from the right person saves you at least a thousand miles to achieve greatness. Action for key number three is to be fully in charge of your life and maximize an approach that you’ve learned from the right person before multiple new approaches. Treat this as an experiment to find out how it’ll work the best for you.
All the roadblocks at first are exactly the magic elements that made your story extremely amazing and stand out of the crowd.
Play with your brain muscle
Years ago, I was graduated from school and had to deal with different hard choices. It was intimidated to take action when being told to choose wisely to avoid failure. After all, I was just an 18 years old teenage that hope to avoid 9-5 curse. I did have plan though but it was dead when someone from nowhere commented that it was a bad choice. I stuck for as long as five years.
In these five years, I travel and work in different countries like Macau and Singapore. Although I have some saving from it but I don’t really know what to do with it. Here is what I conclude from this experience. It’s not about how much you start off with but the state of your mind affect at least 98% of the outcome.
If you pay attention to the different emotion generated according to the different situation, you will soon find out that your mind connects you to the negative feelings like sadness and worry on the unknown path while comfort and relax on the known path.
For instance, staying at a regular job earn you a steady income so your mind makes you feel comfortable. Your mind don’t make you feel anxious on this because it knows exactly how much you can bring home and you agree to that amount. Simultaneously if we compare it to entrepreneurship, your mind instantly connect you to fear, as it doesn’t know what will gonna happen.
Here’s another version of you are what you eat called you are what you feed into your mind. For instance, if you have 100s’ positive comments and 1 negative, you will tend to dwell on the only negative and kind of ignore the positive rest. Do understand that your mind is just a tool and the outcome, your life really depends on how you make use of it.
Here’s a secret crunchy solution that I’ve found really practical. It is much easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. Behaviour first then attitude will come along. Instead of putting on a smile only when you’re happy, put a big cheesy smiley face on first and you will feel happy. Conduct the behaviour first then your attitude will tag along.
Everything starts with being the master of emotion instead of being control by it. Here’s a simple formula. Thoughts(desire) + emotions (negative / positive) = physical equivalent that transmuted from actions.
There are certainly circumstances that give you many reasons to feel a certain way, but at the end of the day you are powerful unless you surrender that power to another person or circumstance. You choose how you act. You might be in a frustration circumstance but you can choose to be frustrated or having strong faith on yourself that you have the ability to get this done. You are not a feeling, you can choose how you feel; you are not a product or victim of the circumstance, you’re 100% in charge of how you respond to it.
Key number four is to master your emotion and understand that all impulse of thought has a tendency to turn out themselves in their physical equivalent. Your brain is just like another muscle that can be trained and you are the only person in charge to get this done.
Here’s the action step by step for you to start anything. Set a deadline and spend your free time learning. When you’re done, stop learning and start implementation. Once you notice that you hit a plateau, stop implement and set a deadline to learn again.
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