How often do you catch yourself not taking action because you don’t feel like it? I find myself in this situation often, and even find myself in it right now as I’m writing this article. There are a lot of things I’d much rather be doing, but that doesn’t change the fact that this article needs to be written and this is the only time I have to write it. 

Our minds like to convince us that it’s not the right time and that we can and will take action later when we are motivated to do so, but oftentimes the motivation never comes. I read recently that the mind is the soul’s greatest tool. While nothing has described my ideal use of the mind more clearly, I usually feel like my mind is the one that gets to be in control. 

Motivation often shows up after we start taking action. I’m now in the third paragraph of this article, and I’m feeling slightly more motivated to get it completed. If I didn’t take the action to get started, this motivation would not be building. I’d consider myself to be pretty good at taking action when I don’t feel like it, and today I’m going to walk you through my process for doing so. My hope is that it’s much simpler than you think.

The first thing I need to do is identify the task that needs to be completed. In this example, it’s getting this article written before I go away for the weekend. This felt overwhelming before I started because I didn’t even have a topic picked out yet. To combat the feelings of overwhelm, I took a deep breath and determined what the first step is: choosing a topic for this week’s article. Remember, all you need to do to start building motivation is take the first step, not complete the entire task. Allow yourself to get clear on what that first step is and forget about the rest. 

Once I was clear on the first step, I needed to get my mind to slow down a little bit. It was racing, trying to distract me and convince me this isn’t the best time to write the article. When my mind is trying to run the show, I slow it down by taking a deep breath, inhaling all the way into the bottom of my stomach and exhaling slowly and with control. Just a few deep breaths is usually all it takes for me to anchor into my body. 

After that, I use Mel Robbins’s 5-4-3-2-1 technique where I count down from five. When I get to one, I take action. In this instance, that action was opening my Google Drive folder to review my recent article topics, and opening my “future column ideas” document to see what I could pull from. The key here is to always take action when you get to one. If you take action, you build trust with yourself that you actually do what you say you’re going to do. If you don’t, you lose trust in yourself just like you’d lose trust in someone else who doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do. 

Our minds are absolutely incredible tools and I wouldn’t be able to write and explain this to you without it. However, I could have easily let my mind take the easy way out and convince me I wasn’t motivated. It’s important we anchor into our bodies when our minds are resisting something that is for our highest good. 

Try out this simple set of steps next time you need to take an action that you don’t feel like taking. Figure out your first step, take a deep breath, countdown from five, and take action. You’ve got this!

Xoxo

Coach Maggi