Episode 14 - Why you aren’t taking action on your decisions
In this week Episode I talk about seven things that stop us from acting on our decisions.
The way your brain is wired
Thinking you need to feel good before you take action
Not believing you can do it
Not being specific about the action to take
Not being willing to feel unpleasant emotions
Not having your own back
Not making the process as easy and fun as possible
I give you tips to counteract all these, so that you can start taking action and moving forward, instead of staying stuck.
Because this Episode is loaded with tips, you'll want to download the transcript. You ‘ll find the download link below.
Resources
Podcasts 7 and 8 on Decision Making: Part 1 - Part 2
Podcast 13 on diffusing Black and White Thinking
Full Transcript
Episode 14 - Why you aren’t taking action on your decisions
Welcome to the managing your smart mind podcast with me, Else Kramer, a.k.a. Coach Kramer.
Last week I taught a Decision Making workshop to a group of gifted people, which was a lot of fun. And if you’d like to get better at this too, check out Episodes 7 and 8 of the podcast.
This episode is a kind of follow-up to those episodes, because the question I got asked most during the workshop was: ‘How do I actually take action after I make a decision?’
And let’s be honest, a lot of people make decisions, or at least they think they do, but then…nothing happens.
Zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
The same may be happening to you.
You’ve made a decision.
You know what you need to do.
You’re motivated, willing and able.
Maybe you’ve decided to start doing daily push-ups.
To drink less wine.
To start looking for a new job.
To build a new business.
To create a post for social media.
It can be small, it can be medium, it can be massive - doesn’t matter.
You know what you need to do.
And yet, you don’t.
It can be very painful, like watching a train wreck.
You see it happen, you absolutely don’t WANT it to happen, and yet you feel completely powerless to stop it.
You watch yourself, in your paralysis, you know all the reasons why it is much better to take the action, and stil…you don’t.
WHY? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
That’s what I’ll explain on today’s podcast.
I’ve got a list of seven things that interfere with your ability to take action on your decisions - and tips on how to overcome them.
Your brain is resistant to change
I talk about this a lot on this podcast, and that’s because you need to know that trying to do something new is never easy.
Your brain much prefers for things to stay the same.
It will resist your attempts to do new things by making you scared, distracting you (look! A funny meme on instagram! Look! another!), telling you you need to know more, learn more, etc.
Not because there’s something wrong with your discipline, willpower, etc.
Taking action on your decisions isn’t easy because of the way you’re wired.
So how do you counteract that?
EXPECT IT. Be ready for it. Acknowledge it, and proceed.
It can help to visualise the part of your brain that always tries to freak you out.
I tend to picture it as a skinny, scared cat on my shoulder, that will start telling me all the things that could go horribly wrong as soon as I make a decision.
I’ll look at it, give it a little scratch under its skinny chin, and say ‘thank you, your input is noted’ - and then go do the thing I want to do.
Do not try to suppress it, that’s just a massive waste of energy.
It’s only trying to protect you, and it always will.
So expect, acknowledge, and proceed.
You believe you have to wait until it feels right
A lot of people, especially coaches, think they need to feel good when taking action.
They want to take it from the right energy, the right vibration, the right feeling.
And they will work on themselves forever to create this feeling. Instead of just taking action.
When you think about taking action on your decision, and you notice that you don’t feel too glorious, nothing has gone wrong.
You’re just out of your comfort zone - which is actually a good thing.
Now note that it’s important that the thing you’re trying doesn’t actually terrify you.
That would only trigger your nervous system. So no, it shouldn’t completely freak you out.
But there is no need for it to feel ‘good’. ‘lovely’, ‘splendid’ or ‘wonderful’ either - if it did you’d be doing it already instead of listening to this podcast, right?
Stop waiting for it to feel good.
Stop waiting and working on yourself until you feel ready.
You can actually do things and feel anxious, nervous, nauseous.
It’s not a problem - unless you make it so.
Deep down inside, you don’t believe you can do it
Now this one is insidious, and can be quite hard to pick up on.
It shows up especially if you’re doing something you’ve tried before, and not succeeded at.
If you’ve lost weight and gained it again you may have a story running that it’s impossible for you - so why bother.
If you’ve tried to sell a work of art, submit a manuscript, make an offer to a potential client - and got rejected, several times, you may have a story running that no-one is ever going to buy from you.
If you’ve started learning Japanese ten times already, but never got past the basic alphabets and greetings (that’s me people), you may believe that you’re useless at learning a new language.
Basically, you have convinced yourself that this thing is impossible for you - it’s simply never going to happen. So why inflict unnecessary pain upon yourself by trying, and failing?
And of course, if you believe you can’t do something, your brain will find evidence for it, and create a fun self-fulfilling prophecy.
So in order to take successful action, you must start building your belief.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean you need to go from believing you can play a simple song on the piano to believing that you’re ready for a performance of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.
You can build your belief brick by brick.
If you believe that you can’t lose weight for example, break it up into something small and specific.
Do you believe you can lose half a pound? OK, go do that first - and use it to build belief for the next step.
If you believe you suck at marketing, selling, or making money whilst wanting to build a business, you need to break that up too.
Whenever you notice yourself thinking ‘I suck at this’, replace it with a thought like ‘I’m learning’ or ‘I’m figuring it out’.
Maybe you’re not very good at selling yet - so what?
You’re smart. You can learn. If you give yourself permission to believe that it’s possible.
I have lots more tips on diffusing underlying beliefs in Episode 13 on Black and White thinking.
You’re not being specific (who, what, where, when, why)
It’s hard to take action when you don’t know when or how.
If you want to start working out for example, but you stay stuck in ‘I want to move my body more’, odds are it’s never going to happen.
How do you want to move your body?
For how long?
When and where are you going to do it?
And, to help you stay motivated: WHY do you want it?
Not being specific creates confusion, overwhelm, a kind of brain fog that makes it very hard to take any action.
Ask yourself:
What is the action I’m going to take?
Where and when am I going to do it?
Who with?
Why?
And you’ll make it so much easier to take action on your decisions.
You’re not willing to feel the crappy emotions that come with doing the thing
Taking action on our decisions usually involves unpleasant emotions (if not, we would already have done the thing).
Humans tend to avoid these and instead, find a safe distraction.
It could be finding something really important that you need to do instead, distracting yourself with your favourite dopamine-providing activity, or telling yourself that you actually need to learn, know, analyse more before you can proceed.
All because you’re not willing to feel scared, anxious, or whatever emotions may be attached to taking action on your decision.
This is one of the biggest things between us and our dreams, big and small.
Between us and a healthier body, a healthier bank account, healthier relationships.
An emotion you’re not willing to feel.
It’s often a variation of one of these: fear, anxiety, shame, sadness.
Which makes sense. But, especially with smart humans, it can also be boredom.
Yup. The dreaded repetitiveness that makes us all run in a different direction.
What if you were willing to feel the emotion? To just be with it and let it move through your body? That will remove a massive barrier to taking action.
The way you treat yourself if things don’t completely go according to plan (aka having your own back)
How do you usually deal with your plans going off the rails?
Do you beat yourself up?
Say mean things, like ‘see, I told you this would never work!’?
If so, then you don’t have your own back. You are not supporting yourself.
You’re actually treating yourself like a terrible tyrannical boss that is waiting for your next mistake so they can take out all their personal frustrations on you (BTW if you want to see a fun illustration of this watch Aggretsuko on Netflix - the fact that it’s funny and Anime makes it slightly more bearable).
If you risk being hated on, being shamed - even if ‘only’ by yourself, if you take action - why would you do it?
Decide to be kind. To have your own back, no matter what happens - and taking action will become so much easier.
Not making it as fun and easy as possible
Some people go so Spartan on themselves. Seriously.
Even if you’re doing hard things, you can still try to make part of it fun and easy. No points will be subtracted! You will still get your medal.
You do not have to willpower your way through everything - it’s exhausting and unsustainable.
Get an accountability partner.
Use hacks, like laying out your workout clothes the night before.
Think of all the ways you could make it more fun - get creative with it.
You do not need to give yourself an extra dose of suffering.
To summarise, here are the seven reasons you’re not taking actions on your decisions:
Your brain’s wiring
Thinking it needs to feel ‘right’
Not believing you can do it
Not being specific
Not being willing to feel unpleasant emotions
Not having your own back
Not making the process as easy and fun as possible
I’ve given you lots of tips to counteract all of these - and I can imagine it’s hard to remember all of them and be able to access them when you need them.
So, in the spirit of number 7, making the process as easy and fun as possible, I’ve included a link to download the transcript of this session in the shownotes.
Go download it now, so you have it handy next time you want to act on your decisions.
Another way of making this fun, faster and easier is to hire a smart coach who can help you manage your mind. If this is something you want to learn, let’s talk. You can reach out to me via my website, coachkramer.org, or send me a message on LinkedIn for a free first consult.
Thank you for listening, and a big shoutout to everyone who has been sharing the podcast, it’s been growing like crazy, thank you so much for spreading the word. We now have listeners in 27 different countries, which is so cool - and I can’t wait to reach more humans with smart minds all over the world.
If there is a specific topic you’d love to see covered on this podcast, or someone you’d love to see interviewed, please let me know on: podcast@elsekramer.com.
Don’t forget to subscribe - and if you liked this episode I’d love for you to leave a review so more people can find the podcast and learn to manage their smart mind.