If what you’re doing in your life or work is not leading you to the results you desire, this article is for you. You’re about to learn specific ways to take massive action, get more done, and get those big results you desire.
“Taking action…” seems easy enough, right? “Just do something!” As you and I both know, it’s not as easy as it sounds!
Managing Your Mind
So much of taking action is about managing your mind. Here’s the thing, you can understand how to do everything, you can study all the material, but until you understand that what you think about is going to create the emotion that either drives the action or the inaction, you’re never going to take the action.
Did you get that? This is important: What you think about creates the emotion that drives the action or inaction. If stress, fear, and panic are fueling the action, you’re not going to be able to produce results at the level you want to produce.
Three Roadblocks that are keeping you from taking massive action.
#1: YOU’RE STUCK IN THE BURNING HUSTLE
I can remember times, back when I was first starting my business, when I was hustling my butt off. I was all over the place, connecting with different people, working with all kinds of clients, somewhat successful—but the problem was, I wasn’t taking action on the things that could actually take me to a place where I could grow and scale my business. I was hustling. I was tired. But, to some degree, I was really just chasing my tail.
This is what I call “The Burning Hustle”—a tiring hustle that’s produced by negative emotion: stress, fear, panic…[Insert your own word here!].
You want to avoid getting into a state of burning hustle, where you may be working hard yet aren’t producing anything. Instead, your goal should be to get to a place of a productive hustle, where results are consistently produced.
If you want to produce something, don’t just sit down to “work on something.” Sit down to produce something!
It’s important to change our language around this. Let’s stop saying, “I’m working on so and so,” and instead say, “I’m producing XYZ,” or “I’m writing a blog post.” See the difference?!
#2: YOU’RE GIVING YOURSELF TOO MUCH TIME TO GET SOMETHING DONE
Too much time is the enemy. It invites us to procrastinate. We give ourselves too much time to produce a result.
Let’s look at the projects we need to get done and assign a time frame in which we will get it done. For example: instead of my saying, “I’ll get the blog post written and uploaded to my website by Wednesday”, I would say, “I will have the blog post written and uploaded to my website in one hour. I’ll sit down and get it done in that hour.”
When you decide how long something will take and you stick to that, that’s when your production gets huge momentum.
Now, for my fellow perfectionists out there, this can be tough because you’re going to have to embrace the fact that you might produce some B-minus work. I know that’s hard to stomach!
B-minus work can change people’s lives. Work that you don’t produce at all, does nothing in the world.
When I started my business, everything felt like B-minus work. But you know what? Nobody else cared about that.
When I got an email from a client who told me she had made significant positive changes in her life as a result of our coaching together, she made me realize that had I not launched my business until it was A-plus, that her life would never have been affected.
That was when I decided that I’m ok with B-minus work—because I know my business will still have a positive impact and help others produce good results. You’ll have to decide for yourself as to what level of work you are ok with.
#3: YOU’RE AVOIDING FAILURE AND DISCOMFORT
Of course, no one loves failure and discomfort; but the truth is, if we’re going to learn and grow, there are going to be moments of failure and times where we will need to step outside of our comfort zone.
Our brains are literally wired to avoid any kind of failure. And usually the only way to be successful at whatever it is that’s important to you, is to fail repeatedly.
So what do we do?!
First, we have to reframe failure. Maya Angelou sums up the reframe best:
“Each time I miss my mark, I learn something, I take that as my reward.” — Maya Angelou
Lastly, we have to show our brains that we are not going to die because of discomfort and failure. We need to learn the process to move into discomfort, and then get comfortable with that discomfort.
If you’re in a holding pattern about anything, move. Take the first step to stop the stall. Write an email, initiate a difficult conversation. Disempower your fear by leaning into it. Action is the proof our brains need to get comfortable with discomfort.
