Cant seem to take action.

crazycattime · 2019-01-26T07:07:07+00:00

Taking action is a habit. There are a bunch of little internal and subconscious tics that keep you from acting. Instead of trying to analyze and remove each one individually, you have to affirmatively develop the habit of action. This will burn through the things holding you back as a side-effect.

Essentially, the process is a feedback loop of making continuous decisions to act as frequently as possible, consciously at first, uncomfortably at first, until the desired actions become habits. It takes willpower to take the first step, but after only a dozen or so successful experiences, you'll find the initial inertia much more manageable. After that, you just keep building discipline, setting and achieving your goals.

If you're really glued to your couch, start small. Tell your self, "in exactly 15 minutes I'm going to get up, walk to the other side of the house/room/whatever, and do 1 pushup." Then make sure you do it, come hell or high water. This is a dumb example, but if you try to add something serious on there as a total couch potato, it may be too hard for you at first. The point is to exercise your mental muscle of setting an intended action and following through with it. Over time, you will learn to trust yourself more and will want to maintain that trust by following through on your internal promises.

As you add actions, especially more meaningful actions, you will have to overcome resistance, just about every time you try. The trick is not to expect the resistance to dissipate, but to expect it, and do the thing anyway. It's not really something that can be taught, but it can be explained, and really you just have to learn it for your self. It basically boils down to internalizing the concept that you don't have to feel like doing something to be able to do it. The more you can condition yourself to do stuff you don't feel like doing, the better you can choose actions that get you closer to your goals.

It's not a short path, but there really aren't any shortcuts. You have to do stuff to get good at doing stuff.

Title	Cant seem to take action.
Author	BasedDarrenMoore
Upvotes	2
Comments	4
Date	January 26, 2019 6:30 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/ajyjvr/cant_seem_to_take_action/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/cant-seem-to-take-action.203492 https://theredarchive.com/post/203492

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