You heard everywhere that you should take action…
But how does that look like and how can it help you build your confidence?
Let’s dive right in!
We are all the same! It’s so hard to take action…
There’s a tiny bit of shame when you think about not taking action.
You think that you’re the only one that is not taking action, that you could and you don’t get why, and even just the fact that you’re saying this to yourself isn’t helping at all, but you still do it!
We are all the same.
And it’s already nice to think that we’re not alone in this “non-action-takers-group” 🙂
Why is it so hard?
Taking action is so hard!
It’s supposed to be super simple: You have an idea/you think about something that you want to do, you just have to stand up and to do it.
So why is it so hard to just take action?!
Let’s say it like this: It’s very SIMPLE to do, but not EASY at all!
I’ve been really wondering and asking myself a lot of questions about this.
For example, Mel Robbins created the 5-second rules for helping us stop our brain from getting in our way and to start taking actions after counting from 5 to 1 (1 is the moment when you start moving).
Let me tell you why it’s so hard.
Because it’s so much more comfortable being where we are!
We are SO AFRAID of what can happen if we take action. Is it going to do something good to me? Is it going to be bad for me?
What emotions am I going to feel? Positive or negative emotions?
We are like “frozen”!
Our brain is creating fears to keep us alive
I think a lot about what Natalie Bacon is saying when she says that our brain is always trying to repeat things we did from the past because it kept us alive.
So it will create fears so we are sure to repeat what we did in the past and not to try something new.
Like this, our brain can assure us that we will still be alive because what has been done in the past has kept us alive!
But you can choose something different, you can choose to create your life (and take action) from your future and not from your past.
So, let’s be gentle with this amazing part of our brain that thinks that it’s protecting us.
It just thinks that it’s doing something good for us!
All of those fears are coming from the right place, from a good intention! 🙂
What’s happening if we take action?
I LOVE charts and arrows and everything that makes words and ideas very easy to understand, so let’s have a look at my little drawing:
As you can see, when we are taking action, there are two results: We’re getting the success wanted from this action, or we are getting feedback.
I think that the “success” part is self-explanatory, but what about the “feedback” part?
We can imagine that the opposite of success would be a failure, but it’s not.
Feedback is what you can learn from what happened, from the action you took.
It doesn’t mean that you fail, not at all! Let’s take an example to make it easier to understand.
Example:
You have an amazing marketing idea at work, but you’re not sure if you should say it, try it, talk about it.
Let’s say that you passed the moment of “should I take action or not?” and you just did it: You talked to someone about it.
First situation: this person thinks that’s an amazing idea and you move forward with looking for providing more ideas around it and more description (how/what/why, etc.).
Second situation: this first person you’re talking to isn’t sure about your idea but is telling you to go ahead and try to provide more information about it to see if it could become something or not.
You see after working on it for a bit that it isn’t a good fit and that it’s not going to work out the way you thought it would.
Conclusion: you can take action and it can result in 2 ways: Or it’s valuable and you can do something with it, or it’s not but at least you know it’s not and you can “check it” and move forward.
What did you lose? Nothing except maybe a bit of your time…?
As you can see, no matter what, everything will be okay.
The only very hard part is to start!
Then, you can just discover what’s working and what’s not and get feedback along the way.
Not taking action = failing ahead of time
I like the idea of the fact that if you don’t take action towards something that you really want, you are actually “failing” ahead of time!
Because you’re not trying, you are anyway not getting what you want!
So, it’s interesting to ask yourself if you wouldn’t rather try and then not succeed right away and try again until you get there or fail ahead of time by not even trying!
Interesting, right? 🙂
The example of taking action
I really like this TED talk from Steve Garguilo that is called The Science of Taking Action.
Actually, it’s funny because this TED talk isn’t really talking about the science behind it, but more how we are always looking for ideas and not taking action on any of them.
He is then showing examples of people that succeeded because they took action.
Check it out yourself:
Taking actions to grow your self-confidence
Taking action will definitely help you on your journey to becoming more self-confident.
Why?
No matter the result, if you take action, you are already proving to yourself that YOU CAN DO THIS.
You’re building trust with yourself.
You know that nothing can go wrong if you try something and that you will always have your own back.
And as you remember if you’ve read my other post about The Secret To Self-Confidence, having confidence in yourself means that no matter what, you will be okay.
No matter how the situation is going, if you’re getting the result that you want or not, you will be okay!
How to start taking action today?
My solution to taking action is the 5-minute rule by Mel Robbins, check it out here if you never heard of it:
This method is so powerful, when you want to do something, just count down from 5 to 1 and get started already, before your brain will take you out of it!
If it’s something that isn’t doable in the next minutes, write on a paper what you want to do and look at it.
Then ask yourself these questions:
- What can happen if I’m trying this out?
- What results can I get?
- If it’s not going the way that I want it to go, what can I do about it?
- What fears are stopping me from taking this action?
- What do I need to believe to convince me to take this action?
- If a friend came to me and talked to me about doing this, what would I tell her/him? (It’s sometimes very easy to give advice to other people than to ourselves!)
- If I had a magic wand, what would I do with it?
- In a perfect world, how would this action go, I mean, what perfect result would I get?
These questions are so powerful. $
You can think about them, you don’t need to find answers right here right now.
Already thinking about it can get you closer to taking action!
Do not tiptoe through life!
I absolutely LOVE this quote: “We tiptoe through life hoping to safely make it to death.”
It’s amazing!
We are afraid of taking action or doing things that are out of our comfort zone and for what?
Because we don’t want to feel negative emotions!
But what if something else is true?
What if it won’t be that bad to take action and what if we could have fun doing it and SUCCEED at it?
It’s true that we will die anyway, we better not tiptoe the way we’re doing it and jump right in! 🙂
The worst that can happen, remind yourself, is a negative emotion! 🙂
To sum up!
To summarize, we’ve seen that what is preventing us from taking action is the fears that we have.
We are wondering what can happen, what can go wrong, and this is stopping us from taking action.
It’s way more comfortable sitting in our comfort zone because we know what result (and no result!) we can get from this situation.
Now, we know that taking action can highly benefit and grow our inner self-confidence because taking action is showing us that WE ARE WORTH IT, that we can do it, and that no matter what, everything will be okay!
Also, we discovered that the result of taking action can be or success in what we want to do or feedback.
So or we discovered something that worked (success) or we discovered something that did not (feedback) but at least, we’re going somewhere!
And not failing ahead of time!
And going somewhere is what keeps us moving and makes our self-esteem rise and our self-confidence grow!
What can really go wrong?
What is the worst-case scenario…? What is worse than right now? 😉
