#646 Why Is Taking Action the Hardest Part?

I was on the phone with one of my students last week and we were having a good time talking and just, you know, joking around. And she says at one point, why is taking action the scariest part? And I had this sort of flashback, flash forward, I don't know, one of those moments, and I realized, oh, it's the third time this week I've had this conversation. Why is taking action the hardest part? The scariest part? Why do we pull up and screech to a halt right when it comes to action? We can plan, we can research, we can dream about it, think about it. But when it gets right up to, oh, it's go time, oh, why is that hard? That's what we're exploring today in this episode, number 646 of Flow Dreaming. Why taking action is the hardest part. Flow Dreaming, it's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. You know, even as I, as I was saying that, I thought, oh, Tom Petty, oh, I remember you so well. I miss you. He said that waiting is the hardest part. I don't know. There is definitely a game on between those two. Would you rather be in a state of perpetual waiting or having to take action? I guess it depends on where your energy is, where you are, where your flow is. So I'm Summer McStravik and thank you for joining me today. We are talking about flow, energy, mindset, our consciousness. We're talking about how we impact our future, how the way we go forward in life, manifesting, co creating energetically, emotionally, how it not just sets the tone, but it really does create the direction for everything that we experience. And you can be woo woo about it, you can be scientific about it. It boils down to the same thing. You are an amazing creator. Every single second of your life, you're making something, creating something. Even if you're just creating leisure and watching a TV show, are creating those moments of time where you are describing those moments, filling those moments, placing those moments inside you, inside the record of everything. Pretty profound. So a lot of us get to this point where we have these big dreams and ideas and we say, all right, I've spent years thinking about this and oftentimes it is years. I've spent years Thinking about this, I thought about how to get it done. I never get past a certain point in my thinking. Like it always stops with, oh, well, when I get enough money put together, or oh, when I'm finally able to quit this job, or oh, when the kids are out of the house, or oh, when I'm, you know, on my own and the divorce is through. Oh, when I get married and have those kids. Oh, you know, and there's these sort of artificial time points that we stick in our lives that we may or may not ever actually reach. So we spend a lot of time in the research, in the dreaming, in the wanting, and we don't spend as much time in the doing, in the making. So, you know, on the heels of this conversation, I mentioned that I had a couple others. Another one was during an interview I was speaking with someone who asked me the question, how do you make decisions like how do you pull the trigger and say, I'm going forward with this, we're doing this, how do you take action? And I start to think, you know, all of these questions. A lot of what people are dealing with right now is how do I trust myself that the decisions that I'm making I can believe in, that the world will believe in me, that they will work out. How do I trust that I won't lose money, lose time, look like a fool, have to shut it down, not be able to follow through, not have enough time. All those things in the past that have disappointed me, how do I make sure that I don't have to face any of those? Because as soon as I take action, those become possibilities again. So I want you to remember back to maybe a time in your life when making decisions, taking action was a little bit easier. And maybe you didn't even think about it very much. Maybe it was just like, I don't know, I'll just pick this for a college major or I don't know, let's move in together or sure, I'll take this job, I can always change it later. It's not going to be my career or anything. And we had this sort of cavalier, joyful, non thinking barreling forward now, not all of us, you know, and some things were still agonizing and we overthought them and we held back on them. But generally for most of us, there was a point when we said, I'll take an action because it's not irrevocable, it's not something where I won't be able to change or go in a different direction. And then we had all these experiences in life where we start to feel like, oh, action might lead to, ooh, not something not good. Maybe I'll screw up, maybe it'll be something not good. Or maybe it'll just be something that's a dud, just a waste of time, a waste of money. And then we started to feel like I always have to pick the very best. I need to pick the very best choice. So until I know for sure what the very best thing is, which secretly means the thing we think is almost a guarantee, I'm not going to make any choices at all. I will just, I'll make choices when they're forced on me, when they're pressed on me, when they come right up to my doorstep and I have to do it. You know, my landlord said rent's due and, and you're out in 30 days. Cause I'm selling the place or whatever it is. And you're like, oh, I gotta make that choice. I didn't want to make that choice. When in fact you'd been thinking about moving for months. But you're like, ah, I don't know if I can find the right place and I don't know if it's, I don't know if I really should, and et cetera, et cetera. For some of us, action is extraordinarily frightening because it comes with so few guarantees. And often what I'm getting at is kind of the older we get, the more we want these guarantees. We want life and energy and source and family and friends to all say, this is the right choice. It will work out, you will be successful at this. Because we've had enough experiences where we took a choice and none of those things worked out. So we start to get a little gun shy. But this is the tipping point between the person who continues to progress and grow and take healthy risks and the person who starts to say, well, I pretty much finished up with life, now I'm just gonna cruise through the next 40, 50 years not doing much of anything. Uh huh. Yeah, no more action for me, no more risk taking. And then you start to think more and more about all the things that happened before and not so much about the things that are happening now. So how do we get back to that point where action is not scary, it's not irrevocable. Action is joyful and fun and brilliant. Let me ask you a question. If someone said to you, take that action, it is totally gonna work out. It is gonna be awesome. You will never regret it. What if somebody said that about everything on your list right now. You would probably say, for real. And, you know, and hypothetically, we'd say, yeah, for real, do it. Go for it. You wouldn't hold back at all. You'd say, well, it may be bumpy or exciting or, I don't know, quite a ride, but it's gonna work out. She said so. They said so. So time to go. Go time. You see, when you reframe it like that, like if somebody said, yeah, this is 100% guaranteed it's gonna work out. Take this action, start this thing, do this thing. You would. If someone said to me, summer, start this particular exercise plan, I guarantee you're gonna lose 30 pounds in one year or six months or three months. And I'd say, for sure. Guaranteed. Guaranteed I would do it. Because all the uncertainty would be washed from my mind, all the fear of failing, of doing it wrong, of disappointing myself, of all work for no payoff. That grind, that would all be gone. The idea here is that we want to start living our lives again with that feeling of, it's probably going to pay off, it's probably going to work out. But how do you get that? How do you get that? Especially if you're kind of dramatized and, you know, you could feel this way at any age 22 or 42 or 82. What I do is I. And this is where we start to go back into flow and mindset and our energy. And I remember what I anticipate is usually what I receive. What I brace for is usually what happens. Not always. Sometimes I just sink into lack thinking, think about all sorts of terrible things. They never happen. And then I laugh at myself, like, well, you spend a lot of time worrying over nothing. But at the same time, what did happen is I got stalled. Like, I just stopped in my tracks and got prepared for something bad. So what I want us to do here, and the point of today's show, is to kind of nudge you, jog you, you know, lift you a bit, and suggest to you that you can take this action now. You can try things. So in MI school and in my teachings, I talk about something called inspired action. And it's a way of helping you understand that there is action that's just action, just doing stuff, and there's action that feels good. It feels like it's being driven from your soul. It feels like, I don't care how it works out, it still feels great. It feels in alignment. And pretty soon you start to discern the difference. Now there's more to it than that. But that's basically it, the general idea. So how do you get to the point where you feel like action's not scary? Well, there are a couple of ways, and I shared this, actually in the interview that I taped a week ago. One of the ways is when I'm in flow, I always feel like I could get nudged off the road. So let's say that your flow, your forward motion, life, the best possible course for you, where things are filled with ease, where the universe is gifting things to you every day you're receiving them, making things, it's just going swimmingly. But then you make a choice that's not really in alignment with you. It's not really in your flow. It's not really in your future or, you know, it's not even a bad choice. It's just something that you want. You want certain feelings in your future, and you think this thing will get you to them. And life is working with you. So it says, no, actually, that's not the thing. That's not the thing. But you do it anyway because you said, by golly, I need to take some action and just try stuff, right? So you take the action, and you're like a car driving off the road into the washboard gutter on the side. You're like, oh, boy, how long is it going to take to get out of this? And that's the part we fear. That's the part we dread. And that's why we drive our cars at 5 miles per hour. And our cars meaning our choices in our lives. What if you instead felt like, hey, even if I got off track, I will never get so far off track as every day I'm going into flow, and I'm asking my flow, is this right? Is this what I should do? Guide me, lead me, nudge me, nudge me. Every day, give me tiny nudges, constant nudges. Make it so that every time I slightly veer off course, it's like autopilot on the. On that fancy car, right? It's going to just nudge me right back on. Or not even autopilot. But, you know, any new car, you. You start to go across the center line and it goes date, date, date, right? Let your flow do the same thing. Listen, feel it. You will be able to course correct so much faster. And I think that's what a lot of us are afraid of. If I make a bigger decision, I have more on the line, more risk, more chance of losing. So we take these teensy little decisions. I'D like you to experiment, make some decisions this week that are a little bigger than your usual ones, ones that will push you forward and ahead, but not ones that are so huge that you go into instant paralysis because you think I made this huge decision with nothing to base it on except good feelings. Feelings like, I'm selling my home and moving to Alaska right this second. I'm gonna be a nomad and travel around in an RV all through the Pacific Northwest and down. Well, maybe you've been thinking about that a long time, and that's a big lifestyle change, a big jump. Maybe that's taken a while to get to because it's an action that's really large. Maybe your next action is more along the lines of, I'm going to rent an RV and go for three weeks. I'm going to schedule two months where I, you know, rent out my house on Airbnb and just take off. See what it's like, right? Get yourself there, nudge your way in. Sometimes it's, I need. I want to invest in a new business, but I have to buy all these supplies. And, you know, I want to be a cake maker. And so, you know, should I put all this money into it? What if nobody buys my cakes? Well, don't buy a bakery, but get yourself totally professionally equipped in your own kitchen. In other words, take your action and incrementalize it. It's not really a word, but you know what I mean. Make it incremental. The fact is, get it out of your head, get it out of head spin, get it out of planning mode and see what happens. See, because here's the other thing. One, I know that flow will nudge me back in alignment. If I get so far out of alignment, it will nudge me back. How do I know? Because every day I go into my flow and I say, hey, here's what I want. Here's who I am, here's how I want to feel life. Let's generate this, let's make this. Let's cause all kinds of things that are in alignment to this to come to me and the things that are out of alignment to leave me every day. It's sort of like if you tell somebody, if you have the same conversation with someone every day, your kids, your partner, et cetera, after a while, they're going to know that conversation by heart. They're going to think of you in terms of that conversation. They're going to respond to you, react to you in terms of that conversation. They're going to think about you what you are talking about? Well, what if instead of your partner and your kids, it's life itself, your flow, your future, you have the same conversation with it every day. It says, oh, you've been telling me all along you want to be really successful doing blah, blah, blah, or feeling this way. Well, that thing you just chose, that doesn't match. Let's get that out of here. Let's get that out of here before you fall off the road. So this gives me an immense sense of relief, huge relief. But the other side of this, the next piece of this, is when I take action. I know that one action begets another action. So if I make a choice that leads me into a new place, right? Let's say I'm driving my car and I always take the exact same route to the grocery store. It never varies. It's the most direct route. I do it all the time. Well, there's not a lot of new things that can enter my life. Sure, maybe I'll, you know, see something or, you know, watch tree trimmers on the side of the road or something one day. But that's really different than if I say I'm going to take an action, where I'm going to take the long way to the store. Oh, wow, there's a new business that's open over there. Maybe I should check it out. Oh, there's a cute restaurant. Oh, they have a social hour, a happy hour. Maybe I want to go. Maybe I'll meet some people. Before I know it, I've now met my life partner because I took a different route. I changed my action. I expanded my action. The more action you take, it opens up more possibilities for life to give you new and different things. If you're continuously taking the same action, which is, I'm thinking about it. Life is pretty much stuck behind that wall. Your flow is stuck behind that wall of thinking about it constantly just giving you the same set of things to think about. You haven't made a move. You know, it's chess. You don't make a move, your partner can't make a move. You make a move, you make a strange move, a crazy move. You get even more variation in choices. Make a move. And sometimes I make moves just for the sake of making a move. And I'm like, I know this isn't the right thing. I know this isn't, you know, I'm not pinning all my hopes on it, but I need to make a move. And again, you know, queen's gambit here, shout out, great show. But you make a move sometimes because you just have to make that move. It's not the move that's the huge thing, but in the overall bigger picture, it's an important move. You just don't know it necessarily at the time. So I make the move, and my life says back to me, oh, finally, now she's in a new room in this grand mansion, and we can do all kinds of different things here. She was in the living room for years. Now she's in the kitchen. Let's whip up a cake. Like, oh, I'm in new places. I get new action, I get new opportunities. So that's another reason why when I decide to fly into action, I come at it feeling very confident and very calm. Because the reassurance isn't that, oh, it's 100% gonna work out everything I choose. That's not so. Even if you try to manifest that, because we're always working with other people, and we would have to have them do exactly what's right for us all the time. And sometimes they do what's right for them. We can bring the right people in our lives, but we don't choose every decision for them. So we're talking generally here. Generally, are you going in the right direction? Generally, are you making the right moves? Generally, yes. So I feel good about that. I feel good because I have a constant communication. My flow never thinks I'm trying to derail, and I will never speak to it again, and it will never give me any other options because I won't ever, ever listen again. This is why the practice of going into flow and flow dreaming and getting to these emotional endpoints and bringing up this full body, full, full emotional state in flow, which is the basis of flow dreaming. It is not meditation. It's not law of attraction. It's its own thing. This is why it's so critical and crucial that you keep having the same conversation. Now, I'm also reassured because I know that if I take one action and it's not right, at least it's thrown open the doors to 20 more possible things that just weren't there before. And, you know, that's funny. Sometimes we get stuck because we look at all the things that are out there and we're like, none of them are right. Ugh. None of them are right. I don't want any of them. I talk with people all the time about that. They're like. I'm like, what do you want? They're like, there is nothing out in my life right now that I want there's just nothing there. I can't even make a choice toward it because there's just nothing. I say, okay, great, let's take some action and get some new moves on the board. What action? I'm like, I don't care. Anything, just about anything. Just make it different, make it new, make it feel good, make it joyful. Go take a cooking class, you know, go do an online yoga program certification. Go, you know, get your master's online that you haven't, you know, you've always wanted to do. Do something. Do something. Go to a new shoe store. Doesn't have to be big. Anything. Do it. We need some new stuff on the table. And the more new stuff you get on the table, you know, it's like throwing them, Throwing all your crummy Scrabble letters back in the bag and getting a whole new draw. Anybody still play Scrabble? My dad loves playing Scrabble. Plays it every single day. I will not play him because I get my ass just totally kicked. But yeah, if I could throw all those E's in eyes back in the bag and get some decent letters, I can spell things with absolutely. So I go forward on this basis and with this assumption. And it's really important that whenever I feel myself sliding back, getting into that paralyzed weight mode, ooh, I need some guarantees mode. I remember, ah, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. Now. There's a few instances I have to mention when not taking action is, mwah, perfecto. This is when you're healing, when you're going through grief, sadness, maybe just when you're finally maturing and up leveling and getting some new understandings of yourself, you're looking at yourself and saying, gosh, I thought this about myself or my family for so long, but I'm starting to really see it and feel it in a different light. Like, these are inward times. These are not action oriented times. These are times when life is telling you, go inward, make changes. A lot of us have had a whole year like this. The whole world, oddly, has had this enforced on it for whatever particular cosmic reason. Nobody could do much on the outside, so they all had to do it on the inside. So that's one reason that you don't want to be out taking action if you're in that state of being. The other one is that when you are looking around and noticing that maybe something new is coming to you, you can just feel it in your bones. Something new is coming. I'm shifting. I'M changing. I feel like I should just be listening right now. I should be listening, I should be information gathering. I should just be letting myself shift and letting myself go through that feeling of shifting instead of resisting it and saying no, I don't want to lose what I had. That is a perfect time to not take action. Action would be scary then because you're not supposed to be in that state. And again, this all comes down to do you know where you are in yourself? Do you see the bigger pattern and the bigger picture in your life? And if you don't, you know people can help you find that. They can look at it with outsiders eyes. Don't ever underestimate that, whether it's a friend, a coach, a mentor. I myself have been in a similar state for maybe six, eight months of things are changing and shifting and I wish I knew exactly what and where because me, I want to jump in and race ahead and get through this, this phase as quickly as I can because I don't like not knowing because I'm more comfortable in action. Frankly, that's a comfort zone for me. But I know it's not for everybody. So for me to be in the non action is tough. And I had to say to myself over and over, let yourself be here, let yourself explore, let yourself not know, be in the uncertainty. Something I've started to see in myself and in others because I myself have been in the uncertainty and now I can spot it. So as you go forward, think about this in your life. Is it time to take some beautiful action? Action that isn't scary, it isn't hard, it's probably way overdue as a matter of fact. Let's take that action, let's see where it leads and then support yourself, support yourself. Oftentimes we don't have friends or family who they might love us, but they sure as heck don't know what we're doing. They don't understand us, they wouldn't really know how to help us. The things they say don't really help even though they try. So you have to put some supports in for yourself, figure out what those are. For me, it's going into flow. I have a couple of wonderful flow dreams. One is called Action Action. There's another one called Wonderful Change and Transition. Of course, in me school there's an entire segment we spend on inspired action. Find some things that support you, that reinforce to you this is right, this feels good. Keep going, we've got you. Don't underestimate your support group, whatever, whoever that Might be. So I'm not doing a flow dream in today's episode. I know you guys are like, ha, I wish you did them all the time. Fact is, you know, I'm. What? Episode 646. That's a lot of flow dreams. I've done over 17 years in so many of the shows. Now, I would like you to just learn what flow dreaming is. Go to flowdreaming.com and go grab the free kit that teaches you. And then if you're inspired, I mean, you can get started with a $10 flow dream. It is not a hard, expensive thing. Once you see that it works for you, get some more. Once they're working for you, go up a little more. Maybe come and become a flow on member with me and take classes with me every month or join me school. Or I could be your private coach. There's so many options, but the steps need to be taken. The action needs to be dove into. Is that right? Dove? That sounds weird, but I think it might be right. Because if we're waiting for things to change for us, what the universe is hearing from us is I'm waiting for something outside me to give me permission to make a move. And the universe is saying, she doesn't have permission. She doesn't have permission. She's waiting for us to convince her. That's a tough position to put your future into because it's basically dealing with a reluctant dog. You know, you pull the leash and they're like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And your universe is like, what's it gonna take? Every time I give you something, you say, not good enough. More proof. Nope. And that's where a lot of us have landed. But that is not where you're meant to be. And this year, more than ever, is a perfect, amazing year to emerge into something else, to come out of your chrysalis, to come out of that cocoon and see who you are. Because chances are you have been in a chrysalis or a cocoon. Many of us slept through the winter of 2020, the long winter. Winter is coming, and we're coming out now. And what we're seeing is that we are not the same being. We are different. And we're figuring out, who are we now? And we're going back to that old store of dreams and things and desires and looking at them, and we're saying, why did I not do those things? Wait, do I still even want to do those things? What do I want to do? Well, you know, the best way to figure that out is Take the action. Take the action. So I'm going to leave you guys again with suggestions for some awesome flow dreams that will really get you revved up. Action Action is a fantastic one. Enough time for everything. For those of you who feel like I don't have enough time and I need to create time, just go to the Flow Dreaming shop. There are a ton, almost 200 different topics. Oh my gosh. That you can move through. And they're not meditations. These are action oriented, energetic processes that move energy, that move you into your future, into your flow, and so on. Pick some, use them, make them be the beginning of this new expansion of you and see what happens. Now, the very last action that I would humbly request of you is please tell someone about this show. Tell someone about this podcast. If someone says, what podcast do you listen to? Say Flow Dreaming. It's amazing. It's crazy amazing. It's been out there 17 years. Can you believe it? It is one of the oldest running self help, self improvement, personal growth, spiritual podcasts out there. Probably one of maybe 150 even. Tell someone and if you feel up to it, go ahead and leave me a review in itunes or Google podcast. That would be super, super awesome. And last thing is, I just realized as I was kind of looking through a bunch of my older episodes recently, I have something called premium subscribers and I don't talk about it very much. I don't know why. I guess just because I got so busy with all these other things. But the premium subscription as of, as of this moment is $2.99 a month. It is stupidly cheap and it opens up all the shows from 2006 to 2012. So it's another like seven years of shows. And it's very interesting because these are the earlier shows and you'll notice that over time, my field of focus shifts. The beginning, I'm like, let's flow dream. Let's flow dream. Let me tell you about flow dreaming, right? There's a lot of teaching going on, a lot of exploration right here in the show with you. And then I became a researcher and I did interviews and I asked a lot of questions without necessarily answering them. But I want to get you thinking. And then I went through another phase of whoop, we're going bigger. You guys want to see what this looks and feels like? I'm going to show you over a couple years. Listen. And now, now the show is changing again. I can't say into exactly what, but I do know that I'm opening up more questions I'm asking you to look in yourself to live better, to love yourself more, to be good to yourself, to forgive yourself, to nourish yourself, to create for yourself. And to have absolutely no fears or holdbacks in doing it. None. And not allow anyone or anything in your life to. To try to make those holdbacks on you or tell you that you can't. Do not ever believe anyone who says that you can. So if you go back to those premium archives, the way that you find those is you can go to my website and go to the podcast page. There's a signup area there. Or you can download the app. It's called Flow Dreaming Radio. Or I may change that going forward. I don't know. It's been a while. Like I said, I looked at this and said, gosh, I haven't updated these graphics in like four years. It's looking a little rinky dink and aged. But you can, you can still download it. The app works beautifully and you can start listening to the shows or join there. So if that's of interest to you, go have a wonderful time. Listen to Flow Dreaming to your heart's, you know, fulfillment. And as always, thank you guys for spending this time with me. Much, much love to you. More brand new episodes coming out. Check every Tuesday generally when they arrive at my love to you all. Hey friends, a couple things to tell you about that I think you'll really enjoy. Flow Dreaming is a universe actually. In other words, yes, there is a technique, but it's also an entire community of those of us who Flow Dream and I have a lot to give you to get you started that's 100% free. So if you go to flowdreaming.com the first thing you need to do is download my free kit that teaches you how to Flow Dream. It contains a audio of a Flow dream that's been recorded called Positive Flow just to get you right into flow state in under 15 minutes. It also includes a tutorial and a PDF guidebook. Now if you're on your mobile device right now, you can also get it by just going to the App Store and downloading the Flow Dreaming app and and it will come preloaded with this wonderful kit for you to learn the process. The next thing I wanted to mention for you is that MI School is my active, gorgeous, beautiful community of Flow Dreamers. And we learn together, we share and we grow into our manifestational, our co creational and mostly our own deep, immense inner power. We do this together in a mentorship type, school type format. But believe me, no tests, no quizzes, it's the best place you've ever been to. It calls itself a school, but it's really the place where you will completely transform yourself from inside out. So check that out, too. Last of all, I hope I see you guys on Facebook or Instagram. Just look up Summer Mixtravic or Flow Dreaming and come say hi to me there. Until next time, my love to you all.