The speaker breaks their cycle of consuming self-help content without acting on it. Three steps: build conviction in your why, break tasks into small timeboxed actions, and commit weekly. Progress feels uncomfortable but you push through anyway.
Chapters
You love learning. You've read countless self help books, listened to podcasts and watched some motivation videos. You're inspired to try new ideas, but you're stuck. In this video, I'm going to explain what causes you to feel this way, how I was stuck in this situation and how you can fix it. At the end, I'll explain the one crucial thing you're going to forget and the signal you need to look out for to know you're on the right track. Learning is fun. There are so many books, videos and podcasts to acquire new knowledge. When we're absorbed in learning material, we can feel wise and powerful even. The problem is you end up with a head full of tactics and no ability to take any action even though it's right in front of you. It's like reading instructions of how to ride a bike or drive a car. It's worthless without actually doing it. It doesn't work there. It doesn't work with self development. It took me a while to realise this, but up until this point I couldn't stop consuming more information. It was reinforced because I sounded clever, regurgitating these tactics to people and having a good response. I felt wise, stroking my own ego and this could go on for months, but. But then the reality hit. I couldn't implement it on myself. I'm not moving. I'm talking about these tactics. By not implementing any of them in my life, I could keep up this facade to others for ages. But the pain was all internal. I knew I wasn't able to move and this made me sad. I had a wealth of knowledge at my disposal, but nothing to show for it. I couldn't deal with this anymore. It was eating away at me. I had to figure out a way to get unstuck. I spent ages trying to understand what was going on in my head. It eventually came up to the surface. The problem wasn't the tactics, it was the mental blocks. I didn't have the confidence to execute. I was scared of failure and I just didn't know whether things would work. I had no conviction in my approach or strategy. And when it came down to it, I didn't have a strategy. There were too many steps to start with and too many options to pick from. I had all these tactics, but when the tire met the road, I was empty. The only thing I could grasp on was to read yet another book. Every time I tried, it got overwhelming and my brain felt foggy. I eventually stepped back, zoomed out and and looked at the problem from afar. I designed an action plan with one crucial ingredient. It was dosed with appropriately sized actions that suited my personality. It had to work with my strengths and my specific and unique weaknesses. After I went through this process, everything started to change. So what can you do to get started? Well, here's three steps to take one. You need to build conviction in your why? Why do you want to do this? Why is this important? What would it give you? This is important because it will help keep you on track when things get tough and things will get tough. 2. Break the task down into a three step process. It will help turn your vague objective into a more actionable approach. Make the steps small, manageable and within a time frame. 3. Make a weekly schedule of commitment. For example, if you want to start a blog, try writing an entry in a Word document every Wednesday night. This helps build structure and a chain of consistency. It increases pressure to perform rather than having an open ended to do list. Finally, here's what you'll forget and what will tempt you away from making progress and a simple signal to listen to. Your mind will want to wander when you try and get started. Fight with everything you've got to push through and execute on those first few steps even if you don't want to. This is where it always breaks down. Why? Because it's hard. You will struggle and the temptation to look for another new shiny object will be really strong. But remember, this is short term and will only hold you in the cycle as the signal that you're going in the right direction is. If it feels uncomfortable but you push through anyway, you're probably doing good.
