If taking action is the key to producing results, why doesn’t everybody take action? Why doesn’t everybody follow through on their plans? Why is it that so many people know what they should do, but still don’t do it?
The most common reasons are: ‘I lack motivation’, ‘I’m too lazy’, ‘I don’t feel confident’ or ‘I am afraid that…’ Is this true for you as well? If you are like most people, you would probably be nodding your head.
For example, you know that you should start exercising three times a week, but you put it off because you feel lazy. As a salesperson, you know you should make ten cold calls a day, but you don’t do it because you don’t feel like being rejected. You know that public speaking will help your career, but you don’t get on stage and face the audience because you feel the fear.
At the same time, there are many things we do, knowing full well that we shouldn’t! Why is that so? That’s because we feel like doing it.
For example, you know that eating that extra piece of delicious chocolate cake is bad for your weight/health but you still do it because you feel greedy. You know that you shouldn’t go back to sleep when the alarm rings, but you still lie in because it feels so good.
Have you ever experienced a day when you managed to get a lot of things done? When your ideas flowed, when you made the best decisions and you were absolutely on form? Well on those ‘top of form’ days, you were in a series of resourceful states.
Then again, have you had days when you couldn’t get anything done? When you couldn’t do anything right? You said and did the most stupid things? How could this happen? You were the same person and had exactly the same resources available to you. The difference was that you were not in a resourceful state.
If you think about it, ‘motivation’, ‘fear’, ‘confidence’, ‘inertia – expressed as procrastination’, are nothing but emotional states we experience.
Emotional ‘States’ like ‘excitement’, ‘passion’, ‘confidence’, and ‘happiness’, ‘exhilaration ‘get us to take action and perform at our peak.
At the same time, states like ‘ fear’, ‘anxiety’, ‘stress’, ‘inertia’, ‘depression’, ‘tiredness’ hold us back.
It is not logic that drives our actions. It is our emotions. Very often, we know that logically we should do something, but we don’t do it because we don’t feel like doing it.
People who take consistent action and produce great results do so because they experience many more resourceful states on a daily basis.
It is truly our emotional ‘states’ that drive our actions and behaviors all the time. How we feel truly determines what we do and how we do it.
It is these empowering states that allow us to get the best out of themselves!
