Convincing Yourself to Finally Get Started

You want the results of changing, but you don’t want to do the hard work that changing demands.

You’re not alone. That is how everyone is wired.

Avoid pain. At all costs. Find pleasure, if it’s not too painful.

So what do you do when you want to change, but you’re not sure how to get started?

You don’t know what to do to trick yourself into taking those very first few steps.

For example, you know you want to get more things done in a day, but when your alarm goes off in the morning you turn it off and go back to sleep. You wanted to get up, but you feel powerless to get started when it matters most.

It’s not just getting up earlier in the morning, it’s how you’ve abandoned your plans to eat healthier, to surround yourself with better friends, to learn something new, to create more revenue, and be a better version of yourself.

In your head, you want to do it. But when it comes to actually getting started, you always seem to find a way to procrastinate. It’s almost automatic.

The only way to change is by applying leverage.

By using that leverage to subconsciously convince yourself that it’s more dangerous to not get started than it is to procrastinate another moment.

And what is that leverage? It’s what you really want. That thing that automatically overrides the pain of getting started.

That motivation that trumps the frustration and fear of trying something new.

It’s you reminding yourself of the harsh reality of your inactivity.

You’re going to die sooner than you need to if you’re not healthy.

You’re never going to be able to live the life of your dreams if you don’t start saving and investing and managing your money.

You’re going to be miserable and unfulfilled unless you start living a life of passion and purpose.

You might know what that leverage for you is right now. Chances are, you don’t.

You’ve been avoiding thinking about it.

You want to succeed, but you don’t want to think about the negative consequences of not succeeding. By avoiding the subject altogether, you get to feel the hope of being successful and avoid the scary reality that you’re never going to actually get there.

But what if you stopped avoiding that scary reality?

What if you let it chew its way into your soul?

Instead of avoiding the subject, you use it as leverage to get started. To build momentum. And to keep that momentum in spite of the pain and fear and stress you feel on a daily basis.

That how to convince yourself to finally get started.

Originally published at danwaldschmidt.com on July 26, 2017.