OnTheBeach – You Know What To Do…Why Aren’t You Doing It?

Last week I went for my regular Acupuncture session, and we were discussing my health since I’d last seen my acupuncturist. I mentioned that I hadn’t been sleeping well for a couple of weeks, and started to explore why. About 10 minutes later, it occurred to me that I had got out of the habit of doing my daily yoga, which had most likely contributed to the poor sleep pattern.

As my Acupuncturist said “You know what to do, you just need to do it!” Which led me down an interesting thought path – why don’t I do it?! I do know that if I do my daily yoga practice, I feel mentally clearer, physically better, I sleep better, I feel emotionally calmer and spiritually more connected. And I like doing it. So why don’t I do it?

And it’s not just yoga. There’s a lot of stuff I know to do…and I don’t always do it. And I know I’m not alone – many of my clients also know what to do…but they don’t always do it. What is WRONG with us all?!?!

Of course, that’s a trick question. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with us. We are just not quite co-ordinating knowledge and action. It’s all part of the glorious learning curve of life. Sometimes it’s a bit irritating and bewildering when we realise we’re just not aligning our action with our wisdom…but it’s normal. We’re human (and beating yourself up for not being perfect is a complete waste of energy and no help at all).

So what gets in the way? Here are a few things that I’ve noticed come up for me and my clients – do any of these resonate with you?

1. Taking a conscious moment

Life is busy. There’s always something competing for our attention – work, family, colleagues, chores, friends, e-mails, texts, phonecalls, twitter, facebook, pinterest, crazy cat videos… Most of us don’t get 2 seconds to rub together in a day. But sometimes all it takes is a conscious moment – a moment to think, to consider, to look at what’s going on and find the issue. For me, coaching, meditation, walking, yoga, coffee with friends and bodywork all provide space for me to notice and analyse what’s going on in my life, space to stop and look around. Often we’re so busy doing we don’t have the time to see the wood for the trees, so we need a space to mull, ponder, consider and question.

Very often the answer will be staring you in the face…but if you never take the time to stop and hear what your inner wisdom is telling you, you’ll never be able to follow that wisdom.

Take a conscious moment to notice an area of your life that’s not working. What do you know you need to do? (You do know – most of us have our answers inside us. Take the time to listen to your inner wisdom)

2. Not knowing EXACTLY what to do

This is usually my biggest cause for procrastination. I’ll have an idea I want to progress, but because I’m not entirely sure what to do, I put it off. We need to be very specific. “Get fit” is very very vague – you can’t put it on your daily to do list. “run for 20 minutes every day” or “do 20 minute yoga session 3 days a week” is definitive. You see people do this for years with their New Year’s Resolutions – this year I’m going to lose weight/stop smoking or drinking/get a new job/sort out my life.

It’s great to have a goal…but what exactly are you going to do to get there? You don’t need every step to be mapped out, but you do need to have an idea where you’ll start, what action you will take to begin moving towards the goal. I had ridiculously vague goals and resolutions for years, and what I didn’t realise was that knowing what I wanted was just the starting point. Like firing up the engine of your car isn’t enough to take you from A to B, you also need to move!

Be super specific about what you need to do to improve a situation. What exactly are you going to do?

3. Making the next action too big

So, you know what to do next to make your life better? All you need to do is “change everything” or “make £50 milion” or “take over the universe”. Uh huh. Hey I’m not judging, I have my own “universe-take-over” issues to work with. But when you make the next action ‘too big’, your mind will shy away from it, and you won’t do what you know you need to do…because you don’t really know where to start. Whenever I work with new business owners, they often tell me their next step is to “Create a website” (and they’re getting nowhere) – this is too big a step. A website is a project, not a ‘next action’ (and it makes me howl with laughter when anyone calls ‘creating a website’ a baby step!!! There’s about 400 baby steps in the “action” of creating a website!) Anyway, break it down – for example: “Work on the text for the home page” – this is specific and easy to do.

I had this problem myself over the past few months. Once I got past the writing stage of my book (when the next action was “write more words”), I started to put on my to do list “work on book” – and often, I would look at my to do list and my mind would skip past that ‘action’ because it was too big to process. I knew what to do – keep editing and formatting, but because I made the action too big, I avoided it! Once I changed my to do actions to things like “spend 20 minutes on ‘real’ book edit”; “investigate Create Space formatting requirements”, I could crack on because these things are actions I know I can take in a small amount of time.

Make sure your next ‘action step’ is an easy step. Momentum breeds momentum, so give yourself the best chance to get some momentum going.

4. Getting stuck in a loop.

Sometimes we go round and round and round and round a problem until we’re dizzy. We forget that for every problem there is a solution, and just get stuck in the problem. Aided and abetted by that wonderful phrase “I don’t know what to do”, we wind ourselves up going deeper into the problem (often one that’s been going on for some time) and how much we don’t know how to get out of it. We see this all the time – lots of us do it, endlessly grumbling and fretting…it doesn’t get us anywhere.

My two favourite ways of getting out of the loop are: talking it out and writing it out. I do the morning pages every day so I write out the mind loop I’m stuck in…at some point I get bored or realise I’m repeating myself and then I naturally move onto what I’m going to do about it, what I’m going to try next. When you’re talking it out, you need someone who won’t add to the stress and tension by agreeing, sympathising, sharing their own ‘boss is an arsehole’ stories or telling you you’re just fucked! You need someone who will just let you talk out of the loop – until you get bored or start repeating yourself and you can move onto the solution.

If you’re stuck in a loop, write it out or talk it out – let yourself just release all the icky thoughts and rambling issues until you get to a point of “right, what am I going to do about it then?” (and here’s a top coaching tip: once you’ve tried everything you can think of, ask for help – there’s 7 billion people on the planet, certainly ONE of them at least has a potential solution you’ve not tried yet!)

5. There’s an obstacle that needs to be cleared

When I started to think about why I wasn’t doing my daily yoga, 2 things sprang to mind: 1. If I didn’t do it before breakfast, I didn’t do it at all (over-trained by my first yoga teacher not to do yoga after food!). Yes, I don’t want to do yoga straight after breakfast, but I could get out my mat after, say, an hour – at just the point when I’ve done my e-mail and social media and listed my tasks for the day ahead…which is actually a great time to stop for 20 minutes and stretch. Ok, that’s obstacle number one busted.

And number 2: I’m not good in the morning, and I often stand on my mat wondering what to do. For the past year, I’ve put on a yoga playlist and just done whatever postures came to mind (or body). This worked well for a while, but it’s stopped working. Instead, I stand on the mat. Not moving. Giving myself time to decide I’m hungry or I can’t be bothered or I don’t want to or some other excuse. For months (months!), I’ve had the thought that if I had a few ‘go to’ routines, if I was uninspired, I could do them instead. And once I’m moving, I’m usually happy to keep going for my full 20 minutes of yoga.

So, last week, I created a list of 8 yoga sessions – some dynamic, some restful, all different. Since I did that, every day I was able, I’ve done yoga. It’s been easy, there’s no resistance. I’ve done what I know to do. Sometimes we just need to have a think about what’s getting in the way and clear out the obstacles, instead of lambasting ourselves for being 80 shades of useless.

If you know what to do and you’re not doing it, and ideas 1-4 don’t apply, ask yourself: what is stopping me doing this thing I know I need to do (and want to to do…if you don’t want to, that’s a bit fat obstacle right there!)? What is getting in the way? It could be something as simple as putting it in your diary, clearing a space, closing the door, creating a routine to follow.

Do you recognise any of these as stopping you from doing what you know you need to do? What else? Take a moment now to consider what gets in the way of you doing the things you know make your life better. What stops you taking the actions you think will help your life rock?

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