Are you someone that hits the snooze alarm? Like often? And each night you go to bed saying to yourself, “Tomorrow AM is the day I don’t snooze”?
Or do you avoid THE most simple task possible?
Only going to take 5, mins or maybe even hours. But alas, you push and it’s still on your to-do list?
Hi! Legitimately me. Especially the last one….okay and the snooze alarm is OC.
Is this relatable? You’re so far pulled over mentally on the road of motivation and help antics that you can’t pull over any further! And the snozberries really taste like snozberries when you’re pulled over that far😂. It’s tough to get jumpstarted.
So you’re in the thick of it. ‘The heavy’, the, I want to escape and not do.
For me, I have a hefty commute and so instead of plugging into educational/self motivation, when I want to escape, I listen to Smartless.
Doesn’t provoke many thoughts there. I enjoy the light-hearted banter.
I can zone out or listen, and most importantly I can hear their smiles; that brings me the right amount of joy my body can handle after a highly stimulated day or morning…toddlers, amiright?
However, I’ve been feeling the above so much so that I had blown through all the newest episodes.
When this happens, a 🚩 goes off for me.
🚩 I’m starting to escape responsibilities; not just take a break from them.
🟢 Time to tap in to expansion.
I realize this as I’m about to head out from school drop-off and so I know that I need to take the simplest step possible. Steps lead to miles. I need to step.. to get my pep back!
I’m in the car so podcast it is and I picked the route of motivation.
Click… Mel Robbins.
Latest Episode, Boom.
Now, gear in Drive, and I’m off.
Then, the HUGEST eye roll.
Really?! I already know all about this subject matter!
Something in my gut told me to stay though. Then my brain (2nd thought) told me to bounce and turn something else on at any of the frequent stops. I’ve learned that the more I tap into that gut instinct, instead of my brain talking me out of it, I am rewarded.
So I stayed…with a quick scowl and shrug. Meanwhile up in that dome piece my brain and my gut are going at it.
Brain: Another waste of time. There you go again! If Times Magazine had a person of the year for biggest time waster, you’d be on it.
Gut: Just stay and calm down.
Brain: Just look around at other podcasts to maximize your time. No one is on this road anyways, you can look quick and you won’t hurt you or someone else in your car. (my hand literally started moving towards the phone)
Gut: I’m like never wrong and you think too much, brain. Calm yo’self and tap in, opening credits are over.
And then you’ll never guess what happened.
I heard what I needed to hear to get me out of a major funk.
I listened to facts/research based information. I learned what my body was actually doing in a way that hadn’t resonated before, and I got a HUGE lightbulb from it.
You see, for 4 months to be exact (remember the deadline push for uploads at the end of June?), I hadn’t touched my storefront on SPS. 4 MONTHS! And I’m the freaking co-founder of this thing. What?! That’s crazy, right?
I had a block. We had gone on vacation to a remote place where I wasn’t getting much service or wifi so I decided to unplug, completely for the week. And I convinced myself that was okay.
And it was, until it wasn’t.
We spent most of Q3 working out the bugs on the site and I used that as my excuse to not finish uploading my resources OR market the ones that I thought of uploading.
Next came the anxiety from feeling behind and then the fear of how much I’d have to do to catch up, etc etc.
So now, here I am in the car, thinking that I know everything there is to know about how “It’s Not Too Late: How to Transform Your Life at Any Moment” because I’ve done the career change in my 30’s. I’ve pivoted plenty in the beauty career. And then there was this mind blowing moment when Rich Roll said,
“Mood follows action.”
Followed by:
“You cannot make a change by ruminating in your mind…When we are in those moments when we think, yeah, I need to stop vaping or I need to stop going on Tinder or whatever it is, we let those moments pass without doing anything about it. In truth, it is behavior first thoughts, feelings, and emotions follow. So the easiest example is, I don’t want to go to the gym. I’ll go to the gym when I’m motivated, when I feel better, when I feel energetic. But when you go to the gym and you realize you feel energetic afterwards, so instead of waiting for the feeling to inspire the action, take the action and enjoy the feeling as a consequence of having undertaken it…”
AND THEN:
“…I need to act. Okay, tomorrow morning when I wake up, I’m going to do that. You’ve already lost the plot.”
Mood follows action.
“Change is an action-based affair. You cannot make a change by ruminating in your mind.”
Let’s break this down.
Your body won’t tell you to do the work, but it will feel the dopamine hit after you do the work. Your amygdala shields you from doing anything out of your comfort zone. BUT, when you just go DO, your body will highly reward you afterwards.
The amygdala is the brain region that triggers fear and discomfort to protect you from perceived threats, but the prefrontal cortex can override this response to enable growth. The dopamine hit you feel after completing a difficult task (or even crossing off an item on your checklist) isn’t a predictor to act; it’s a reinforcement (reward) mechanism that signals to the brain that the action was a good one, strengthening the connection between the action and the reward for future behavior.
On October 15, I stopped snoozing.
I got straight up and then walked our dog – double dopamine hit.
Then, before anyone was awake, I logged into my storefront on SPS, and cross checked that with my Canva to see what I still needed to upload to my store – dopamine hit
And what did this do?
It sent me into a surge that craved getting back to it! I felt empowered and now motivated to move this industry forward in a way that we’ve never seen before.
If you’re in the same head space, I can’t emphasize enough, don’t think, just do. Do the action that will move you forward and then move the industry forward. Your body will reward you and before you know it, so will your bank account.
☮️💟,
H
