When you know what to do but can’t start doing
"I will feel much better if I exercise more. I will start running again twice a week" he said. And yet it took months before he was actually running twice a week regularly. Another client said: "I know I need to give people more recognition when they do something well. It doesn't come naturally to me, so the conscious effort it requires means it goes out of the window when I'm under pressure." All very recognizable, isn't it? Most of us have known that we "should do [that]" but just can't seem to find a way to get started.
Have a compelling reason to do it
Move from "should" to "want": "should" is driven by the expectations of others, real or perceived. We know or believe that we are expected to be doing [that] and we want to meet that expectation for various reasons. Because we think [that] is good leadership behaviour, for example, or because we want to be accepted in that community. "Want" signifies something that we aspire to within ourselves. Something that is important to us because of our values, of how we see ourselves, because of the kind of person we want to be. Doing something you're not used to requires effort. What's in it for you? What will you get out of doing this new thing?
Take a leap
Much like declaring your love to someone, there never is a right time. At some point you have to take a leap. You won't know whether it will work out as you imagine, but your choices are to keep doing what you're doing or try something else. Once you're clear on what you want, for example I want to be a person who tells people I've seen them do a good job there, try it out one day. Just once. See what happens. Don't worry about what the end goal looks like, exactly. Pick your direction and take one step. Or stay where you are and know what you will get. Your choice.
Trust that you can do it
We often think that we can't do something that we haven't done before. Or maybe we tried it once or twice years ago and it didn't go very well, so we quickly turned to something else that gave us more of a sense of accomplishment. All this tells us is that we don't have experience with this. It does not follow that we cannot learn if we choose to. Believe that you can learn because it matters to you. Wanting to be able to do something is an incredibly powerful motivator. Look at something that you do particularly well. How did you get so good at this? Exactly. It took dedication, iteration, learning by doing, adjusting as you went. That skilfulness did not arrive fully formed. Mastery takes work. You were able to learn this. What makes you think you couldn't do [that]? What can you take from your learning there to make learning how to do [that] easier?
Progress over perfection
You don't have to be world champion at something to be making a difference. You'll start getting positive feedback from your new behaviour, which gives you even more reason to keep going. My client from the earlier example was initially met with surprise when he started telling people he'd noticed their work, but he stuck with it and very quickly he reported a sense of accomplishment at seeing how happy people were with his feedback. Clearly he was able to do it well enough. In fact people are more likely to trust that you are genuine when you're not perfect at something you've only just started doing. How weird would it be if someone appeared to be a completely different person overnight? You still want to be you, just better.
You can do this.
You can find me here if you'd like to find out more about working with me.
If you're new here you can subscribe below to get more newsletters like this.
