Problems Taking Action

[trthskr]

I'm begining to realize that I am becoming an information junkie by reading numerous personal development books and going to a few workshops now that I have tourble taking action and that is part of my self sabotaging behavior. It's sooo frustrating too!

After consulting with a coaching friend of mine who hired one of Anthony Robbins' coaches in the past...he said that the reason that I probably don't take action is b/c I associate too much pain to doing what it takes than pleasure and that I might require a high degree of certainty before I'll take the plunge and take action.

I'd have to say that's a pretty accurate assessment. The reason why I have to have a high degree of certainty is b/c I want to make sure I get my money's worth and feel that in the past when I paid to see therapists or went to workshops I have never felt like I got anything great out of them and ended up feeling like it was a waste of money. I guess that is why I need certainty before I take any action.

Can anyone relate to what I am saying or have any advice on overcoming this analysis paralysis state that I feel like I am stuck in? What can one do to start taking action so that one can start seeing results and prevent oneself of self sabotage?

[Shamou]

Originally Posted by trthskr
The reason why I have to have a high degree of certainty is b/c I want to make sure I get my money's worth and feel that in the past when I paid to see therapists or went to workshops I have never felt like I got anything great out of them and ended up feeling like it was a waste of money. I guess that is why I need certainty before I take any action.

The main reason that you have not taken action yet is probably that you have not reach the “emotional threshold” where you can’t take it no more… and that enough is enough and something has got to change and it’s going to change now…

You are not alone in this… most people search for that magical recipe where the good life is going to emerge out of thin air… sorry buddy… there is no such animal…

If you want to succeed… not only do you have to take action… but you must take “massive action”… you don’t knock on one door… you knock on twenty doors… you don’t try it once to see if it works… you do it until it does work… (does not mean that you don’t change your approach though…)

If you do what everyone is doing (sit on their butt and wait for opportunity to knock) you’ll reap exactly the same thing that they do… and that is nothing…

It is not what you know that counts… it’s what you do with what you know that brings results…

This is a wake up call… quit the procrastination… and take action…

Good luck to you… I feel certain that you can make it…



.

[Sunnybayes]

I'd say you need to find what you really want in life. Need to find your life goal, something absurdly crazy and wonderful that would really excite you. Because if you don't define for yourself a high enough goal to connects all your subgoals to, then you are just going to be constantly afraid or hesitant on any action because you are not sure if it is the best and that doing one action will keep you from doing some other actions that could be better. But if you define your highest level goal, then you'll know which of your actions don't actually matter in the long term, so you can immediately drop those and those that do matter, well they matter, so obviously you'll feel like doing them.

Or maybe you fear your most ambitious goals, but the solution for fear is exactly the same, just to visualize and define better the unknown, so just work on defining what you really really want, and if you become familiar enough with it by brainstorming/visualizing it you will no longer fear it, because after all, all fear is the fear of the unknown [even the fear of heights, for example, you can be no longer afraid of heights if you work as a roofer for a summer, I challenge anyone to find a fear that is not caused by the unknown.]

Your mind constantly tries to pick the action that will optimize [something like happiness, goodness, efficiency] so if you don't put concious effort into it, or give it one really really really good choice, then its stuck to choose between a whole bunch of mediocre goals, and you constantly are trying to pick between them, and you make yourself afraid that the one that you do choose is not the best one. But if you don't know where you are going then you don't really know which one is the best, and you'll feel like their all bad actions.


So sit down for about 3 hours, with note pad, type

what do I really want out of this life?

Type whatever immediately comes to mind, think about it for 5 minuets, gather some insight, type some more, rinse and reapeat... A first its going to be really fuzzy, but if you work on it long enough it will become more and more discrete and feel more exciting that you're actually starting to find the thing that you like. And it will be really hard at first to do, because its a new activity, but then you'll get used to it, and you'll be really really motivated to continue.

It might take you like a month or so to really define really discretely what you want, but if you do that, then you'll know how the most simple actions that you take link to that highest level goal that you've define, and you wont be afraid to take them and you wont take any hesitation to take them.

Read some of Steve's articles on finding life purpose.

Some top level goals that every human needs to fulfill to be happy is to have good health, wealth, spiritual and intellectual, and to feel like you've made a contribution. So work on picking out a purpose/goal/vision/belief that will let you fulfill all of those.

And as you go on in life, you're going to have to do this again, if you ever feel like you have a choice of actions, but not really sure which on to do.

[alexyeo]

Some great advices by Sunnybales and Shamou.

For me, my "advice" is really simple.

"For you to have massive actions, you need to take baby-steps' actions first"

I am sure you know about law of inertia:
An object that is not moving will not move until a net force acts upon it.

You just need that first initial actions to keep you going. Once you have started "doing it", you tend to have momemtum.

I am sure you experienced it before, eg: work or project in hand etc. You might be lazy to start it. But once you start doing it, you will find it easier to continue it and wanted to complete it till the end. Just the first step will propel you forward. Isn't it?

[Sunnybayes]

Okay, and one more thing... [or several... I realize that I've written way too much here... but it was such a good time... and I'm finished with all my finals.... , and this is part of one of my goals... ]

"Many a false step was made by standing still." - Fortune Cookie

"Named must your fear be before banish it you can."Yoda, from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

A second look at this makes it seems you have a core set of beliefs that are holding you back.

" analysis paralysis" is caused by fear. The evolutionary purpose of fear is to paralyze you. Therefore you will stare at the unknown, forcing you to become familiar with it, getting rid of the unknown, to determine if it is dangerous, so that your parents can come over to save you, or to tell you if that thing is good or not, or to keep you staring at that scary looking predator long enough so that you can learn to predict its behavior, because If you don't know how something works, and have never seen it before, and you try messing with it, then it could kill you. I think this applies to all fears, heights, any creature, test fear, see a hot babe fear (your unconscious ancient brain forces you to strongly focus all your attention on her, and if she is a new person, since she is unknown to you, you fear her until you walk over and say hello) ... all fear/anxiety caused by no matter what.

So fear happens with anything that is new to you, unless you can take that new thing and generalize it to something that you have experienced before. A kid is afraid of a lion cause he's never seem one before, but a lion hunter who's studied lions almost feels sorry for them.

So to get over your fear, you are trying to figure it out as much as possible and make the best mental model of the reality that you can. But this analysis becomes trouble when you try to predict too much into the future, and are making new theories about reality, without actually grounding those theories to reality, so you have no clue which ones are good.

Life is like a game of chess. If you are a newbie, then it takes a long time to think, predict, and plan what move to do. Except that in life, the chess board is much larger. There is just about an infinite amount of possible moves. For a given move, its only somewhat know what it will do, until you've done it. You could spend your life trying to find the most absolutely perfect move to do, but by the time you've found it, you'd be dead, and that therefore, the newbie player that just does not care as much and goes ahead and picks a decent enough move will make an infinite amount more progress.

Also, the amount of analysis the newbie is going to do will depend on the stakes. If the stakes are life and death, then yes, he'd spend maybe up to half of his life trying to pick the absolutely best moves. So if you are frustrated that you are putting in too much analysis... then you need to make it seem like the stakes are not so bad.

How to lessen the stakes / make them not so bad:
The more worse the stakes, the more fear associated with them. Lessen the fear.
Get familiar with the unknown to get rid of the fear. Get someone show you that its not so bad, or show yourself. I do this by brainstorming, visualizing, writing a brief story about my fear.

For example, there is fear that you'd waste your money and go broke. If you lost all your money, what's the worst thing that could happen to you? Here is the absolutely worst thing that could happen... and its cool because what could happen is not so bad, and the chance that the _absolute_ worst thing that could happen is not too likely, therefore anything else that could happen looks minor in comparison:

So the _absolute_ worst thing that could happen:
You'd become a lonely bum on the street, begging for food, perhaps you would not find enough and you'd starve to death.
While you're alive people would look down at you, laugh at you, and for the rest of the history of the universe, you'd be known as the joker who wasted all his money and went broke, and the people would swear by your name, for all eternity. Or you could catch some horrible disease and ugly rash, and then die a slow painful death, and then your family would spend every waking hour of the rest of their lives morning over your death. Or no, even more worse, you catch a horrible disease that manages to keep you alive in pain for all eternity. And then your kids would all have the same fate, because not a sole on the planet would even want to try to support them. And then everyone else on the planet would become so sad that they'd all commit suicide, and that would mean the end of humanity, and the universe would never be able to experience anything like humanity again.

Why the _absolute_ worst case scenario is not so bad:
The universe doesn't care if humanity doesn't exists.
No one would be around to care that everyone's dead.
According to quantum mechanics, there are several other universes out there, all with a chance of consciousnesses to form.
Or there only is this universe, but again, the universe really doesn't care if we're all dead.
Perhaps god would get lonely, and give us another chance at the humanity thing.
If you yourself are dead, don't worry you're not concious enough to care that you are dead, kinda like when you are sleeping, you're not concious enough to care when someone puts shaving cream all over your face.

See that's the _absolute_ worst case scenario, and that's not so bad now is it? So even if you planned your best and put in all your effort to fail as best as possible, then you'd still do better than the worst case scenario, which is not even that bad. Even with barley guided actions, you'll still do infinitely better.

Basically I'm saying, come up with the absolutely most terrifying things that could happen to you, and write it down on paper, so that you can read it over and over again. Feel the fear, and keep on expanding it, exposing all your fears, and then by doing it you become familiar with what you have written down. Then you get used to it, visualizing yourself in that situation. And the magic is, by visualizing that absolute worst situation, you'll get used to it, because fear is always just the fear of the unknown, then you no longer fear it, because you've cause it to be known. Bertrand Russell once said, "It is impossible to be afraid of anything if you have thought about it deeply enough."


You brain becomes satisfied because it thinks that it can now predict the future, and nature is satisfied because fear is just natures way of making you paralyzed so that it forces you to stop and stare and to focus your attention so that you can then make prediction.

And writing the story, you follow your fear, brainstorm, and visualize it putting you face to face with it. Then your realize that its not so bad because you can now image and predict what you'd do if it ever did get to the worst case scenario. And if go to your deepest core values, then you wont be afraid of not picking the absolute best move, you'll be happy with making a move that is good enough, and then you'll actually start to move ahead.

Also another comment about analysis paralysis... you do need to do it, but efficiently. Doing it all strictly in your mind is not efficient because there is limited working memory. Write everything on paper, so you can look back and learn you own thoughts, like learning a textbook.

Its all the same.
Fear = unknown.
How do you make it unknown? You visualize it, which is the law of attraction, which is intention/manifestation, which is finding your life purpose, which is finding your life goals, which is finding direction in your life, which is brainstorming, which is becoming more concious, which is knowing your polarization.

Motivation is this:
"I'm so motivated now!!! I know exactly what to do and how to do it!!! And nothing can get in my way!!!"

"I know exactly what to do" = doing all that other stuff
"nothing can get in my way!!!" = knowing what you obstacles are and that you can get over them [and that you don't fear them] because you've done all that other stuff.

But your brain has limited capacity to remeber the thoughts that have streamed by, and that doing all that other stuff is creating knowlege in your mind, like the equivalent of learning a course in college, so that's why you need to keep a journal and write everything down, like you'd do in college with taking notes, except these notes are about the knowlege that you've created yourself. You'd forget if you would not have written it down. And that like a college course, you need to do your homework, and you need to have disciple to study, and that it will not be instantaneous. Like math, you have to do math exercises and not expect that just reading the text book is going to make you know it.

another thing...

I'm beginning to realize that I am becoming an information junkie by reading numerous personal development books and going to a few workshops now that I have trouble taking action and that is part of my self sabotaging behavior. It's sooo frustrating too!

Being an information junkie is a life pattern. And apparently a pleasurable one, kinda like watching TV. Listen to Steve's getting rid of patterns podcast to get rid of it. You have enough information now. Now stop learning about PD, and start writing your own books about it, and coming up with your own theories about how to apply it to your own life.

And final thing...
Do a 30 day trial of not reading about/learning about Personal Development. The only personal development that you are allowed to do is with the stuff that's only in your mind, and your own PD advice that you've created by yourself. And that you've learned enough, so now its time burn in the habit into your subconscious mind of applying it to fulfill your life goals and purpose, and visualizing how to apply what's already in your brain.