1. How to Take Action

Nobody ever teaches you how to take action.

There’s no class at school on how to get yourself to execute the things you need to do.

This episode is the ultimate crash course.

In this episode, you’ll learn my three-step process for getting yourself to take action on your goals.

• View Transcript

  Hey, it's Sarah Arnold-Hall, and you're listening to How to Take Action.

  We have got to talk about what hustling really means, because I think hustling has been given a bit of bad press recently, and it's been kind of held responsible for burnouts, and working yourself into the ground, and working really long hours, and working harder than you ever have before. But, if you actually look up the dictionary definition of hustle, it doesn't mean any of those.

  The Cambridge Dictionary definition of hustle is "to act quickly with energy." and I love this definition because when you think about it, we are so often doing the opposite. We're so often acting slowly with lethargy. We're doing anything but taking quick, energetic action, and that is my mission for this podcast.

  I want this entire podcast to be a conversation around taking action quickly with energy. And the reason that this has become so important to me is because not only have I worked with a lot of clients around this issue, but I've also discovered and kind of noticed in the world that so many of our problems as a society, as a globe could be solved, if we knew how to get ourselves and others to take action. We have got the resources to solve climate change, to solve the hunger crisis, to solve all of the other social issues that we're facing and humanitarian issues, but we are not taking action on them.

  And so I wanna start that conversation around, let's start with ourselves, take action on our own goals and on a global scale as well. Let's just begin. Let's dive in to our first episode today on How to Take Action . So I named this first episode How to Take Action, even though this entire podcast is about how to take action, because I really want to give a bit of a first kind of crash course in how to get yourself to take action.

  So there are three steps that I'm gonna teach you today, and before we can really dive into those steps, we first have to know why you're not taking action in the first place. So I want you to think about a goal or a dream that you have, right? Something big, something exciting that you haven't been working on enough.

  Maybe you haven't been working on it at all, or maybe you've been doing a bit, but you haven't really been taking the action that's going to get you the results that you want.

  There are five things that stop people from taking action, and as I go through these, I want you to think about what your goal is and which one of these, pops up at you as the reason why you're not taking action. Now, it could be all five of the things, but it's likely that there's one or two that are kind of the main ones that are holding you back. So each of these five things that I'm about to share with you that are stopping you from taking action are actually emotions, because when it comes down to it, our emotions are what drive our action.

  It completely depends on how you feel as to whether or not you're gonna do stuff. If you don't feel like doing it, you're not gonna do it. I've come up with these based on hundreds of sessions that I've done with my clients on getting them to take action towards their goals. And I think these are five universal ones.

  So here they are: confusion, overwhelm, self-doubt, fear, and lethargy. Those are the five key emotions that are stopping you. I wanna quickly explain a little bit more in detail about how you know which one you're facing.

  So each of these emotions is coming from a belief that you have, and so you know that you're confused if you are believing the thought: "well, I don't know what to do," or "I don't know where to start."

  And you know, you're feeling overwhelmed if you're thinking the thought: "there's just too much to do" or "this is too intense," or something along the lines of that.

  You know that you're feeling self-doubt if you're believing, something like, it's usually an open-ended question, like, "Can I really do this? Am I good enough?"

  You know, you're experiencing fear if you're stuck in the 'what ifs'. "What if this goes wrong? What if that happens? What if I succeed in X, Y, Z, and what if I fail? And A, B, C."

  And, you know that you're in lethargy, if you're thinking the and believing the thought, "I just don't wanna do it. I don't feel like doing it. This is boring." That's how you know.

  So figure out which one of those five it is for you.

  Here's the thing about these emotions, they are self-reinforcing. So if you're feeling overwhelmed and you don't take, and you see no progress, you're gonna feel even more overwhelmed. So you kind of end up going down this downward spiral of procrastination.

  The more that you feel those emotions, the more you procrastinate, and the more you procrastinate, the more you feel those emotions. And so we have to get you out of that. How do we do that? It starts by changing and shifting your emotion, and in order to do that, you're gonna be having to think new beliefs because the ones that you're having right now, like there's too much to do, this is too hard.

  All of those beliefs that you have right now, they are creating the unhelpful emotions that are definitely stopping you from taking action. You have to change your emotions by changing your beliefs.

  So, there are three steps to getting yourself to take action, to stop procrastinating, to get in this new outward spiral.

  And, the first thing is to figure out the opposite emotion of the one that you're currently experiencing right now.

  So if you are experiencing confusion, figure out for you what the opposite emotion is. And there's no right answer to this. Everyone's gonna have different answers. The opposite of confusion might be clarity, and the opposite of lethargy might be motivation or determination.

  That's the first step. Just find the opposite emotion. The second step is to identify the belief that would cause that emotion. If it is, let's say, it's calm. Maybe the belief would be, "I can handle this," and you don't have to believe it yet. You just have to identify it.

  So the first step is to figure out what the opposite emotion is. The second step is to find the belief that would create that emotion. And the third step is to find evidence for that belief. I used to think that a belief was just a thought that you think over and over and over, so you just do affirmations in the mirror. Let's say you come up with a belief like, "I can handle this," or "I'm good enough."

  You just say it a hundred times in the mirror every morning and you journal it out and you make an affirmation tape to play while you're driving to work. That's not actually how beliefs are created. A belief is not just a thought you think over and over. A belief is a thought that you have got evidence for.

  We need evidence to create the belief in order to feel the emotion, in order to get ourselves to take action. Don't even worry if the thought that you've come up with isn't even true yet. All you have to do is find enough evidence to believe it until it actually becomes true, because you take action and you see it as a result.

  That's it. Those are the three steps. You have to find the opposite emotion. You have to identify the belief that would make you feel that emotion, and then you have to find the evidence for it.

  All right. That's it. That is our podcast for today. I am so excited that we are done with our first episode, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with you in the next episode, and I will see you there.

  Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you're gonna love being coached by me. We're gonna solve your specific action taking struggle. So you can hit any goal you set. Just go to saraharnoldhall.com to sign up.