Doing what challenges you the most to stay motivated may feel a little odd at first. One of the ways that this motivates you is by giving you a sense of accomplishment. There are plenty of good reasons that we give ourselves for not getting these things done. It makes complete sense in the moment to put it off, not make it a priority, and keep putting those things that challenge us off to another day. 

So, we are going to go over some tools on how to get started taking on the things that challenge us so you can start to allow the challenges to excite you.  You must do those things that challenge you the most first.  The fear is what has been stopping you, but on the other hand, maybe you stopped challenging yourself at all. Are you pushing yourself? Do you have bigger goals? If you don’t that’s a different thing.  If you do and you know that you have been making excuses for not getting them done.  You must make them a priority.

Why It Is Important

Why do you need to make them a priority? Well first of all it’s going to be where all the growth will happen for you. When you push yourself and you challenge yourself and you do those things first it’s where you grow the most as a person.  Doing the things that scare you the most is going to help you become more of what you’re supposed to become as a person.  Secondly, when you achieve it when you get it done Woo Hoo! How great do you feel about yourself? Think about the last time that you did that. You felt amazing, didn’t you? What about when you did not get it done? If you don’t do it how do you feel?

So,  doing the things that you did challenging the most are going to give you the most juice because you’re going to stay motivated you’re going to get it done, you’re going to work on making that commitment to yourself, you’re going to work on keeping that promise to yourself and then when you achieve it. You are going to feel so good that you will forget all of the pain that happened while you were achieving the goal.  Nature has a way of helping us forget the struggle—ask any woman who has had a baby more than once.  If we remembered the pain of giving birth, would we do it again? No, we focus on the good stuff, the things we like about being a parent, and the joy we get from raising our kids. We want the good feeling and we want the feeling of accomplishing the goal.

Remember,  failure is part of the process. This is part of learning, it is part of growing and taking on those challenges. This is where you move from knowing what to expect and understanding and being knowledgeable. Failing is okay- it’s just part of the process.

I know, saying you are going to take on challenges and doing it are two different things-I know exactly how you feel. We all need a little push. We all need some tools and some tips and some tricks so here are a few to get you going. We’re going to do this in two parts to make sure we cover all of the tools and you don’t get so overwhelmed that you do not take action.

Write Down A List Of What You Have Been Putting Off

First, you have to know where you are starting from. Write down the things that you’ve been putting off and that you know you need to accomplish.  You know the list—it should scare you a little bit. If you don’t have one thing that will challenge you, then what could it be?  Really think of something that you’ve been putting off, something you have wanted to do forever. For me, it was putting my book into the world.  

What Has Been Stopping You

Now that you have the list it is time to really get honest with yourself. Why are they still on your list?  What have been the excuses that you have been making for not taking action?  Don’t judge your answers, just write them down. There is some emotion that you have attached to this-fear, anger, sadness, or some combination of those.

Now That You Know, Do Something About It

Whatever the reason now you know. You are now more self-aware and have identified what emotion you have allowed that emotion to stop you from doing what you want to do. The next step is to do something about this emotion and take action to get rid of it. It is easier said than done and it may take you a few attempts to find the action that will work for you.  I’ll go first. For me not writing the book and putting it in the world was a combination of two different things. First, it was fear of putting myself out there and being judged. Once you put yourself out there, whether it be in writing or Facebook Lives, or YouTube videos, you are opening yourself up to criticism and judgment.  

The second reason was to write the book that I want to write (that I am writing right now) requires me to be vulnerable in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.  I have to go back in my past and talk about things that I have obviously moved on from and that I don’t want to revisit necessarily. These are also the very situations that were key life lessons that shaped me and factored into the decisions that I made and how I made my choices.

You can not move forward without acknowledging what is holding you back, so whatever it is for you just confront it, acknowledge it, and begin to figure it out. You will have to take some steps to eliminate it.  This may take more than one attempt to find what works for you. What I found worked for me to eliminate the fear was to focus on my outcome.  I focused on knowing that by accomplishing this goal if I can help one parent- one parent with a relationship with their child their son or daughter and it’s fine. If I have one person who starts taking action in conquering their fears and starts getting the things they want in life then it’s worth it that’s worth it.

Eliminate Your Negative Thoughts

You may have to remind yourself more than once to stop yourself from shrinking back into your old habits.  You will have negative thoughts creep in—it is human and natural. Check out our Success Habit videos to help with this and you can download our ebook 12 Habits That Create Negative Thoughts and How To Eradicate Them. For today, identify the negative thoughts that come up for you when you are trying to take on this challenge. You must pay attention to what you’re saying to yourself that is negative and it could sound like: I’m not good enough, why should they believe me, no one’s going to accept this, what do I know,  etc. It’s usually something along those lines. You’ve got to get control of the thoughts you have about getting this done and it’s going to be a continual thing.  it’s not going to be taken care of once and that thought will not come up again, because they will keep coming up.  This is when you will have to dig in and stand in your potential,  stand in the place where you see yourself. Don’t worry about what or who people think you are-you see it first.  Some examples of people that have done this effectively( Grant Cardone always uses this example)  Muhammad Ali.  He told people he was the greatest before they agreed.  Another example is Donald Trump-he always speaks in terms of what he wants people to see and believe. It’s a very powerful tool that you can use, so stand in your own potential for so when you get that negative thought and it comes across.  I’m a martial artist I visualize palm heel blocking it out of the way right, but blocking it is step one. You must replace it with a positive thought. We will be working on this on Monday’s this month and give you tools to get this done.

Break The Challenge Into Smaller Tasks

Now, you want to take this challenge and you want to break it down into smaller pieces.  Tony Robbins refers to this is chunking. Take this big task that you’ve been procrastinating on and you want to break it down into smaller pieces so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. I had to do this with cleaning the house. If I thought of like having to clean the whole house I just was like forget it, but if I thought of being able to clean the downstairs rooms, or one room a day by the end of the week I had gotten through the whole house and it didn’t take me all day.

Reward Yourself For The Steps Forward

This is important and often overlooked.  We do this for our kids and our animals, but not for ourselves. Do something for yourself that is a “Good Job!”.  Don’t wait for the big finish—every step is progress, every step is getting you closer to your goal. One of my favorite rewards for myself is to give myself a day of reading my sci-fi books or just watching like the Netflix show and just totally going to the show hole and not feeling guilty about taking the time for myself. What will it be for you? Find a reward that’s going to get you excited that when you’re receiving it. It should make you feel good about accomplishing it and motivate you to keep going.

Expect The Unexpected

 It’s about stacking these good feelings while you are making progress because things you do not expect will happen.  You must expect the unexpected- if you are a really big planner you can do this when you write it down write down.

I am in the process of finishing my book and I was on roll and then I got COVID. Just a little bit of a setback.  So expect that things are going to come into play and be prepared for that, but don’t let it be the thing that stops you. Workaround it, let it knock you down but get back up.  You may have to change how you do it, come up with a plan to continue moving forward.

Expect To Feel Resistance

When you start moving in a new direction or start to accomplish your goals, expect to feel some resistance. Resistance can come from a  few different places. First, it can come from you or it can come from the people around you. It all depends on the task and how big the task is because sometimes when we start achieving our goals, we get scared and we want to fall back into the old habits that we have because we’re comfortable. Growing anything is going to involve some pain and there is going to be some resistance. It is okay – confront it when it happens whether it is you or family and friends.  If it’s from family then you’re going to have to share with them why this is important to you. If you are the problem you’ve got to remember why you’re doing the task, why you want to get this done, what you will accomplish when you are done, and how good you will feel.

Let Yourself Feel Good

Allow yourself to feel good.  This is a little bit different than the reward part because sometimes we get so stuck in the doing we forget what we are accomplishing.  I don’t know if you’ve done this if you write down your goals you may want to go back and check and see where you have written a goal down and you may have forgotten. I know that I have achieved goals and didn’t even realize what I accomplished.

This is why we need to make a point of feeling good about our progress. This is just as important as getting that reward for the small milestone so allow yourself to feel good. We judge ourselves -we are always Our Own Worst Enemy-way too harshly. We must stop and look at what we’ve accomplished step by step of the process. The task does not have to be all the way done- just the fact that there were moving towards our goal is so important to stay motivated to get it done. I know for a long time for me I have had time frames in my mind that in order for this to be a success it has to be done in this time frame where it’s not really the time frame, but I had to keep reminding myself that I’m still moving towards the goal, still taking action, I’m still doing what I’m supposed to do and I’m still able to create the things that I want to create for myself.

Feel good about learning a new skill,  a new skill as a martial artist you know I’m still a student. Give yourself credit for what I do get done as a martial artist but as a mom, as a wife, and as a business owner.  Make it a habit to feel good about what we’re doing when we’re taking action, when we’re heading towards what we want and towards where we want to go.

Take Action Today

I want you to actually take action on these nine steps.  I don’t want you to just listen. I want you to actually take action and I want you to take each one of these steps and apply it between now and next Wednesday.

Writing down one thing that you’ve been putting off-it could be small-it could be clean out that stupid closet or reorganizing that room or I don’t know whatever you’ve been putting off. That is today’s action and then follow the steps.

It does not serve you to say you will do it and then take no action. Make it a priority to do this between now and next week.  We will continue to work on how to move ourselves to take action, but this is the beginning of a new habit.  It is just the beginning of building that muscle okay so next week we’re going to talk we’re going to go over the remaining steps on how to stay motivated take actions towards doing those things that challenge you.

If you want to get more in-depth with this concept of conquering your fears and taking action if you want to really get into how to talk to your friend take action we’re doing our one-hour webinar will walk you through exactly how to get that done.

No more putting it off–find the stuff that scares, find the stuff that’s challenging you and let’s start stepping into it, and let’s start getting things done.

I hope  I’ll see you on the webinar How To Conquer Your Fears and Take Action. Embrace those challenges. Be amazing, Be Exceptional. Be You.