‘How To Stop Screwing Yourself Over’
TEDxSF by Mel Robbins
Another great video about failure and how to get what you want – feel the fear and do it anyway! The video can be found here, or highlights are laid out below.
Highlights:
What do you want? Not other people, think selfishly – what do you want?
Getting what you want is simple but not easy. Information seems to be all around us about getting what we want, so why don’t we have it? You have the free tools, contacts, and the information – so what’s stopping you?
One word: fine – you’re fine. Really? If you’re fine you don’t have to do anything about getting what you want, so this is what we fall back on. Tell the truth! Not just to others: tell yourself the truth! You’ve convinced yourself you’re fine not having what you want so you don’t have to push yourself.
Scientists have calculated the odds of you being born – taking into account wars, natural disasters, etc. – and they found that 1:400,000,000,000 are the odds. You’re not fine – you’re fantastic! You have life changing ideas for a reason, and it’s not to torture yourself.
You have all of these ideas and what do you do with them? Nothing. You have an inner snooze button and you are using it. In any area of your life that you want to change, there’s one fact: you are never going to feel like it.
Activation energy is the force required to get you to change what you’re doing on autopilot to something new – a physical force required to change your behaviour.
It is your job to parent yourself – to make yourself do the stuff you don’t want to do so you can be everything you are supposed to be. So stop waiting for someone else to come along and force you to do it. There’s always stuff you don’t want to do. To get what you want, you have to force yourself.
One side of your brain is an autopilot and one side in an emergency brake. Anytime you do something different from your normal routine, your brain goes into emergency break mode. Anything that’s a break from your routine is going to require force (and activation energy). The routine, however, is killing you.
Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs means that your body is wired to send you signals. When you feel stuck or dissatisfied in life, it is a signal that one of your most basic needs is not being met – your need for exploration. Your soul needs exploration and growth.
Force yourself to be uncomfortable.
Force yourself out of your head.
Force yourself past your feelings.
If you listen to how you feel when it comes to what you want, you will never get it because you will never feel like it.
Force yourself out of your comfort zone.
The first few seconds or minutes outside of your comfort zone will suck.
When you have the impulse to do something but then don’t do the activation energy required to force yourself, your brain’s emergency break is getting pulled. So use the five second rule: if you don’t marry an impulse with an action in five seconds, then you pull the emergency break and kill the idea. Your problem isn’t ideas, your problem is you don’t act on them – you kill your own ideas. It’s not going to happen in your head. So practice the five second rule, marry actions to your ideas, and you might be surprised with what happens.
Remember to check out the video linked above for the full talk – and start practicing the five second rule for activating ideas now!