Do you have a personal goal you just haven’t taken any action on? Perhaps you thought of it years ago, or maybe it was something you thought of quite recently. It could be a business idea, a fitness goal, or maybe a career goal.
If you know exactly what you need to do to achieve that goal, but haven’t started taking action on it, then this article will help you discover the real reasons you aren’t taking action.
We’ll start by taking a look at some of the symptoms of inaction, followed by the real core reasons for that inaction, and then finally, we’ll have a look at some of the solutions to help you start creating the life you have always wanted (and not just the one you settled for).
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The Symptoms of Inaction
First of all, to establish whether any of the 3 core reasons for inaction apply to you, it is important to identify some of the relevant symptoms you might be experiencing.
Over-Researching (Paralysis by Analysis)
You have an idea for a business, project, or health regime in your mind. You know your desired outcomes, and you know roughly what you need to do to bring your ideas to life. However, instead of knuckling down and getting to work on your ideas, you know you need to prepare yourself for the upcoming task. Even more than that, you also know you probably need to up-skill yourself and improve your capacity to try and do these new things.
You start by researching your idea. In detail. As time goes on, you know you need to make some progress, but instead of taking any action, you do more research, trying to account for every possible/likely scenario (success, failure, un-expected surprises and obstacles).
The more research you do, the more you realise you don’t know, and the more research you decide to do. You want to make sure you are ready.
Eventually, the research you are doing has 2 effects:
- It causes you to question everything. You don’t want to put a foot wrong, so you never get started, and you get stuck in a cycle of doing more research looking for all the answers to all of your questions.
- You start to convince yourself that research is work. You feel like as long as you are researching things, you are doing “something” towards your goals. The problem with this is, research alone never delivers results, and nothing ever changes.
Perfectionism (a close relative to Paralysis by Analysis in my opinion)
You don’t want to put anything “out there in the World” until everything is perfect, and all of your ducks are neatly lined up in a row. You research things endlessly. Unlike the research symptoms, you actually do a little work, but typically, you’re not happy with it, or you never quite finish it.
It’s never ready for the World to see it, so you never take that all important step of actually launching your big idea and taking the actions you need to take to see results.
General Procrastination and Staying in your Comfort Zone
You are overly optimistic about the time you have available to do your project. You delay taking any action and constantly prioritise other things.
You might rationalise this behaviour by saying things like:
“I have bigger things to worry about right now. I will sort out this other stuff first, and then I will be ready to give this my full attention/focus”
Some of those other “things” and “priorities” might be:
- Your job/career
- A promotion at work
- Looking after your family
- Buying a house
- Hitting a certain financial savings goal
- A holiday
- Relationship goals
- This list could go on, on, on and on….
Even worse than this, some times the things you prioritise aren’t even that important. Some examples:
“I’m going to get started on this right away, but first, I’m going to…”
- Play Call of Duty
- Watch some amusing cat videos on Youtube
- Find out what the Kardashians are up to via the magic of reality TV
- Go for a walk
- Read
- Sun tan
- You get my drift….
You are living in your comfort zone, and when you live in your comfort zone, the only thing that really matters is your immediate comfort and pleasure.
You dedicate no time to working on your future, developing yourself or any of your ideas.
Inability to Make Decisions
Instead of making a decision, you make no decision at all. Again, this is a close relative to Paralysis by Analysis and over-researching.
You think deeply about all the possible options you have available to you, but you never feel confident enough to take a leap of faith and make a decision.
What you fail to notice, is that deciding to make no decisions is actually a decision itself.
Highly Creative, Self-Sabotaging, Negative Self-Talk
When ever you think of your project or idea, your mind seems to automatically start listing all the reasons why your plan won’t work. Just as you feel comfortable enough to start getting down to some actual work, a little voice in your head starts whispering things like;
- “You’re not good enough”
- “Sure, it is has worked for other people, but they are so much better than you are”
- “Yeah, that sounds like a great approach, but lets list all the things that might go wrong”
The negative self-talk chips away at you, and erodes any feeling of positivity you might have previously felt. Dejected, you decide that in light of this new information, you should perhaps consider going back to the drawing board, or maybe just staying in the confines of your comfort zone.
The Core Reasons for Your Inaction
1. Fear of Failure
Probably the most common reason why people don’t take action in life, but one of the reasons a lot of people try to ignore.
You don’t want to fail. But more than that, you don’t want others to see or know you have failed. The shame and embarrassment is too much, and it feels safer to do nothing at all.
You get stuck. You can’t guarantee success, so instead, you freeze and do nothing at all.
The longer this fear goes unrecognised and untreated, the worse the symptoms get. Eventually, the fear can become so crippling, it prevents you from achieving your potential in life. What is more, if unchecked, this fear, and it’s consequences, can lead to depression.
What causes it?
It’s different for everyone. It can be related to a traumatic experience you had earlier in life, that caused you to associate negative emotions with failure, and develop an unhealthy relationship with failing.
If we think back to some of the symptoms of inaction earlier in the article, we might recall discussing be unable to make a decision, procrastinating, over-thinking, researching and analysing.
All of these things act as useful excuses for some one too frightened to move forward with their idea;
“I looked at everything, but there just wasn’t enough information to be sure. I never really started, so I can’t have failed something I never started”.
By researching an idea, you feel busy, almost like you are doing something towards it, but never enough for you to actually fail at it. It’s a safe option, sparing you of the perceived pain of failure. You don’t have to listen to your friends and family saying “I told you so” or laughing behind your back.
Because it is a problem that is often living in the subconscious mind, there is no quick fix. It’s something you need to work on over time, and I have offered some practical tips on how to approach this at the end of the article.
If you think fear of failure is holding you back from achieving your goals, click on the image above to grab a copy of our free 8 page visual ebook, with 8 quick hacks to fight the fear of failure.
2. You’re Not Clear Enough on your “Why”
If you’re not clear enough on why you want to do something, then the likelihood is that you will never do what it takes to make that thing happen. On top of that, not only do you have to understand your “why”, but it also has to be compelling enough.
The reason this is so important, is because our brains have a natural tendency to move us towards things that bring us pleasure, and move us away from things that cause pain (physical and emotional). It’s one of the reasons we eat that sweet little treat/snack, even though we know in the long-term it’s not going to be good for us.
It’s a hangover from our cave man days, where in order to survive, we had to focus on the “here and now”. We focussed on immediate tasks and instant gratification, because back then, it could have meant the difference between life and death.
These days, our standard of living has improved since the last ice age. For most of us living in the developed and developing World, we have access to food and shelter. Our basic needs are being met, and for many of us, we have just got it too good.
But to do something new or different with our lives, and make big changes, we will have to do things we may never have done before, or we may have to try things that don’t feel natural or comfortable. We will have to take a step outside of our comfort zones and experience a little pain and inconvenience.
We will only take that action when we perceive the long-term gain to be of greater benefit than the short-term pleasure we could be enjoying (through screwing around, or doing something entertaining).
This takes commitment.
Commitment is doing the thing you said you were going to do, long after the mood you said it in has left you
-Darren Hardy
The truth is, most of us don’t know or understand our why.
If you suspect you “just don’t want it bad enough” it’s time to reconnect with what you actually want and understand the reasons behind that.If you’re struggling with this, read on, I share some specific actions you can take later in this article.
3. Fear of Success
For many people, this one may seem like a bit of a curve ball, but stick with me here….
There are actually people out there that have a very real fear of success.
Fear of success actually shares a lot of symptoms with fear of failure. For example, some people believe that success will only eventually lead to failure “it will never last“.
People with this fear often self-sabotage and often talk themselves out of projects or work, where they may be recognised for what they have done. They may feel like they are not worthy of success, or they may be frightened of the envy and jealousy of other people who observe their success.
Susanne Babbel Ph.D, M.F.T also observed that often the excitement of success can have very close parallels with the body’s reaction to trauma in this article on Psychology Today.
When imagining yourself succeeding, have you ever had any of the following thoughts?
- “Would people spread nasty rumours about me?
- Would they harass me?
- Would they try to embarrass me?
- Would some one try and take it all away?”
These are all thoughts that could be caused by a fear of success.
Conclusions on the 3 Core Reasons for Inaction
After reading through this article, you may find that perhaps only one or two of the items above affect you.
If this is your first time thinking about, researching and reflecting on why you seem to be stuck in 1st gear in your life, then facing up to some of these things might be very challenging. I know I spent a lot of time avoiding thinking about these things and admitting them to myself. Its not pleasant, but I believe it is necessary if you ever want to move forward in life.
Now we have faced some inner-demons, lets look at the ways we can overcome these obstacles and go about creating that life we always wanted.
Some Solutions
I cannot guarantee all of these will work for you. In some cases, it may even be worth your while speaking to a counsellor, coach or psychologist. I am none of these things. I drew these conclusions through hours of self-teaching, research and self-analysis. Seriously, if you think these issues are too big to handle alone, there is no shame in getting some help.
Lets get started.
Checking Your Why
This approach is pretty simplistic and involves one pen, and a pad of paper. I found it very effective, and I hope it works for you as well.
It is basically a way of understanding why you want to make change in your life, and getting closer to understanding what motivates and energizes you. This task also helps you get a better understanding of things that sap your energy and motivation.
Step 1 – Write down everything that makes you angry. Write down everything you can think of, and remember not to censor, or judge yourself too much at this point.
To do this effectively, it is best to write all this down in a place where you know no one will ever look. Just write it all down in bullet-points, and get it out of your mind onto paper.
Here are some examples from my list:
- Working 5-7 days a week for some one else’s gain and profit
- Not being able to treat my family with gifts and vacations away as much as I would like to
- Debt
- Not fulfilling my personal potential
- My career
Step 2 – Write down everything that makes you feel frightened, weak or anxious in the past, present or future.
Again, some examples:
- Debt
- Lack of disposable income
- Missing out on time with people I care about
- My own decision making
Step 3 – Write down everything you do want in life. Write it down in bullet points, or even in a sentence. Write down why you want those things.
If you want to be free of debt, and have more money, write down why you want that, and write down what it means to you.
Having done step 1 or 2, you should be clear on what you don’t want, and what you want to move away from in life. This should help make it easier to write down what you do want in life, and make it easier to understand why those things are important to you.
You have to understand your dislikes and fears as well as your hopes and aspirations. Once you have taken these 3 steps, you should be at least closer to understanding your “why” and what it is that motivates you, and drives you to push forward.
Step 4 (completely optional) – Write down the solutions to your fears, anxieties and causes of anger.
Look at all of the things that are causing you anxiety, fear and anger, and write down a number of actions you could take to alleviate these feelings and problems.
This will help you realise there is a way forward, and you are in control of your own destiny. If you do this, you should start notice you are willing to face the things that frighten you, take bigger risks, and ultimately take more action.
**Important** – After you have done the above exercise, make a commitment to reading all these pages of your notes back to yourself. I know a lot of people in the “self-help” or “personal development” space recommend reading out goals and affirmations once a day, but I find reading these things back to myself once a month helps. It refocuses me, and reminds me of the path forwards.
Reframe Failure
“Reframing failure” is a fancy way of saying, “change the way you think about failure”. Essentially, it’s about taking a painful experience, and changing it into something positive.
A good example of this would be thinking about failure as a learning opportunity.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
-Henry Ford
If you fail at something, you have basically learned one way in which not to do something. And the more you understand what not to do, the closer you will come to understanding the right way to do something.
In many ways, this is how many of today’s (and yesterday’s) most successful and famous people have come to enjoy such massive success in their lives.
Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, J.K. Rowling, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs (the list goes on and on) all have experienced a great deal of failures in their lives before succeeding. They used what they learned from these failures to move them towards achieving their goals.
Lets look at an abstract example of how failing can ultimately lead to massive success:
The Maze
Imagine you are stood in the middle of a maze that you are looking to escape from. You attempt to leave the maze, but on your first attempt, you reach a dead end. You re-trace your steps and mark your route with chalk.
Whilst you failed in your attempt to escape the maze, you now know never to take that route again, which limits the remaining options you have. With fewer possible routes, your odds for successfully escaping the maze have improved.
As long as you don’t make the same mistake twice (and you won’t because you re-traced your steps and marked your route with chalk) then each attempt is taking you closer and closer to succeeding.
The important point here, is that whilst you are failing in your attempts, you are leaning something from them.
Succeeding in life (at anything) is not about your ability to avoid failure, but it is all about how you deal with it, and move on from it. In order to be able to do that, you need to change how you think about failure. Failure is not the end of the World, it’s an opportunity to learn and improve.
Click the image below to instantly download our free visual ebook with 8 hacks to fight fear the fear of failure:
Break Big Tasks Down into Little Tasks
This is a common-sense tip to help you take action on big ideas and projects. One of the reasons why we hesitate to take action and move forward is because of the scale of the task we see before us.
Instead of being put off by big tasks, try getting into the habit of writing down all the micro-tasks of a bigger task before beginning work on it. Not only does it make the task seem less intimidating, but after you complete each micro-task, you will feel yourself making progress, which motivates you to do more work and more micro-tasks.
On big projects, work backwards:
- Start with the main outcome/objective, and write down what you need to do to get that outcome.
- Then, for each task/action, write down the micro-tasks you need to take in order to complete them.
- Work through the tasks, measure you progress, and take time to recognise and celebrate how far you have come.
Continuous Action and Habit Building
Once you have broken down your actions into manageable tasks, start taking action on them. Do it. No matter how uncomfortable, just get started.
If you workout and stop for a period of time, you will probably know that the first workout is always going to be the hardest, and the most difficult for you to motivate yourself to do.
However, once you are over the hump of the first few sessions, going to do a workout becomes easier, and just part of your normal routine. In the same way, when taking action consistently, it will become easier to do. It will become routine and a habit.
Instead of slumping in front of the TV, Playstation, computer, iPad or smart phone at night, tackle one of the items on your to-do-list. Do some work. Instead of going to the local bar/pub or nightclub to screw off for the night, spend a few hours getting through your task list.
Charles Ruhig, is a reporter for the New York Times and an Author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. In an interview with HBR.org, he asserts that the success or failure of a company is actually a direct result of the habits of an organisation and not their strategic decisions.
He also claims, that an individual spends as much as 40%-45% of their time doing habits, rather than making conscious decisions. Given how much of our time is spent doing habits, it’s in our interest to make sure they are good ones!
Focus on building good habits and taking action consistently. You might not see the results instantly, but when you reflect on how far you have come in 1-3 month’s time, you will notice the difference (and possibly thank yourself for the good habits you created).
Get People to Hold You Accountable for Your Progress
Quite often, we tend to let ourselves off with things. We don’t always push ourselves, and sometimes it is easier to give ourselves the day off, or come up with an excuse about why we couldn’t do something.
However, if some one else knows what we are looking to achieve, and they keep checking up on our progress, we are far more likely to push ourselves to do something to save ourselves the embarrassment of being called out by some one. Having some one else knowing our goals and objectives also means they are likely to remind us of those goals at times when we may lose sight of what we are doing.
These people hold us accountable for our actions (or lack of action).
This is one of the big reasons behind why people will hire professional coaches and personal trainers (aside from the technical knowledge they have in their field).
This isn’t just about some one busting your balls though. It’s about networking with people who want to support you. People who will understand where you are coming from and will want to see you do well. The sad reality is, that those people are not always the people you know today.
Your friends and family want to support you, but they don’t understand what you are doing (and they might not fully understand why you are doing it). It’s unchartered territory for them, and they don’t know how to best advise you. Your actions force them to think about something unfamiliar and uncomfortable to them. They want you as you are, in your comfort zone, and in their comfort zone.
There is also the Crab Mentality. The crab mentality theory refers to the behaviour of crabs when placed into a bucket or a barrel in a group. It is within their abilities to escape the bucket, but often, members of the group will hold on to them, preventing any of them from being able to leave.
In human terms, it’s referring to the fact that members of your social circle may not want to see you succeed beyond them, and they will sabotage you through bad advice/behaviour so you don’t “escape the bucket”.
If we can’t rely on the people we have in our lives today to be invested in our success, and if we can’t turn to the people who we usually turn to for advice, then what options do we have available?
We need to go out and find people who can support us and who will hold us accountable. We need to network. And the best way to do this is to find people who have done, or who are doing similar things to what we wish to do. They could be people you know of in your local community, or they could be members of an online community you find.
Have a think about what you want to do, who has done this kind of thing before and where can you find them?
The Summary
If you life is not where you want it to be, and you have some good ideas about how it could be better, but you can’t seem to do what is needed to make your ideas come to life, then it is time to take closer look at some of the deeper causes that are stopping you from taking action.
Facing up to the causes of your inaction is usually very uncomfortable (if you are doing it right). It’s not an easy process, but when you do, you are ready to start making big changes in your life.
Your time on this planet is extremely limited. Your friend’s and family’s time on this planet is also extremely limited. If you have a vision of how you would like your life to be, then there is no better time than now to start working on your life’s big goals.
I wish you all the best in your pursuit of the Good Life.