just do it

Taking action to reduce anxiety

Action cures anxiety. Sitting around doing nothing but thinking about what might go wrong produces anxiety. A lot of times, the possibility of what might happen is actually worse than what does happen.

The best way to improve your situation is to do what you can. Affect the things that you can control, but don’t worry about the things that you cannot. Those things will happen one way or another and there’s nothing you can do about that. And that’s OK.

When you’re feeling lost or stuck, get moving. Take action. If it is productive action, it may move you closer to your goals. But even if it is not directly productive, it may still alleviate any anxiety you have just by distracting you.

When will you actually pull the trigger?

You’ve been talking about how you want to do this or how you’d like to do that…but how long have you been saying this?

Stop procrastinating. If you want to do something, make it happen. Just do it.

It all starts with taking action. Sure, you need to plan and prepare. But you can only do that for so long. Eventually, you’re just lying to yourself that you need more time, more money, more…something…

When are you actually going to pull the trigger and do what you want to do? Do you want to get healthier? Start today. Do you want to go on vacation? Book it today.

What if you wait ten years to do something, only to find out you absolutely love it? Wouldn’t you want more time to experience that thing? Start now and live without regret. Because even if the experience isn’t everything you dreamed it would be, at least you would know if you like it or not. You would have clarity on what is, and not worry about “what if.” Stop waiting and just do it.

Make taking action your default tendency

When you face uncertainty, do you take action or do you pause? There’s fight, flight, or freeze.

There’s not a “one size fits all” answer for every situation. You can deal with each scenario differently, and depending on the urgency of what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, your previous history with that person/scenario, and the risk/reward balance, you may choose differently.

But we all have a default action or inaction that we take.

I tend to lean towards taking action. Instead of thinking about doing things, just do them. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but you’ll also end up getting much more done than those who default to pausing/talking things over.

Default towards taking action. Be aggressive. Don’t be passive.

It’s about how you do things

Practice vs deliberate practice. Working out vs training. Going through the motions vs living intentionally.

You can become moderately good or even above average by consistently working on something. But if you’re just going through the motions and not deliberately following a plan to improve, you won’t reach your full potential and your progress will be much slower. Do you have a specific plan or are you just doing what you feel like doing that day?

Improving is partly just about “doing something” repeatedly as it relates to your goals. But that’s only a small part of the solution. The bigger part is practicing perfection. We will never achieve perfection, but the more we aim towards it, the closer we will get in chasing excellence.

If you wait to start until you feel like you’re “ready,” you’ll never get started.

You’ll never be 100% ready for what happens next because we can’t predict the future. All you can do is put yourself in the best position to succeed by reading about a subject and asking others who have already accomplished what you want to do. From there, take action. Even if you’re taking baby steps, that’s better than procrastinating and always being in learning mode.

We often confuse learning with productivity. Learning is amazing, but if you don’t do anything with what you’ve learned, it should actually be re-categorized as entertainment. DOING something meaningful is productive. Make sure that you don’t confuse step one (learning) and step two (taking action to stay busy) with productivity.