How to Start When You Don't Feel Ready

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 68. I think there comes a time in most podcasters experience, where they do an episode on the resistance to doing an episode, I haven't been resisting this one as much as I have felt overwhelmed by my mounting list of to dos, and the state of the world. Today, everything seems chaotic and stressful. And sometimes I feel like I don't know where to begin. So I believe this experience is a common one to most people. So I thought I would share my thoughts today about what to do when you don't feel ready to do anything at all. I hope it helps you either today, or someday in the future, when you feel like you need this kind of help and message. Let's go listen to the episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. 

Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hi, everyone. It's Christine. I mentioned in the teaser to this episode that I've been feeling a little bit stuck lately. And I think sometimes we just need to create the content we need to use ourselves. If you are feeling not ready to take on your next project or task, I would love for you to consider some of these tips that I'm going to share with you so that you can find yourself in a new headspace one that is more inclined to take action to move yourself forward any way you can. Alright, so I'm going to start with tip number one. And that is to keep remembering the outcome or the result that you want. Oftentimes, we get totally distracted and demotivated when we lose sight of what our original objective is or was recenter yourself. By placing your attention on the goal that you want to achieve, not the distractions that are pulling your attention away. Lately, I've been into Wordle who are de la I think most of you know what I'm talking about the unlimited version. And that's okay too. Because Wordle is fun, keeps your mind off things. But once I finish a few rounds of Wordle I want to just remind myself, okay, what is that goal that needs to happen that I need to see finished. And that will help to get me restarted. Tip number two is an important one assume that you don't have to feel ready to start. I think this is a big mistake that a lot of people make that we are just kind of sitting waiting for the time to tick by waiting for our mind to click in and waiting for ourselves to feel the emotional state of feeling ready. And I think we lose a ton of precious time fooling ourselves into thinking that we have to wait for that precious moment before we can begin when we insist that everything has to be just so again, we lose precious, precious time and then we end up fussing over little details and we stay stuck. Oftentimes all we need to get started is that one, itty bitty, intentional. Next step. So take that next step. Don't delay and don't get judgmental towards yourself about how small you think that first step is. That first step is gold. Alright, third step is do some prep. What do I mean by that you can prepare yourself for effective action in so many different ways you can give yourself a five minute break. If you're feeling all wound up and twisted and worried or feeling like your energy is really low. You can just separate yourself from the work for just five minutes. Do some deep breathing perhaps get your mind off things so that you can breathe again and breathe into the project instead of trying to run away from it. Do a guided meditation. If that floats your boat, you can download the App Insight Timer. It's i n s IG HT Insight Timer app.

It's an app that I use almost daily. For these guided meditations, I love this app. And I highly suggest you download it for yourself. It's a great tool for when your own voice inside your head is really not serving you. You're not getting anywhere by listening to yourself, fuss and moan and get worried about every little thing. Turn on the Insight time, or download a meditation, and then release that feeling of stress that you might have for the current moment so that you can move into the next moment, so you can try to move forward again. Alright, step number four, let's learn to use time in super creative ways. What do I mean by that? I mean, don't look at time, just as clock time, just as one minute here, one minute there. Because time can be bendable when you know how to use it correctly. When we're constantly looking at the clock and thinking, oh my god, I only have five minutes, you get yourself caught in a state of lack, where you're thinking you never have enough time for what you need it for. And then you're caught in a cycle of struggle, feeling like your motivation is not there feeling like you don't have the energy to start. And you're feeling compressed and nervous because it's like a ticking time bomb that you're going to lose out if you don't get moving. And I want to encourage you not to use panic or stress. When you do your work when you do anything at all. I think panic and stress are not fun feelings to be steeped in. And they certainly aren't great for our focus and attention either. So we know that time runs really quickly, especially clock time. So what I recommend is that you want to expand your time you want to envision your time expanding, actually, there's no other word to describe this, you want to feel that time is on your side, and that you're using it beautifully and that you have all the time that you need to accomplish what you need to do. You can fit in more projects and activities in time than you think you can. And the good news is that when you learn to fit in small tasks in small amounts of time, you get better at the skill, you stop wasting big chunks of time, you end up feeling like you have better time awareness. And then you're able to fit more things in into the same amount of time. Now it's a little bit tricky to explain, but you have to believe me, that time is going to stay the same. But your usage of your time doesn't have to you can get better at being someone who fits things in you could become much more efficient all of us can. And I think it's a muscle that we have to build and practice and nurture. And again, we don't want stress or the feeling of pressure to be anywhere near our practice area when we're practicing to fit in more, or to do more or to be more in the same amount of time that we used to stress out in and we used to procrastinate it. So have a new sense of the time that you have in your life. It's going to benefit you a lot because you're going to have a sharper sense of what you really need to do what's really important, and how to use your time in the most efficient way possible. Alright, tip number five is a really smart tip, if

I may say so myself, I want you to learn to accept a mediocre type of performance. I stand firm in my belief that most everything in life does not require your best performance. I have never performed in Carnegie Hall myself. And if I were I would recommend to myself that I practice towards performing at my best ever and that is my shot to perform in the best way that I can. But most days again, I'm not aiming for Carnegie Hall. And I think that just getting by and doing The minimum or doing just what I can, is oftentimes, totally fine, more than enough and satisfactory. So I want to stay away from the mindset of stress and pressure. And feeling like everything that I produce has to be a plus a Level A minus at least because that's an extra burden that I don't want to carry. throughout my day. Actually, most days, I just want to get through what I've got on my plate, do it well enough and rest easily at the end of the night, that I've put in a good effort, but I did not wipe myself out. So you might be feeling stuck right now because you're thinking, everything needs to be just perfect, and just the way you envision, but allow some mediocrity into your life, believe me, you're gonna think this tip is really going to free you up, I think you're going to feel that really quickly if you allow yourself to perform less than perfectly. And I'll share with you what I drafted for this episode about the Carnegie Hall piece I did actually perform as a dancer in the Westbury music hall, I

forget what it's called, it's Westbury music fair, or something like that. It's a concert hall in Long Island, New York. And I was in graduate school, and I was wearing red sequined shorts shorts. And I was at the top of a human pyramid of hip hop dancers. And I will say that that performance by me was not perfect. It was what I could do. At the time, I was a graduate student, I was not a professional dancer. But I was having fun. And I was with the hip hop team. And there I was doing my best and being in the moment and having a blast. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet who remembers that performance. But I'm using it so that you get my point that you will survive every instance of your performances. And life doesn't require you to knock it out of the park every single time you show up to play. So play well. And again, except a regular level of performance. Alright, here is tip number six. When you feel stuck, or you are stuck, make sure to be super kind to yourself. So this isn't really so much an action step in terms of this is going to move you forward. But I think when you treat yourself well emotionally, and when you take care of yourself kindly, you tend to be able to get into motion that much quicker. So if you have a history like I did, of beating yourself up every time, you felt like you were failing, or you felt like you didn't know what to do, I want you to learn a different way. Because I think you're going to feel so much better about yourself, you're going to feel so much better about the work. And you're going to feel so much more capable of getting started again, when you adopt a kinder attitude towards yourself. I do think it's the best way to cope with things that are disappointing, especially when we're disappointing ourselves. So whatever the trigger is that you're facing, understand that you are doing the best that you can, and that this is not the end of the road. And that tearing yourself down is not going to be helpful. If you need more support in learning how to be kind to yourself, reach out to people who can teach you reach out to me, let me know. Reach out to your coaches, your mentors, your therapist, your friends, because this is an area that is really important for our essential productivity. We need to learn how to be reasonable with ourselves first. And I think that's it for my list of tips tonight. I am really grateful to be able to share these with you. I've used these tips over and over and over again. In the past, let's say 20 years and they're really good. They really do work. So give yourself a break today. Use one or two of these tips, put them some great high vibe music, the kind of music that you love. Give yourself a pat on the back a nudge, a little affirmation perhaps some deep breaths and then go for it. Just try your best. Okay. Now I wanted to add another suggestion and that If you feel like you would like some more tips to help you get even more unstuck or to know more about how to block yourself from indulging in procrastination and staying still longer, I suggest you revisit episode number two of the podcast. That episode is called The Ultimate Guide to Getting rid of procrastination. And I would also recommend episode number nine, which is how to solve your worry problem. Both of these episodes have a lot of content about what to do when you need to make more time for success. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope it really really helps you. And if you loved this episode, please do me that favor and leave a five star rating and review for the show. I thank you in advance for helping me get the word out about the podcast and for sharing your love for this show with me. And I will see you next Thursday for our next episode. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast.

If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.

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