How To Make Taking Action Feel Effortless

I found that living free is more of a mindset thing than anything else. It’s creating awareness of who you are and where you are before you can figure out and work on where you want to be. If you don’t feel satisfied with who you are and what you are doing at this moment, then you will have to change some things. Making a change is easier said than done though.

There are only so many things you can do

If you don’t take action, your intentions are just a bunch of energy spewed into the endless universe. “Do or do not, there is no try”, like mythical space figure Yoda once said. When I disagree with something, my first instinct was to change the world around me. I found out that’s not possible. The reality is that I am the only person I have control of and it’s way easier to change myself than to change the many people around me.

My biggest problem is that I want to change too many things at the same time.  Before I have even started, I have already lost. I want to eat healthier, wake up earlier, read more, learn to play the guitar, learn to code, etc. I simply can’t do all those things at the same time without burning up my willpower. Once my willpower is gone, basically nothing has been done to satisfaction.

I figured out the hard way that by doing many things half baked, I never really feel satisfied because I don’t actually finish something. However, there are still so many things that I want to do. After I started to prioritize, the needle started moving in the desired direction.

Building small habits is your golden ticket to change

After reading Atomic Habits by James Clear I realized that the trick is to take small steps. When you start with where you want to be, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. When you start with where you are and build from there, you will start getting results. At first, it might feel like if you don’t make any progress. However, when you look back, in the long run, you can connect the dots and see how far you actually have come. Changing habits one by one is the secret ingredient.

You will need about 60 days to turn an old (bad) habit, into a new (good) habit. If you try to change many habits at one time, you will probably run out of willpower after a week. Maybe two if you’re persistent. If you start with one small habit and work on it every day, one day you will do it effortlessly. Probably, that one habit will also inception your own brain to change something else.

If you do things on a daily basis, you will get better at it

Remember, the goal is not to become the best x, the most y, or the richest z. The goal is to figure out what you need to do on a daily basis to gain more self confidence and expand your unique experiences, interests, and skills.

I found that it’s easiest to take ridiculous small steps when I want to do something new on a daily basis. When I set a goal of reading one book a day cold turkey, I am 101% sure I will not finish the goal. However, when I start with reading just one page for three days, I will be a fool if I can’t check that off my daily to do list. Below are some examples of stupidly small daily to do’s I set for myself when I was starting out with changing some habits.

When you are working on a new habit (blog/book) don’t rush yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t set too many goals for one day. On an ideal day, I just have two things I want to accomplish. One work-related goal, and one quality time-related goal. That’s it. Maybe you can go faster than I can. But hey, nobody is perfect.

Now it’s time to jump into the nitty gritty. Below, I’ll give some anecdotes and examples of things I have done to change my mindset to spend my time on what I value the most.