Avoid this mindset trap in order to take clearer action

Have you ever started planning out your future, only to think about how you’ve handled related tasks in your past?

An example.

You’re a student going into the spring semester and you’re planning ways that you can stay engaged with your school work and studying to ensure you get a desirable GPA. As you start listing out the ways you’re going to achieve this for the upcoming semester, you start to think about why you didn’t execute on these strategies in the fall...you were going to go to the library in the evenings, but joined an intramural soccer team instead...after all, that is good for your health. That study group that met every Thursday afternoon was a great concept, but your new friends were off from class at that same time so you went to the student center with them, because after all, social interactions are important.

Now in the scenario above I am not trying to say that the two reasons for not following through on your desired actions are not important, they totally are. Rather, what I am trying to shine a light on is that you’re justifying past attempts that never came to fruition.

You’re entering a trapped mindset.

Let's jump back into another example.

I am trying to make a couple moderate lifestyle changes. I sit down and plot out ways that I can increase my step count, create consistent training times in my schedule, and simplify my grocery list to buy better options for at home. While I am doing this my mind starts to move into each scenario on my list and why that concept won’t work as intended. My work schedule is too inconsistent for my training times, I don’t have the time to spare to walk extra distances, and my cooking skills aren’t up to par regardless of what I buy at the grocery store.

Boom. It’s happening again. I start to move away from finding ways to be proactive towards current and future action and move into a mindset that justifies why I am delayed in making these changes...I am now avoiding taking that clear step forward.

So what the hell do you do now?

The changes you’re making are too advanced for what you feel comfortable doing. Structured training times might not be in the cards, where maybe you do just need to track those steps and focus on getting over the 7,000 or 10,000 marker with consistency.

An extension from the above...you may not have boiled down your action into the easiest step for you. Having dedicated training times is great, but do you know what you’re doing during that time? Having a grocery list is awesome, but do you know what you’re going to cook? Having and executing on your plan are two very different things. Plan for execution, don’t plan just to plan…

Your past justifications appear as a superior action, although they are not. Our own ideas are always the best ideas, that’s why they are our ideas, right? In this case, we have an internal bias that is telling us that we are making the right decision. In essence, we are talking ourself out of it, before even getting started. When that negative self-talk appears (even though it’s a positive justification), give yourself a time frame to complete it. “I’m going to try this for 7 days and see how it goes…” is way better than “nah, this ain’t it”.