In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo that he is trying to free his mind. He reminds him that he can only show him the door, and that he must choose to walk through it.

Have you ever looked for solutions, studied books, asked for help, and still felt stuck? This is especially common in the self-help industry. We want to improve our lives. We want to change something. Yet, we are stuck. We have all the information, but nothing is changing.

What’s missing?

Taking action. You can read as much as you can. You can buy all the books on self-help. You can watch every YouTube video about self-help. You can read every post on this blog. However, unless and until you take action, nothing is going to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

4 Things to Consider When Taking Action

Take a Break from Learning

After a point, learning new information becomes useless. What use are 10 more revolutionary diet plans, if you haven’t even tried one yet? What good is learning 100 more strategies for growing rich, if you haven’t even tried one? Learning more is often a means to avoid the discomfort of taking action. We feel productive when we learn more information, and that helps us fool our brains in thinking we are doing so much. This helps us feel secure, safe, and comfortable. However, in reality we are just consuming information that’s utterly useless until we apply it. Like Walter said to Jesse in Breaking Bad, “Apply yourself.”

When we stop learning, we have to face the harsh truth: that we aren’t doing anything, and if we want to actually grow or change something, we have to take action.

Motivation Comes from Action

Are you waiting to feel motivated before you take action? Let me tell you a secret: you might as well stop waiting and give up because that motivation will never come. Motivation comes from action. When you take the first step, you get momentum, and that momentum leads to motivation. If you wait until you feel ready, you will never do it.

Think about waking up in the morning. For most of us, we don’t feel like getting out of bed. Why would we? It’s comfy. It’s cozy. It’s easy. But if we take that first step to swing our legs out of bed, the rest gets surprisingly easy.

The same goes for hitting the gym. Have you ever dreaded going to the gym, but once you get there, you get a burst of energy you didn’t know you had?

Motivation comes from action, so take the first step. It can be a small step, but start the momentum in the right direction, and it will carry you.

Ditch the Perfectionism

One of the biggest reasons we like to keep learning and not actually doing is perfectionism. Until we know everything, until we believe we can do it perfectly, until we have the perfect strategy, we don’t take action. But what if we realize that there is no perfect way or perfect strategy? We spend so much time preparing, researching, agonizing over the end result instead of doing something. The more you do, the better you will get.

Consistency

Maybe you have taken some action. Maybe you tried a diet for a day, and it didn’t work.

The key here is to take consistent action. Persevere. This is what separates successful people from others. They don’t give up or stop when things get uncomfortable or difficult. You have to be consistent when you take action.

If you find that your strategies aren’t working, that’s okay, try another one. You are gaining incredible knowledge about what doesn’t work. And that is more information that you have than someone who isn’t taking action at all. 

Remember, people can guide you. Books can teach you. Research can prepare you. And these are all great things. But nothing will happen until you apply what you learn and take action. At the end of the day, the responsibility is yours. Just like Morpheus says to Neo, “I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it.” So are you ready to take the leap and walk through the door?

Have you ever felt like you’re behind? Or that you have to hurry up and get everything you want, because otherwise life will fly by and you will be too old to accomplish the rest of your dreams?

We often get caught up in time, age, and deadlines. In our twenties, we feel like we have to live it up, go on every adventure as possible, and build the foundation of an amazing career. We feel rushed, because God forbid, we reach thirty and we haven’t progressed like we “should”. When we are thirty, we need to hit other milestones like be married, have a house and have children. We have to go on all the family vacations we want because soon the kids will move out. If we have an idea for a business or want to change our careers or want to move across the world, we rule it out because we are “too old”.

Although we live our lives according to time, time is just a construct and age is just a number. We have unlimited time to be whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to be.

Age is Just a Number

Society is full of rules and conventions that tell us what we can and can’t do. Some of them, like international laws and rules at school, help us live in a civilized and organized manner. Others, however, are less beneficial. We tend to create an idea of “normal”, especially with respect to age, and judge anyone who deviates from this. However, age is just a number. Someone in their fifties can be more youthful in spirit than someone in their twenties. Age is no reason to do or not to do something.

The moment you stop letting your age define you, you will unlock a new sense of freedom. If you want to travel the world, what’s stopping you? If you want to switch careers, don’t waste more time telling yourself you are too old! Don’t let age define you or hold you back. Do what makes you happy.

You Never Know How Much Time is Left

I’ve said this many times on this blog: Your time here is limited. If you believe you can do everything and anything as a twenty-one-year-old, what is stopping you as a sixty-one-year-old? You never know how much time you have left, even as a young person. Anything can happen tomorrow. The only difference is that the twenty-one-year-old believes they have time. But do they? None of us know how much time we have and we are all perishable items.

Every Moment is a New Opportunity

Whatever you have done until this moment is the past. The beauty in each new moment is that it is just that: a NEW opportunity. You don’t need to wait for a new year, a new month, or even a new day to change something. You can change it NOW. Tired of feeling sad? Think of something happy right now! Tired of procrastinating? Take action now!

The truth is, life is happening now and you cannot afford to live in potential for the rest of your life. If you dream of doing something radical and being someone different, but you feel like you are out of time, take action now. Age is just a number, and every moment is a new opportunity. It’s never too late to start right now.

We all wish we could go back and change something that happened in our past, but we also know that there’s no way we can time travel (at least at this point in time). So, rather than focusing on the past, what if we shifted our focus to altering our present to bring about a better future?

No matter how much we wish we could change the past, it is more beneficial for us to live in the present so that we can make a better future for ourselves.

The Problem with Dwelling on The Past

Dwelling on the past is problematic for several reasons including the following:

The Story Stays the Same

First and foremost, focusing on the past is futile. There is no way to go back and change something that already occurred, so dwelling on what has already passed just prevents us from moving on.

You Miss Out on the Present Moment

When you live your life reflecting on the past, you miss what is happening directly in front of you. You miss opportunities, relationships, and positive moments.

It Makes Us Feel Stuck

Living in the past can also cause you to feel stuck in life. It brings about feelings of anxiety and leads you to feel helpless about improving your situation.

How to Focus on Changing your Future

Before we get into some tips for changing your future, there is an important distinction to make. Focusing on changing your future is different from living in the future. Living in the future is often brought on by anxiety and causes people to worry about what is yet to come. Changing your future requires living in the present and actively working to improve your life for the better.

Here are some ways that you can get your head out of the past and start working towards a better future.

Try New Things

When you start making changes to your life, you should try new things. Trying new things is a great way to expand your horizons and begin to figure out what you want in your life and what you don’t. You also might gain a new passion along the way.

Be Okay with Change

Change isn’t always easy, and some people struggle with it more than others. In order to make any kind of change in your life, you have to give yourself permission to change.

Find Meaning in Everything You Do

Making a better future for yourself involves finding meaning and purpose in your life. Everything you do should have a meaning. If you can’t find meaning in a certain part of your life, maybe it isn’t right for you.

Set Goals

I cannot preach the value of goal setting enough. Goals are so important to improving your life because they give you something to work towards and they give you the motivation to get there. Try working on one goal at a time and hold yourself accountable to stay on track. You’d be surprised how many goals you can achieve in a year’s time.

Living in the present is what allows us to focus on changing our future rather than letting the past rule our lives.

When you’re facing a tough challenge, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, frightened, and helpless. Even if you have made it through tough challenges before, you still might feel uncertain about your ability to pull it off again. You may find yourself frozen in fear, uncertain of your next step. Or you might do the opposite and start scrambling to find a solution.

While both of these reactions can be helpful at times depending on the circumstances, there is another approach that usually works much better, no matter the nature of the challenge.

The first thing that is often helpful is to shift your perspective of the challenge. When the challenge first appears, it may seem big and scary, or even threatening to your very well-being, which of course triggers a fearful reaction. But if you can pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and consider the challenge before you. Remind yourself that you can choose to view it in a different way.

You can choose to see it as a threat, or as a scary situation that you have no power to change, or you can choose to see it as an opportunity to test your strength, determination, and confidence in your own abilities. Even if you still feel uncertain about those abilities, at least acknowledging that there are multiple perspectives to consider can often help you to feel calmer.

Next, surrender to the existence of the challenge in your life. You may feel some initial resistance to that idea but remind yourself that surrender is not the same thing as defeat. The harder you fight against something, the more of your energy you give away to it, and it will often start to seem even scarier, stronger, and more prevalent in your life.

When you decide to stop fighting and simply surrender to the present reality with calm acceptance, you immediately open pathways for solutions to flow in. Surrendering does not mean resigning yourself to the problem or challenge, but rather withdrawing your energy from it. This alone can release massive amounts of resistance and shift your entire perspective in how you approach finding a solution.

From this inner state of calm detachment, you can then tap into your inner strength and creativity, which can yield many possible ways to navigate through or around the present challenge. Tapping into your inner strength is as simple as turning your attention inward and connecting with the light at your center. As you focus inward, you may feel a sense of warmth flooding through your body, or you might even see a mental image of brilliant light radiating from your center.

However you experience it, allow a sense of quiet strength to fill you. Remind yourself that you are never helpless, never lost, never truly stuck. Recognize that the challenge you are facing is nothing more than a momentary pause on your journey, and if you will simply accept it with patience and grace, you will draw forth the strength to not only bear it but overcome it with ease.

Do you often spend a good amount of your time pursuing and obtaining things that you think will make you feel happier? It may be more money in the bank, comfort and convenience, better living conditions, or prestige and accolades. There’s no doubt that these things can make you feel good for a little while. But before you know it, you’re feeling a gnawing sense of emptiness and you’re off to find the next thing that will make you feel happy again.

You may have heard before that happiness is a state of mind, but you might struggle to believe it since there is usually a clear correlation between the conditions of your life and the way you feel. When certain conditions in your life are troubling, it’s hard to feel happy. Likewise, when you are lacking something that you need or want, you probably feel frustrated and deprived. It certainly seems as though your outer conditions have a big impact on your ability to feel happy.

But what if it’s not so much having those outer things that makes you feel happy, but rather just the act of focusing on them? On the opposite side of that same coin, what if focusing too much on the things you don’t have, or the troubling aspects of a certain situation is what actually causes your feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction?

Try this experiment over the next few days: Focus as much as possible on things that make you feel uplifted, inspired, grateful, and blessed. Look at your life and the world around you and notice how much beauty, abundance, and goodness is all around you. Think about the good things that you would like to experience in the future, without needing to have them right now. Simply take pleasure in the ideas because it feels good to dream and imagine.

If your thoughts begin to veer into negative territory and you start feeling frustrated or focusing too much on lack, gently let those thoughts go and ask yourself, “What can I focus on that would make me feel happier right now?” Then focus there for a few minutes.

Within a short period of time you should be able to see clearly that your feelings of happiness or unhappiness are not dependent on any particular conditions in your life, or on the amount of material abundance that you have. Instead, you will know that your deliberate focus on happy subjects is the only true source of your happiness.

This is so empowering to know because outer conditions are fleeting. Objects come and go, people come and go, and conditions change constantly. It is futile to base your sense of happiness on any of these things. But your conscious awareness is something that you can never lose. As long as you are awake and aware, you have the ability to focus your thoughts on whatever you wish. And the direction of your focus, whether positive or negative, will inspire feelings that match. Whenever you notice that you are feeling unhappy, see it as a sign that you have been focusing too much in a negative direction and do what you can to turn it around again.

This famous quote spoken by Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) was said at the end of Back to the Future Part 1 and in the beginning of Back to the Future Part 2.

Doc makes a grand entrance in Marty’s driveway with his Delorean time machine. He tells Marty and his girlfriend that they must go with him into the future. He says it concerns their children. They agree and while in the time machine, Marty cautions that they have to back up because they don’t have enough road to get up to 88mph. And to that Doc replies, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

I think it is safe to say that Doc Brown isn’t afraid to be different and do his own thing. He doesn’t care about what other people think. He isn’t afraid of failure or ridicule. He just wants to change the world and time travel.

Steve Jobs has been noted for saying two things that have resonated with me through the years. And it fits Doc Brown’s mentality.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

And

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

No matter what they tell you, you don’t have to stay within the lines. Take risks and be different. Don’t be afraid to fail a bunch of times until you find the one way something can work. Anything is possible if you have enough nerve.

Do you tend to seek others’ approval when making decisions? Most people look to others to validate their decisions because they are not confident in their ability to make decisions on their own.

However, we shouldn’t need this validation. We need to learn to have confidence in our decisions. Because the more that we love our decisions, the less we will need others to approve of them.

Continue reading to learn the consequences of seeking others’ approval and how to have more confidence in your own decisions.

The Consequences of Seeking Approval

We often seek approval from others because we don’t want to be disliked or judged for the things we do in our lives. We think that if other people approve of what we do, we must be doing the right thing. But this often leads us down a path that isn’t best suited for us. There are consequences to constantly seeking approval.

Going Down the Wrong Path

When we make decisions based on the need for others’ approval, we can lead ourselves down a path that isn’t meant for us. We turn down perfect opportunities and accept jobs, relationships, or lifestyles that we don’t necessarily want or enjoy.

Living Your Life for Other People

There are a lot of people who live their lives for other people, meaning they let others’ opinions dictate every move they make. This might be a specific person they seek approval from (a parent, significant other, friend, etc.), or it might be to please society in general. Again, living your life for other people can prevent you from living the life you actually want to live.

Can Cause You to Lose Yourself

Seeking validation for too long can cause you to lose who you truly are. It can alter the way you act, the way you treat other people, your passions, and your lifestyle. Losing who you are can also lead to mental health problems including depression, lack of self-confidence, and anxiety.

How to Have Confidence in Your Decisions

Having confidence in your decisions and not relying on the approval of others is possible, but you need to be willing to make a few changes. Here are three ways you can start improving your ability to love the decisions you make for yourself.

Understand that the Desire for Approval is Normal

The first step is to understand that it is normal to want others to approve of our decisions. Everyone wants to be liked, and that desire can be difficult to overcome. Accepting that this desire is normal can help you begin to break away from needing validation.

Make Decisions for Yourself and No One Else

The second step is to make decisions for yourself based on what you need and want. Obviously, you should be considerate of other people your decision may affect, but you should also avoid making a choice because another person wants you to make that choice.

Always reflect on your options and identify what you really want before even thinking about what other people might expect you to do.

Have Self-Compassion

The third and final step is to have some self-compassion. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone makes decisions that don’t end up working out in the end. You need to be okay with making a wrong decision and not get down on yourself when something doesn’t go right.

Remember, learning to make decisions without the approval of others can be challenging, but making decisions on your own ensures that you live the life you were meant to live.

This quote comes from Nirvana’s song Dumb. Fans have read a lot into Cobain’s lyrics, but the truth is, he was an admittedly “lazy” lyric writer. He focused on creating rather complex and brilliant intricate melodies and sounds in the music. And he would often write the lyrics at the last minute, and he said they didn’t have much meaning. He preferred that people draw their own conclusions about the meaning of his music. And that really is the beauty of music, isn’t it? The same music can mean radically different things to people.

But I love the line in this song, “The sun is gone, but I have a light.” To me, the light can mean anything. It can be escaping through substances, or it can mean resiliency. It can mean even in the darkest of times, you can choose to be a light.

When you refuse to be overtaken by the darkness, you build resiliency. Only in overcoming these challenges can we learn that we can do it and how incredibly resourceful we are. I wrote a previous post about steps you can take to increase your own resiliency here.