I know you came here to get the latest time management tools, the newest goal-setting strategies, and science-packed productivity tips. Don’t worry, I promise to deliver. But before you go away to use them, I want to challenge your way of thinking.
Why?
Because you can have all the tools in the world, but if you don’t know how to use them, they don’t give you what you want. Or even worse, ask yourself this: how many tools do you have but never used?
In the last six months, I must have learned tens if not more productivity tools, but to be frank, I forgot them all. And I thought that was the reason why my productivity sunk.
You see, I am an action-orientated person. I understand that to move forward, to achieve my goal, I need to act. I need to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
So, I immersed myself in doing.
And I kept on doing, using newer tools and searching for the latest hacks. Because my doing was not producing the results I wanted.
If you feel stuck with your wellness, if you want to lose weight, but can’t. If you want to spend more time with your kids but are unable to find a spare moment. If you signed up for the gym but gave up the second week in, then we need to talk.
But before we start, are you part of my community? Join my newsletter to get the latest action steps on how to eat a healthy plant-based diet, de-stress, manage your time better, prioritize yourself, and anything in between so that you INCREASE your energy, SAVE time and INVEST well in your wellness!
Are We All Insane?
Neuroscience teaches us that our brain will do anything to protect us. It is its way to ensure the survival of the species. But this also means that you keep doing the same thing over and over again even if it doesn’t work.
Think about a moment in your life when you did something and didn’t get the desired outcome. But somehow you did it again, just to get the same unhelpful result.
Maybe you went on a keto diet, but after a while, you went back to eating potatoes, and the weight came back. And then, after weeks of struggle and self-loathing, you mastered the motivation and energy and went yet again on another diet.
The definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and expect a different result. And to be frank, I have been on the verge of insanity lately. I kept doing the same tasks over and over again and expecting different results!
Talking about insanity, right?
So, how can you get yourself out of the funk? How can you get a different result? How to find the spark to change the ways you do something?
There is one word for it, and that is honesty.
How Honest Are You?
You may be surprised that I suggest honesty as a goal setting, productivity, and time-management tool, but trust me. Once you adopt the mindset of honesty, you will reach the stars.
I have been browsing through some of the biggest names in the industry and their values and I was surprised how often the value of honesty comes up. But is this what they really mean?
Do they really want us to say how things really are?
Maybe one of your values is honesty as well, but you have all those rules attached to it. Have you ever told your kids you want them to be honest, but when they came to you and said they did something naughty you got upset?
Or maybe you wanted honesty from your partner but when they told you they forgot about something, you got angry at them?
We do want honesty but on our own terms.
Don’t feel bad about it. I just recently caught myself doing the same. I wanted to be honest about why I felt stuck, but I realized I had a rule attached to every statement I made.
All the motivational gurus out there will tell us to look for the positives in life, and I am not arguing with that. The only way to move forward is to acknowledge the good things in your life. But what I want you to do is to be brutally honest with your life right now.
Without the pink glasses, the rules you invented, and the filters you put.
How to Boost Your Mental Wellbeing
Be raw about what is not working in your life and wellness right now. Put it in a single sentence without the ‘but’. Use the simplest words you can find and omit the fluffy adjectives.
If you put on weight, be honest with yourself and say you put on extra kilos. If your business is not working, say you didn’t put in the hard work. If your relationship is not working, say you lost passion for it.
You may be thinking that insanity obscures my judgment, but you can fix something only when you know it needs fixing. When you come up with different scenarios of why something is not going the way you want, or why you are feeling stuck, you look for justifications.
You see our tendency is to keep doing what is familiar to us. But the true action is to pause, assess, be honest with ourselves, and pivot. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what tools you have if you are using them the wrong way.
Being honest with yourself doesn’t mean beating yourself up about why something didn’t work out the way you wanted. It doesn’t mean pointing out all the failures, and valleys, and criticizing yourself.
Being honest means having a clean slate and seeing things as they are. Because this is your starting point. Sometimes you need to scale back and understand your true position in order to move forward.
Where Are You in Life?
When I sat down and took a real assessment of why I felt stuck and why things weren’t working for me, I felt invigorated. It gave me power because I could see in black and white what needed to be done.
Remember stress, overwhelm, and eventually burnout sneaks in because you are lacking clarity. You say too many yes-es, and too few no-s, and your boundaries are blurry. The only way to change the way you feel is by streamlining your focus.
And to do that, you need to be honest.
There may be many reasons why you got stuck, why you tried something, and it didn’t work out. You can spend hours and hours overanalyzing what internal or external factors brought you to this moment.
But to make a meaningful change you need to bare it all.
So, how do you do it?
First, find a quiet space, take your journal, and don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Ask yourself what is not working in your life right now.
What would you like to change? Where do you feel stuck? What area or areas of your life, health, or wellbeing are bringing you pain or sadness? What is going on in your life right now that you know can’t stay this way?
Keep on writing. Take it out of your mind and onto a paper. Make it black and white so there is no turning back. This process may seem uncomfortable, but growth never happens in your comfort zone.
Second, write down what could have brought you to this situation. What did you keep doing over and over although it wasn’t bringing results? What have you tried, and it didn’t work? What were you afraid to let go?
What are you doing that you know you need to stop?
Remember, you want to avoid going insane again.
A Way to Move Forward
After being honest about your current situation, and the reason why you may feel stuck, it’s time to create a forward plan. The aim of being honest is to get you moving. It is to create that starting point.
It is a foundation you will build on.
How are you going to change what is not working in your life, health, or wellness? What actions do you need to take to move forward? Who do you need to contact? What resources do you need?
What is the first step you can take right now?
How to Be Honest
I can see that we all want honesty, but we rarely use it in the way it was intended. When you attach terms and conditions to how things really are in your life you feel stuck.
Being honest means seeing things as they truly are. Without the bells and whistles. Is it scary to stare honesty in the eyes? Of course, it is.
It takes courage, resilience, and true bravery to do that. You must be vulnerable, and in the process, you may discover things you never wanted to admit out loud.
But to change the way you feel and act, to move forward and get unstuck you need to come out of your comfort zone. You need to be honest. And let that honestly boost mental wellbeing, elevate you and create the life you deserve.
Join my newsletter to get the latest action steps on how to eat a healthy plant-based diet, de-stress, manage your time better, prioritize yourself, and anything in between so that you INCREASE your energy, SAVE time and INVEST well in your wellness!
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