Changing Your Actions or Changing Your Thinking

Leadership expert, Brian Moran is quoted saying: “When you focus on changing your actions, you experience incremental performance; when, however, your thinking shifts, everything changes.”

It is a challenge to change negative habits. Although we promise ourselves to change and even create new year resolutions, most of those well intended hopes rarely reach a happy ending. Procrastination is the mother nature of unhealthy habits. We feel a sense of anxiety or frustration when facing the need to complete a task. As a result, we learn to push forward the inevitable chores to the very last minute when there is no other option, but to do it or else.

As creature of habits, our brain learns from these procrastinating experiences. Pushing tasks forward and eventually completing them becomes a successful learned brain experience. It learned that we are eventually able to complete our tasks and procrastinating is ok. However, we look back and often think that we could have done better had we started earlier.

change thinking new mindsetAs Moran says, changes start with having a clear vision of what we want to achieve. Our thinking needs to change. It starts with accepting being uncomfortable and wanting to reach our clearly defined visions.

Secondly, create a plan. Define what you want to achieve and its timetable. Be clear to define what you want to accomplish by when so you are guided by your goals rather than by the day-to-day urgencies.

Thirdly, set your process. This is the “how” you will go about tackling what you want to do for today. Maybe it is to set time aside to complete a specific task or disconnect from distractions until your task is finished. Most of the plans fail to be completed because the “how” was flawed, not the “what.”

Lastly, set time aside for strategic planning. Do not wait to have an unexpected extra time to do strategic planning. Just do the opposite, set aside 10 minutes to go for a walk and strategize your plan.

Take a proactive approach to change your thinking and changes will happen.

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