Welcome to September!
How we got here so fast might be a head-scratcher for a few of us, myself included. Yet here we are.
I like the month of September; some of my favorite people were born in September. In the Northern Hemisphere, it starts to cool off as we prepare for Fall weather. In the United States, we begin American Football (including the religion that is College Football). And we begin to inch toward the holiday season. Most of what I describe sounds like fun to a lot of people. For others, who might not enjoy this time as much, it might sound like filling up your calendar with upcoming, added events – that you may or may not consider fun. Either way, the Fall signals a ramp-up from the relaxed nature of summer calendars.
Which leads me to this month’s focus on taking Action and Accountability.
The picture above is a self-created label that’s stuck to the bottom of the second computer screen in my office. It reminds me to GET INTO ACTION.
I know I’ve written about this before, and certainly if you’re a client, we’ve talked about this before. If we wait until we feel like doing something to take action on it, we will NOT take action on it.
Why is that?
Because, and commit this memory, or make a label for your computer screen:
ACTION CREATES EMOTION
(It’s never the other way around – unless you’re planning an International vacation or something like that. Then your emotions put you into action because you’re excited about vacation! But, come on *|FNAME|*, that’s about the only circumstance. đ§)
There are two kinds of people – those who feel their way into behaviors and those who behave their way into feelings.
I posted on LinkedIn recently that confidence isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision. For many of us, acting confident, even when we don’t necessarily feel so in a particular environment, is a decision. You decide and take action, and you behave your way into feeling confident.
Gratitude is another example of how your actions can influence your emotions. Attempting to practice gratitude or finding something to notice you’re grateful for, when you don’t particularly feel grateful, isn’t being disingenuous. It’s taking action to create the emotion, and that’s a decision.
I illustrate this concept using fitness a lot because that’s my personal Achilles heel. Given the choice of not working out and reading a book instead, I’ll take it every time because I “don’t feel like doing it”! But when I put myself into action, I feel pretty accomplished after I do it. It won’t ever be the other way around, and at this point in my life, I’m okay knowing that about myself.
So why do I bring this up now as we begin the slide into the last four months of the year? Because there will be events, deadlines, stressors, and obligations that you probably won’t “feel” like doing. And I don’t want you to lose time, procrastinate, or delude yourself into waiting for that time to magically appear.
The feeling won’t come, because, and commit this to memory,
EMOTION DOES NOT CREATE ACTION.
ACTION CREATES EMOTION
Begin today. Take ACTION; make a label for your computer screen.
