Turn Your Thoughts into Action

Do you have big plans for your life? Dreams that you want to turn into a reality? This is often easier than done, especially when you don't know how to start taking action in the first place. Below are some ways to help you more effectively turn your thoughts into actions, no matter how crazy they may be. 

 

Start By Making A Plan

 

Usually, when someone has a plan in their head, it can be a bit chaotic and maybe hard to see exactly how to get there. This is why you should start by making a physical, written-down plan of what you want to do. This will give you a better view of where to go to start. This will also help you to break your goals down into more manageable steps. Don’t think that just because you write a plan that it has to happen exactly that way either, as once you start to take action, you can come back and adjust your plan as needed. 

 

Stop Overthinking Everything

 

One of the reasons you may find yourself unable to turn thoughts into actions is probably because you are overthinking everything. The above step of making a plan should help you to clear up your overthinking a little bit as you write things down. But if it doesn't, other mental relaxation techniques like meditation, talking something out with others, and taking a deep breath can help you stop overthinking. Remember, you aren't perfect, and that isn't what you are trying to achieve, so there is no reason to fret over your mental plan being perfect. 

 

Figure Out What Is Stopping You From Taking Action

 

If you've done the two above steps but still can't seem to turn your thoughts into action, it's time to figure out why. Are you scared of failure? Too distracted? Waiting for the perfect time? Any of these can hold you back as you work to make your thoughts become a reality. If you leave them unchecked, you will never be able to take meaningful action. So once you discover why you can't seem to take action in your life, work through why and eliminate it from your life so that it is no longer a reason. 

 

Turning your thoughts into action is often easier said than done, especially if you aren’t sure where to start and are overthinking everything. The trick is, you need to figure out what is stopping you from turning your thoughts into action, cut out the overthinking, and start following a plan that you have written down—and before you know it, your thoughts will become actions!

 

4 Action Steps to Stop Overthinking Now

Is it bad to think? Sometimes…yes. It is.

 

Anytime we feel stressed about things in our lives, we retreat back into the world of our minds. It’s normal to want to think about the things causing us problems. Sometimes though, this kind of focus can become harmful. We start losing faith in ourselves and even stop making decisions. 

 

What should we do when we’ve fallen into this trap of overthinking absolutely everything? Try this four-step plan to get back on track. 

 

Revisit the Truth

 

Overthinking has a way of pulling you away from the facts. It’s so easy to fall into the world of fallacies and drama when you’re overthinking things. You create worst-case scenarios and get so far from the truth you don’t even know what’s right anymore. By pulling back and asking yourself what is true, what you absolutely know for certain, you get your head out of the clouds and back in the game. 

 

Check Your Emotions

 

Once you know the truth, examine how you feel about this. What are the real emotions connected with this thought? Are you perhaps sidetracking yourself away from something you really don’t want to acknowledge like fear or guilt? This step can seem daunting because you’re really having to be honest with yourself here as you can’t possibly move past this step without a clear understanding of what’s going on.

 

Decide the Impact

 

So, where does all this leave you? By obsessing and denying certain emotions, what possible benefit are you giving yourself? Or, more accurately, what are you holding yourself back from? For example, if you’re obsessing about a job interview gone wrong, you might realize the emotion connected to this event is an embarrassment, or fear because you’re worried you’ve made a terrible impression. The impact? You might not get the job you wanted.

 

Make a New Decision

 

You’ve come this far. Hang in there! The real question at this point is, what will you do going forward? Rather than overthink the interview in the previous example, what can you do instead? Is there some way to salvage the situation? Or is this a learning experience you can apply to future experiences?

 

With these four steps, it’s relatively easy to attack the overthinking monster and pull your thoughts back under control. Once you do, it’s an easy matter to push yourself back into motion, especially once you’ve completed the last step and figured out from it your next best move. 

 

5 Ways to Keep Self-Doubt from Taking Over Your Dreams

If you could do anything, what would you choose?

 

We all have dreams. Every one of us. So why do so few of our dreams ever reach reality?

 

The problem comes when we get in our own way, or when we become crippled with fear of failure and thoughts of we can never be enough. This is the world of self-doubt, and it's a tough place to escape.

 

Until today. It's time to take back your life. Don't let self-doubt take over your dreams. Instead, try these simple tips to get your life back on track. 

 

Take a Trip Down Memory Lane

 

Ready to revisit history? Chances are you've had self-doubts before. But have any of those adverse outcomes ever come true? If so, were the consequences as bad as you'd thought they would be? Now think about the times that things went right. Remind yourself they likely will work out again this time too.

 

Keep a Journal

 

Ideally, a journal becomes a record of everything you've gone through. Write about the problems you're having. Write about how you solve those problems. Include everything. Then go back and read your journal sometimes for a reminder of what you've already gone through. Use this book for ideas on how to tackle the problems of today. 

 

Remember it's Not About You

 

If self-doubt is fuelled by a caustic remark from someone else, or in how someone treats you, take a step back from the emotional backlash. Before you get all fired up, remind yourself this is very likely more about the other person than you. You don't know what kind of day they're having or what they're going through. Take what they say with a grain of salt and move on. There's absolutely no reason to start doubting yourself just because of what someone else happened to say.

 

Readjust Expectations

 

Do you doubt yourself because you feel like you're on the wrong track? Here's where you need to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. There's nothing wrong with making adjustments to the plan. Dreams don't just happen from the initial blueprint. Sometimes you need to tweak things a little, especially if information or situations change. Rather than get hung up when this happens, look for ways to readjust the plan. You'll be back on track in no time.

 

Celebrate Wins

 

Self-doubt hates success. This is why it's so important to get in the habit of celebrating when things go right. It doesn't matter if the progress is small, make a point to enjoy the milestone all the same. After all, you and your dreams deserve it!

 

How Can I Stop Avoiding My Feelings?

In this day and age, individuals are usually encouraged to suppress their feelings and emotions for several reasons. Your job wants you to remain professional, and kids are taught that expressing emotions makes you weak. But all this avoidance of feelings can cause them to fester and grow into serious issues such as anxiety and depression. This is why it is time to stop avoiding your feelings. 

 

Mindfulness

 

The number one tool you can use to stop avoiding your emotions is applying mindfulness to your life. Mindfulness is taking time out of your day to spend with yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings. Mindfulness will teach you who you are as a person and how to accept yourself just the way you are. It can also teach you about how and why you feel certain emotions, and you’ll learn to express them properly instead of burying them within. 

 

Meditation

 

Another easy way to begin to confront your feelings and work through them is through the practice of regular meditation. Medical professionals worldwide simply rave about the health benefits of meditation. Several studies have shown that it can help with even more serious issues such as anxiety and depression. So, it’s time to engage in meditation in your own life daily, so you can spend time processing your emotions in a safe space.

 

Deal With Your Emotions Immediately

 

A common tactic in emotional repression is when you experience something that you resolve to deal with it later. The problem is, you rarely actually end up dealing with it later. This is why it is good practice to decide to work through your emotions when they come around. If someone says something that upsets you, tell them that, right then and there, and then the issue can be resolved immediately. This is much better than burying the pain of the hurtful words until they grow to be something worse when the words may have been a simple misunderstanding. 

 

Overall, it can be a challenging task to learn to stop avoiding your feelings. But if you are going to live a happy and healthy life, you must learn to express your feelings to yourself, and others, in a respectful manner. So, start with a bit of mindfulness, meditation, and immediacy, and soon you’ll find you’ll no longer feel like you need to hide your emotions.

 

Helping Others to Be More Resilient

Are you a resilient person? Are you able to face challenges and not be afraid to do what it takes to solve them? If so, you are a prime candidate to help others do the same. 

 

People are capable of being resilient. However, for one reason or another, they are not. This lack of resilience can prevent them from facing life’s challenges. They will find themselves constantly struggling to stay ahead. As a resilient person, you can guide others to become more resilient. Helping in this way is rewarding, but not without its challenges.

 

When you find someone who is not resilient, you have to try to discover why. Get this person to talk about their lives. Unless you are a trained counselor, however, keep this activity at a high level. Don’t try to pry too much. You can only do so much to help people. They need to take action.

 

If there was a time that you were not as resilient as you are now, try to relate that experience. Think back to what was holding you back and use that as a guide. Also, try to remember how you overcame the problem. Your solutions can be the action steps you present to the people you are helping.

 

Learning how to be more resilient usually requires changes within, but this doesn’t happen overnight. So you will need to be patient. It may never happen, and you need to accept that. Not everyone deals with change the same. Some people cannot handle change at all which means you won’t be able to help them. It’s sad, but there’s not much you can do about it. Simply let them know you are available when they are ready, and leave it at that.

 

Help people accomplish small victories. The victories may be small, but they can set the stage for more challenging tasks later. Instead of trying to tackle something large and difficult, let them tackle something easy. When they see that the effort required wasn’t as bad as they thought, they may be ready for bigger challenges later. It’s okay to keep presenting the smaller ones until they get comfortable. Then you can increase the difficulty of the challenges.

 

When you have helped a few people, you may decide to turn the activity into a business. Many coaching businesses start this way. Of course, if you are just doing it because of the satisfaction of helping others, that is noble as well. It is something that can make you feel good about yourself.

 

Resilience Starts at an Early Age

If you want to be resilient, make sure you start at an early age. If this didn’t happen for you for some reason, don’t worry. You can still help yourself to be more resilient. However, when you start as early as childhood, it becomes part of you to the point where it’s natural.

 

Even if you weren’t taught to be resilient early on, there is no reason why you can’t help your kids become so. The main lesson is to make sure they follow through on whatever they start. Perhaps they want to join a sports team. Don’t let them quit midseason because this sends a bad message not only to your kid, but to the team, coaches, and other parents. Unless there are unforeseen circumstances, require your kid to play the entire season. He or she does not have to take it up again the following year if that is what you want to allow.

 

Kids should follow a routine. When they get in the habit of doing similar activities the same time each day, they will be more likely to complete whatever they are doing. Allocate time for homework as well as play. But, lazy hours should be allowed as well which are different. It’s time that your children can do whatever they please, including playing video games. 

 

When your kids are a bit older, and their subjects are more challenging, encourage them to form study groups. Study groups are a great way to interact with others and to solve common problems together. It also will force the group to complete what they set out to do. They will be resilient when doing this.

 

Set aside time for exercise for you and your kids. You could take them on a hike, or you can play sports with them. It’s a great way to get involved as a family and get the needed exercise for both you and your kids. When people are in good shape, they will be more resilient at many tasks compared to people who are out-of-shape. This resilience includes mental activities as well.

 

Getting a start early in life is a great way for people to become resilient. They get used to following through to the point where it doesn’t make sense not to. It gives them more years to work with, more than if they start out later in life. Also, we know that habits started early in life tend to carry through to adulthood.

Resiliency and Positivity Go Hand-in-Hand

It’s hard to imagine being resilient without being positive. Some people can be resilient in their negativity. However, in the long run, that negative behavior will sap the energy out of them. You cannot thrive for very long in an environment filled with negativity. You will lose resiliency in this environment.

 

When you project a positive outlook, others will follow along. People are attracted to this outlook and will want to make it continue. While some people will be attracted to others who are negative, on the whole, they prefer positive people. When this happens, you will be resilient by bringing others along.

 

When you are positive, you are more likely to look for solutions to problems. When you are negative, you are more likely to look for excuses. How can you be resilient when you are looking for excuses? Nothing will get done which means you will hold yourself (and others) back. Plus, if you are one to look for excuses constantly, others will catch onto this and avoid you. If you do this in your job, it could eventually lead to your dismissal. After being fired from your job, there's no way you can be resilient.

 

Being positive doesn’t mean you should never complain. Sometimes, you need to point out weaknesses where you know they exist. However, positive people tend to offer up alternatives which make them part of the solution. Imagine if several such people offered up alternatives. Solutions would surface quickly, wouldn’t they? Contrast this to excuse makers. They will never find solutions. 

 

It’s believed that people with positive attitudes have a greater chance at beating life-threatening diseases as well. Your body has the best mechanisms available to fight diseases, even better than medications. If you are positive about your outlook, it will set your body to the optimal conditions that should help you battle those diseases. Even if this weren’t true, it certainly is better than being negative, which increases stress. Stress has been proven to block the disease-fighting aspects of your body.

 

Think back to positive and negative times in your life. When were you happier, negative or positive? It’s likely that you chose positive times as being happier. It’s also likely that you were the most productive during this time. By extension, being productive means you were resilient. It all came from that positive attitude.

5 Methods for Stopping Negative Self-Talk in Its Tracks

Imagine this: you’re on your way. You’re about to make some serious progress in something which matters deeply to you when suddenly, there it is. A nasty little inner voice telling you all the ways you’re going to fail.

 

The brakes slam on. Wherever you were on this particular road to realizing your goals, you’re parked now and going nowhere fast. All because of some negative self-talk.

 

Nope. You can’t let it end that way. It’s time to re-write the script and get moving again. It’s the negative self-talk that needs to stop in its tracks, not you. 

 

How? Try these methods for some quick and easy success:

 

Take a Reality Check

 

When you hear the negative thoughts, ask yourself if this is really what the truth of the matter is. Are you ‘always’ late or just ‘sometimes’? Negative self-talk tends to exaggerate.

 

Soften the Blow

 

Try rewording something negative into something a little more passable if you can’t figure out the positive counterpart. Even taking the sting out of the words will help you to feel more motivated. For example, thinking, “I cannot possibly finish on time” might become, “I will finish this project, and even if it’s late, it will be okay because I talked to my boss about it.”

 

Think Like a Friend

 

When you hear negative self-talk, ask yourself if you would talk to someone else in the same way. If not, ask yourself what you would say instead to your friend about the same topic. Practice talking to yourself the way you would to them.

 

Look into the Future

 

Will this really matter tomorrow? Or next week? Or next year? A lot of negative self-talk is focused so much on the here and now. We tend to forget how little these words will matter outside of today. Brush off the things which have no bearing on your future.

 

Stop the Thought

 

Even interrupting your negative self-talk will change the script and force another ending to the story. With this in mind, simply tell yourself to stop when you hear negative thoughts. Force yourself to think about something different. If the negative thinking comes up again, tell it quite firmly to disappear again. Keep doing this until it goes away and stays away.

 

Feeling better now? Hopefully, you’re back up and running. The sky is the limit! Now get moving, and don’t look back.

Reasons We Struggle with Patience

The alarm fails to go off, so you oversleep. Now you are late, and you have a flat tire to make things worse. You know that if one more thing happens, you might explode with some expletives that would make a sailor blush. 

 

Every day, we fight to maintain a sense of calm as the world around us pushes our patience buttons. We may have heard that patience is a virtue, but why is it so hard to be patient? What factors play into our ability to let go of our frustrations and let things roll off our backs? 

 

6 Reasons People Are Impatient

 

Our fast-paced society has us frustrated over small things. Even though we know we need to learn how to be patient, we all still struggle, and here’s why:

 

1.       Our habits are disrupted. Habits offer comfort. They give us a sense of calm in a chaotic world. We become impatient when something comes along and disrupts our typically scheduled patterns.

 

2.       Things are important, but time is running out. You have an important meeting. While you left with plenty of time to get there, delays occurred. You may have a flat tire, or there is an accident on the highway. As the clock hands move closer to the appointment time, your patience grows thinner and thinner.

 

3.       Other people succeed, and we don’t. The comparison trap can cause much upheaval in your life. Seeing others succeed in pursuing their goals while you are stuck in a rut is bound to cause jealousy and some impatience on your part.

 

4.       We feel overwhelmed. Having too much to do leaves many of us feeling overwhelmed. So we move from task to task, working fast and efficiently until someone comes along and tips the apple cart. Now things are stalled, and patience is lost.

 

5.       We don’t see results as fast as we think we should. Let’s say you want to lose weight. You research methods and choose to eat healthier and exercise. You start out great and drop seven pounds your first month. Then you lose two; then none for several weeks. When progress stalls, it is easy to grow impatient.

 

6.       We are tired and hungry. Anytime you are tired, you are likely to lose your patience with others fast. Being hungry has the same effect. 

 

Recognizing why we become impatient is the first step in pursuing a happier life filled with patience. Consider which of these reasons play the most significant factors for you, and then learn how to combat impatience.