Why Action Beats Motivation Every Time

For years I waited until I had more time, till the kids were older, till I’d figured my shit out before I got started on what I wanted. I didn’t even bother to really think about my dreams and hopes because it felt so utterly irrelevant to my life raising two tiny children without any real help. Looking back on it, I sacrificed my internal world for so long that it got to the point that I stopped even thinking about it. And when I did, I hid behind the title of mum and the fact that I was so busy I couldn’t possibly find the time to waste on whimsy.

Now I know better, now I know that my wants and hopes are not whimsy, or actually they are but in the best possible way. They are every bit as important as exercising, eating healthily- all the things that we consider “looking after yourself” and they deserve to be heard and valued. I was waiting for the perfect time to come, for motivation to magically appear and for me to figure out who the hell I was and what I wanted to do.

Now I know that change doesn’t happen with motivation or beliefs, it happens with action. Action creates change which leads to momentum and to be honest a bit of a kick up the arse. There is nothing more soul destroying than standing still and watching everyone else fly by, doing things and enjoying their lives. I felt stuck for so long, I was convinced I was lazy and useless and that my life could never be anything other than just motherhood and facilitating my husband’s career. Nothing I did seemed to make any difference, the grey just seeped back in and Groundhog day repeated itself again and again. I was purely relying on motivation and I’d have a few great days, doing whatever it was I was doing and then bam, motivation would drop and I’d go right back to existing. I had no structure or accountability, just chaos and a severe lack of self trust. All the times I tried something and gave it up just piled up in my mind and I started to truly believe I could never be anything more. My self abandonment was in full swing and I didn’t even know it.

Identity isn’t something you think your way into. It’s something you build your way into. Repeated actions that you’ve chosen all add up to build evidence in your brain that you are who you want to be. It’s nothing dramatic, it happens so slowly you don’t even notice, which is exactly how you got to this place of feeling so lost you feel grey. Over years of abandoning yourself, you made so many little decisions against yourself that you started to believe you were irrelevant and that you had no more potential. Depressing as that is, the flip side is also true- if you make conscious little decisions every day to choose yourself, you’ll start to find your identity again. It doesn’t have to be anything big, it can be saying yes to a glass of water when you’d normally say no so as not to be a bother- just show yourself that you matter. Because you do. I matter too.

Don’t be put off because you don’t know everything yet- you’ll figure it out along the way. Feeling lost and confused is the perfect place to start because you know you want something to change. Commit to yourself daily, in small achievable ways and find out who you truly I. I can’t wait to see you.