The price of inaction

One of our readers, Iva Agnes, makes a wonderful point about what happens when people wait to feel ready before changing some behavior in their lives that is not working for them. Iva said:

Dr. Jacobs, You make an excellent point about positive thinking vs taking action. I kept waiting to start feeling positive about changing and all that happened was that I got more anxious and guilty about how I wasn't changing. Then I couldn't even think about the problems I needed to change because it made me feel so bad, I just wanted to avoid the whole thing.

Iva is right. You can wait forever and never feel ready to move ahead. But all that procrastinating accomplishes is keeping you stuck, tense and very likely, like Iva, feeling guilty for not getting started. Not feeling ready to break with an old way of acting is a normal feeling. We're all wary of the unknown, and change is about the unknown. The trick is to understand that nothing terrible will happen if you go against that feeling and force yourself to start acting differently.

As I explain in my book Take-Charge Living: How to Recast Your Role in Life...In Six Acts, feelings are not facts. They feel like facts because they are so alive and seem so compelling. But feelings that get in your way of personal progress usually turn out to be built on unfounded fears. You have to defy those fears to convince your brain that you can change. I know that is exactly the opposite of the way most people think it works. The reality is, you have to act differently first, and you will feel ready and better afterwards.