Your Daily Dose: “Inspired Action”

How do you decide where to invest your energy, focus, and time?

If you are like me, you may make a list to start off your day. You add a combination of things you’ll enjoy and things you need to do. Some items you do first, while other items may get left until the end of the day. You may even discover that no matter how many times you add certain things, you repeatedly fail to get them done. When this happens, it can feel disheartening, sap your energy, and make you doubt your capacity to get anything done at all. It’s no fun, and sometimes no degree of willpower will push through it.

I have fallen into this cycle countless times. No matter how hard I push, I can’t seem to be able to generate enough momentum or enthusiasm around a given task to dust it off the list. If I stay in this state for too long, it can turn into a feeling of powerlessness. Fortunately, there is nearly always a solution. But it requires me to stop and think a bit differently about my experience.

When you stop and sink in to your experience, you may realize that your “stuckness” is a sign that there is a better path for you than the one you initially envisioned.

Consider this: For anything to get done, it needs to be worth doing. Open-hearted human beings act from a place of a bigger vision of what is possible.

When you start to rely on your heart to help guide and inform your life, your priorities can begin to shift in a profound way. Doing just for the sake of doing is no longer all that motivating! In my experience, my heart inspires me to create from a deeper source of motivation, from a place of envisioning a reality that truly matters. Once this bigger picture comes into focus, the world often aligns itself so that my “work” can get done with relative ease. The resistance I experienced dissolves, and taking action becomes my natural expression.

If you are struggling to get things done, it may be helpful to ask yourself, “is this f*@!-ing thing on my list really worth doing?” And if it is, but you’re not feeling motivated yet, ask “what would make this thing truly inspiring to me?”

These can be useful questions to journal about for a little bit. Sitting in inquiry for 15 minutes is generally more than enough to get you unstuck. Literally just writing these two questions and a few words on a piece of paper can get your heart and mind thinking in a new and more expansive way about your todo list. Try it out for yourself!

When I practice this myself, I often find there is a little nugget (or sometimes, a very BIG nugget) of joy waiting for me inside the very same thing I had been resisting. It is like my heart wanted me to see a bigger vision for it before my mind would even let me begin. This bigger vision often places my task into a context of service to my community. Once I see how my little mini project can become a powerful form of contribution to the world, it becomes easier for me to tap into my joy and make progress.

Sit in curiosity with the areas you are stuck in your productive life. What arises in you? You may discover a larger vision lying dormant inside you. Once you find it, you can allow this vision to fuel your inspiration and light your afterburners. Your todo list will get completed faster and you’ll be able to spend more time doing things you truly love. Like going to the beach and watching the clouds roll by in the sky.

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