Take My Advice—I need to begin following it, too

My last post was about paying yourself first—in money AND in action. THAT is really good advice!

However, this is often more easily said than done.

Case in point…

Just yesterday, I never made it to my blog here to post. Why? I was just plainly too busy—doing things for OTHER people.

That’s right! When you take care of other people before yourself, it’s likely you’ll make excuses—and allow them—why you’re not completing (for yourself) what you wanted.

I covered this topic pretty well within my last post.

My point today is that all of us KNOW what to do, and we DO something else.

Why do we don’t we do what we know that we should do?

If you aren’t doing what you “should,” there are several reasons I’ve noticed over time.

No Time: Many people think that they don’t have time to do this. Either you can make time, or you need to determine whether you want to make time to do what you know that you should, or you need to decide that you really do not need to do this.

No Energy: When you are tired, it is easy to skip doing what you need. You also might not be trying to do what you are asking yourself at your peak time of the day. All of us have times throughout the day when we have more energy—and less. We might be trying to set aside time to do what we need to do at our low energy part of our day.

No Skill: We might not know how to do what we need, or we might only know how to do it, but we’re really inefficient. Nobody likes doing work that feels like we’re spending enough energy to push a train across the country yet only making an inch of progress on the track. If something seems easy for us, we’re more likely to do it. See what we can do to get that training.

Not Prioritizing: Even if we really want something, we aren’t always good at making it at or near our top priority. We let other things take priority. If this is something that really needs to get done, you just need to tell yourself that it is a priority and don’t let yourself not do it.

Low Importance: Maybe we are not prioritizing something correctly, or maybe we are. Sometimes, we’re smarter than we think. Often, when we keep putting off something, it’s because we really do NOT want it as badly as we think. We can ask ourselves whether we REALLY want what we keep avoiding. Why are we not doing it? Better yet, WHY do we really want to do this? You’ll be surprised how often we don’t have a good answer. If we don’t, then drop it. Focus on what you really want.

Many people don’t check themselves against these. Almost all people simply chastise themselves over not doing what they supposed to do, but most of these people never take the time or energy to identify why they keep straying.

Check yourself. If you think you know what to do but keep NOT doing it, save yourself the repeated stress. Ask yourself why…and try to learn from it.