I’ll like to credit Alvin for this post coz it’s actually an add-on to the last post he made (writing it under comments will be too darn long). I highly recommend that you read that first.

If you’re still reading this before you’ve read his post, I insist that you go ahead and do it now. It’s only appropriate that you do so in order to better appreciate the message you rightly deserve.

OK?

You’ve read ‘A Way to Get out of Inaction’?

If you haven’t, please indulge yourself and read Yezhong’s earlier post and pay special attention to the concept of and identifying your Precursor to Failure. Read them here and here.

If you are wondering where I’m leading you to…you’re right, here you are the smarter ones.

(NLP practitioners out there, check out the scope/punctuation/phonological/syntactic ambiguities in the last sentence. d-:)

The smart ones move on…that’s right.

The only dumb-dumb we have got left behind and it feels good to be you, right? If you feel clueless about feeling good, it’s time that you re-Visit this little space.

If you somehow are the one who finally got through and kinda feeling a little off-balance right now. Use this.

It’s imperative that you’ve visited all the links, as you will find out when we move along.

In Alvin’s post, we discover how we can ask a small, simple yet specific question and follow that up with an actionable step that serves as propulsion.

Preceding that, we have to first have the self-awareness that we are heading towards being struck with inaction. It’s ironic that we can end up being frozen when things start heating up, isn’t it? It’ll be good if we can even arrest inaction even before it begins. The cause of allowing things to pile up is where a lot of people are receiving coaching about. This could range from lack of awareness, procrastination, poor time-management, etc.

All in all, awareness plays the most pivotal role: if you are sitting on your hands, you gotta know it’s under your own butt. OK, just to address the not-so-empowered-yet, you will be…wanting to scream out “Duhh…my hands are under my boss’, spouse’s, in-laws’, kids’,….OK you get the drift and I’m not being naughty here, are you?

Yeah, I know how paradoxical this is going to sound…but truly and bless my heart if you don’t agree…and as the NLP people among us will already noticed by the title of this post (and you would’ve noticed by now, won’t you?), the solution is in the problem itself.

“Now wait a minute!”

“Whoa…Pete hold your horses!”

“Huh?”

“What the…?”

The Solution is IN the Problem itself.

“Huh?” (Again)

“The Solution is IN the Problem itself?”

Yeah.

The Solution is IN the Problem itself!!

The Way to Get Out of Inaction is to Get IN Action.

That’s right,my friends, it’s that simple. Just need to create that little space from inaction to get in action.

The butt on your hands doesn’t budge, one or the other has to give that little nudge.

Newton’s Law, right? An object at rest will always be at rest (until a force is applied on it).

In this blog, you can find loads of strategies to propel you in action, peruse all the articles so far. One of the things Life Coaches do, in fact it’s a pretty strong hidden theme in NLP too, is we get people UNSTUCK.

Being aware of our failure patterns (the doomsayer says Path to Destruction, Yezhong says Precursors to Failure), we know that cluttering up our physical and emotional space is like building a time bomb or turning up the heat in the pressure cooker. Either way, you’ll be cooked.

One of the ways (and we’re going to share more) to becoming clutter-free is what Alvin described here.

One way to minimize the negative self-speak. You can learn to do that by choosing to speak a Personal Mantra for example: “Just do it!”, “All I need is a small step forward.”, “How do you eat an Elephant? Part by part of course!!”

In NLP, we often identify patterns, and then either reinforce them or break them. Here’s your coaching assignment if you find yourself currently in the self-induced or otherwise stuck mode:

GAIN AWARENESS. This is not just about before you get stuck. Assuming you are already coached through planning, values-alignment, time-management and goal-setting. When you unconsciously get stuck, it’s the coach’s role (even if you are playing your own) to remind you to wiggle your fingers a little and the butt will be AWARE that it is weighing down on something. Conversely, I can get you to shift your position so that the pressure on the hands will be shifted such that they will be AWARE that they are being sat on!!

DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!! You want to change something in your life. It’s common for people we coach to miraculously develop temporary amnesia or paralysis of taking an actionable step like Alvin described. Inaction are learnt, a result of habits and we are always unaware of them. During coaching, I have even come across people who will sit on their hands when asked to access what some of these habits are. So being solution-focused, I usually suggest that they have to start by doing things a little differently to train up their unconsciousness to the notion of change. Not big items but small ones like, wearing the other shoe first, buttoning top to bottom instead , cream before sugar while making coffee.

Doing small things differently is a powerful and much under-rated pattern interrupt to the unconscious negative patterns in our life. If you want to change something, do something different. Let me assure you that you’ll find yourself not only in action, you’ll see new possibilities coz you already primed yourself to move out that old frame that was you.

GET IN ACTION!! If you lift your butt a little higher, the hands get a better chance to get in action. If you press your hands down a little harder, there’s a better chance for the butt to lift off.

Don’t take my word for it. Test it out. OK?

Wiggle your fingers.