Keep moving forward by hacking your brain
Real progress toward your goals happens whenever you don’t feel like it.
I have proved this over the years in different areas of my life: learning, writing, workouts, coding, and so on.
After having been running for thirty days straight, one day I woke up, and I didn’t feel like running at all.
The exact same behavior happened after I had been writing thirty minutes for fifteen days straight.
It is probably you have faced a similar experience trying to accomplish your goals. If not, I bet you will at some point.
What I didn’t know is the fact that in those exact moments is when you get real progress. This timing is crucial to keep moving forward toward your goals.
In order to get through this challenging timing, you will need to leverage the following ways of thinking.
Starting thinking small — hack your brain
Everything you think becomes true. When something you don’t feel like it your brain forces you to act in that direction.
A little and underestimate action is to start out thinking small. This means to hack your brain.
By doing this, you are turning something that scared your brain into something lighter and less dangerous to it.
Put it simply, if your workout session means to run 4km, you should say, “Ok, today I will just run 1km”.
If you are a writer like me and if you usually write for 1 hour. You can say: “ Today I will write for 15 minutes, no more”.
Just after such a thought, your brain will approve your decision.
You hacked it. The goal of this way of thinking is just to get started.
Embrace and clap your little progress
Getting started when you don’t feel like it is the most crucial step to keep moving forward. Yet, it’s just half of the battle.
You are now 10,100 meters ahead. You are now 10, 50, 100 words more than the beginning.
At this time, the good news is the fact that your brain has released
The good news at this point is the fact that your brain has increased dopamine levels, so you have a fuel you didn’t have at first.
Embrace and clap yourself with this little progress. You are more motivated and excited to keep going.
Leverage on momentum
“Momentum solves 80% of your problems.” — John C. Maxwel
Finally, you have built momentum. You have built motion. You have got into the flow.
Those days when I didn’t feel like it, were the days where I ran more kilometers, wrote high-quality masterpieces faster.
But, I did achieve more than that. The most crucial lesson was the belief I sowed into my brain: I can achieve anything. I can keep moving on the dark days.
Ending Thoughts
Getting progress toward your goals when you don’t feel like it is really hard.
If you are like me who enjoys pushing yourself to be a better self, you have probably experienced the feeling of didn’t feeling like it to keep going.
Having said that, you should implement a few hacks to get through it.
Start by thinking small. Fool your brain that doing tiny things will be fine. It will trust you.
Clap yourself when you are in the middle of battle.
Finally, leverage on momentum. Your brain has released dopamine. The fuel you didn’t have at the beginning.
I hope this turned out to be helpful for you. Thanks for reading. Share your thoughts in the comment section. See you in the next piece.