Attractive Attraction

Balancing thought and action is a challenge for many people, especially those who are self-employed. How much time should you spend thinking vs. doing? We hear things like, “failing to plan is planning to fail,” implying that careful thought must govern all action. But then there are also the cries of, “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” pressing for immediate action.

How do you know when to think vs. when to act? Where’s the point of balance between analysis paralysis on the thinking side and excessive impulsivity on the action side?

It seems clear you need a good balance between the two, especially when running your own business. Both are important.

I used to have this problem of wondering whether I was overacting and under-thinking or over-planning and under-acting, but the problem ceased to exist when I shifted my perspective on a different level. Now it feels to me that thought and action are more similar than they are different. One is a mental action; the other is a physical one.

I think the feeling of imbalance between thought and action is itself a symptom of a greater internal incongruence. You think you need to balance the two when they’re both taking you in different directions. You think in one direction but act in another.

It’s easy to fall into this state of imbalance when you experience a moderate perspective shift in your thinking, but your past momentum still rules your actions. So you keep working under your previous paradigm but thinking under your new paradigm. That’s when you’ll begin feeling a division between thought and action. You get results from both, but each is taking you in a slightly different direction. So you end up constantly questioning which is the right way to go. It seems like a conflict between thought and action, but if you look deep enough, you’ll see it’s really a conflict between two paradigms the old and the new.

I think the most common case would be when your thoughts take you in a new direction, while your actions are rooted in old habits. But it could also be the other way around, where your behavior shifts to something new, and your thoughts have yet to catch up. That can happen when your external environment forces a behavior change you move to a new city, switch jobs, enter a new relationship, etc. Your mental model of who you are hasn’t yet integrated the full extent of your new environment.

So while you can view a conflict between thought and action as causing a lack of clarity in your life, I think it’s more likely that the opposite is true a lack of clarity creates a perceived conflict between thought and action.

Thought and action can be perceived as two different dimensions of who you are: the mental you and the physical you. But there are other dimensions as well: the emotional you and the spiritual you. So one way to break through a perceived impasse between thought and action is to consult your other dimensions of emotions and spirit to see the situation from other perspectives. What do your feelings say about the conflict? What does your conscience tell you?

When you put all four of these dimensions together and collect input from all of them: the physical you, the mental you, the emotional you, and the spiritual you, you now have a lot more information about the problem, seeing all four sides instead of just two. Ultimately this allows you to envision a higher-level solution where all four of these “yous” can become congruent, all pointing in the same direction. And this will allow you to transcend the original problem entirely.

Albert Einstein said that the greatest problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them. The problem of a perceived conflict between thought and action cannot be solved at the level of thoughts and actions. You need to take a step back and see the perspectives of all four parts: body, mind, heart, and soul. Only then will a total solution begin to come into focus.

Let’s shove this abstract stuff down into a more concrete real-world example.

Suppose you run your own business. You think and plan about how to grow the business. This seems like a good idea as you enjoy running the business (at least at its current level), and it would be nice to increase your income. Growing the business seems like a pretty good idea. You feel that you have the necessary skills to do it too. But then when it comes to action, you feel stuck. You can’t seem to get moving. You keep working on urgent things, and the important growth projects stall. So you figure maybe your plans were wrong, and you go back to the comfort of doing more thinking and planning. And the same thing happens. And then you start thinking about planning and maybe that you’re over-planning, and you enter the stuck state of analysis paralysis, where your thinking becomes circular. You start to wonder why you aren’t taking action to grow the business, when your plans all look so good on paper. What’s holding you back?

At the level of thinking and action, you can’t solve the problem. You’ll just stay perpetually stuck. You may have what feels like a productive day now and then, but you won’t have that feeling of perpetual productivity that takes you through each and every day with a feeling of fulfillment and flow.

So what’s the solution? It’s time to consult the other parts of you who’ve been trying to speak up but who haven’t been heard. Start with your emotions. How do you honestly feel about growing the business? Maybe you’re getting mixed signals there. Perhaps you feel it would be great to have a bigger business, but you’re also a bit uneasy about how much more work it would mean. Your feelings further verify that you’re internally incongruent. You aren’t totally 100% committed to the idea of growing your business. It partly seems like the right thing to do, but it also partly feels wrong, and you can’t quite put your finger on it. Consulting your feelings gives you more evidence that something is wrong, but it doesn’t point you in the direction of a solution. Time to visit another advisor.

So now you consult with your spirit, your conscience, your deepest and most sacred beliefs. This is the quietest part of you, so you have to be alone and undisturbed to hear it clearly. One of the best questions to ask here is, “What should I be doing?” You can also try, “What’s true for me?” And then listen internally for the truth, not for what you want to hear. If you’re internally conflicted between thoughts, actions, and feelings, then your spiritual answer will explain why. And it won’t pull its punches. It can take some courage to listen to this inner voice and not tune it out, but this is a voice that must be heeded if you ever want to restore congruence and experience balance again.

This inner voice may say to you, “You’re not living in accordance with what you believe” or “This isn’t what you’re here to do.” It will look at your business and ask all the big questions. How will growing your business affect your character? How will it impact all the people it touches? How does it mesh with your deepest sense of right and wrong? Is it contributing? Does it truly help people in the way they most need to be helped? Are you passionate about it? Is this the best you can do?

This is a very individual process. I can’t say where it will lead in the short term, but in in the long term, listening to all four of these parts of yourself body, mind, heart, soul will help you envision a way of living where all parts of your life can become congruent. You don’t have to take a flying leap into living spiritually and go broke doing it. All four parts can be in balance. But you have to listen to all four and get their input in order to understand the direction where that balance lies.

I believe all four dimensions have their own valid perspective. One perspective is no better or worse than another. Some problems are simple enough that they only need a single perspective to solve them. Your body can tackle the challenge of eating a meal without much conscious thought. Your mind can solve a math problem without needing to consult your feelings. Your emotions can signal danger without consulting your spirit. But sometimes these parts don’t listen to each other. Your body tries to gobble up the junk food while your mind says, “Put that donut down!” Your mind focuses on negative outcomes while your emotions say, “You’re stressing me out here!” And you start plotting revenge out of anger while your spirit says, “You believe in forgiveness.”

Each part of you has its own unique perspective, and each is wise in its own way. By listening to all four parts and iterating through them again and again, you eventually reach a state of congruence. It’s an internal negotiation process. Body wants that donut. Mind says no. Spirit says, “Blech. The donut maker treats her employees harshly.” Heart says “Mmmmm, donut!” Body says, “I’m hungry.” Mind says, “OK, you can have a muffin instead.” Spirit says, “Make sure it’s organic.” Body says, “OK, I’ll have an organic banana nut muffin.” Heart says, “Banana nut now that’s good muffin!”

The same goes for career. Body wants big salary. Mind wants interesting work that fits our talents. Heart wants fun. Spirit wants meaningful contribution. Body says, “Contribution? You trying to starve us?” Heart says, “Contribution would make us feel good, but I don’t want to do dull and boring work all day.” Spirit says, “Mind, figure out how contribution can be fun.” Mind says, “It has to be a form of service that fits our talents so we’re good at it, and our passion so we enjoy it.” Heart says, “Mmmmmm, passion.” Body says, “Excuse me, but how the heck are we gonna make a living at this?” Mind says, “If we do what we’re best at, and there’s a demand for it, people will be happy to pay us for it.” Body says, “You’ll have to do better than that to convince me. I know we can make $X right now doing Y, and that’s good enough for me.” Mind says, “Here, eat this muffin while I think about it.” Heart says, “I wouldn’t feel good working only for money.” Spirit says, “Everybody make a list of the types of careers that could satisfy you.”

Everybody makes their own list. They all negotiate back and forth until they find one that pleases all of them. Heart rejects accountant. Spirit rejects the adult web site idea. Mind rejects professional athlete. Body rejects psychologist. They eventually reject everything on every list and have to go back to make new lists, but they do a better job the second time because now they understand what the others want. So they each start listing ideas that have a better chance of acceptance by all. And after a while they find a few that actually work, and they pick the best of those. Through this internal negotiation process, they discover the best option, so they can finally commit. Congruence is achieved, and moving forward, the new career will satisfy all four parts as fully as possible. All perceived conflict between thought vs. action vanishes. Thoughts, actions, feelings, and beliefs are all headed in the same direction.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

Tags: law of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal growth, personal value, prosperity, successlaw of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal growth, personal value, prosperity, success

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Do you tend to compartmentalize all the different areas of your life? Career goes there, relationship goes here, spirituality fits there, and health well, that’s neither here nor there.

Or maybe your compartmentalizing is temporal instead of spatial in your thinking. During the workday you do what you must, this evening you’ll do what you love and have some fun, and on Sunday you’ll think about what it means.

Or perhaps you experience a feeling of compartmentalizing thought vs. action: “I’m spending X% of my time thinking and Y% of my time acting.”

When you view your life as a series of different compartments, each with different rules, then life gets pretty complicated. Trying to achieve balance is very difficult because you constantly feel the need to task switch. My relationship needs attention. Oh no, I’ve been neglecting my health. I need to work harder. I’ve got to stop thinking so much and take more action.

The different “bins” of your life are all fighting for your time. And the longer you neglect one of those bins, the louder it gets and the harder it will fight for attention. Put off your health for too long, and you’ll crash with an illness. Put off your relationship for too long, and a breakup may be the result. Put off your work, and your career and income will suffer.

This is a paradigm that many people share. Keep all your balls in the air. Keep all those plates spinning. Don’t let your spiritual beliefs interfere with your work.

But I think it’s a broken paradigm. Let’s consider a different way of thinking.

What if your life had only one bin, one ball to juggle, one plate to spin. Just one. No need to deal with 10 different areas of your life and keep them all balanced. Just one.

How is this possible? It’s possible if all of those different areas of your life are congruent, if they all follow the same rules. Then thought and action are one, both pointing in the same direction. They’re on the same path. Your work is congruent with your most deeply held spiritual beliefs you don’t have to take your spirituality offline when you go to work. Improving your health improves your relationship. Increasing your income increases your service.

This means moving from a paradigm of the different parts of your life being in conflict to a new paradigm where they all cooperate. Instead of seeing each part of your life as independent, you begin to see them as interdependent. And isn’t this a more accurate model anyway? Can you truly isolate each part of your life as something separate? Can you abuse your health and think it won’t affect your career or your relationships? Do you think your feelings about your relationship won’t affect your financial situation? Can you ignore your spiritual beliefs when making business decisions and expect no negative consequences?

It seems obvious that all the different parts of your life are deeply interconnected. But a common way to treat problems is to try to isolate them. If there’s a problem with your health, you need to diet and exercise. If there’s a problem in your career, it’s time to work harder. But this isolation protocol doesn’t work well because there’s too much overlap between all the different parts of your life, no matter how much you try to isolate the problem areas and go to work on them.

It’s often the case that the obvious cause of the problem isn’t the true source. If you feel lonely because you haven’t been able to find the right relationship, and you keep trying harder and harder to find a relationship, you may get nowhere. The problem may be that you work at a career you aren’t passionate about, and you project this lack of passion to everyone you meet. And still a deeper issue may be that your spiritual beliefs tell you that service to others is very important, but you don’t feel you’re doing that. Then you change careers to do what you love, and it aligns with your spiritual beliefs because now you feel you’re contributing and serving. Then out of nowhere, you meet your future spouse, who is attracted to your passion about your work and the contribution you’re making. And the encouragement you experience from this relationship in turn helps you advance your career, increase your income, and free up more time to spend with your new spouse. Your stress goes down, and your health improves too. Your inner spiritual conflict was the real source of your inability to find the right relationship. Everything is deeply interconnected.

Although it seems that each part of your life follows different rules, they all follow the same rules. You may have different values for each part of your life, but the rules that govern those areas don’t change.

An example of an unchanging rule is kindness. The concept of kindness should resonate with your spiritual beliefs. You can be kind to your body, and your health will improve. You can be kind to your co-workers, and your relationships with them will improve. You can be kind to your spouse, and your marriage will grow stronger. You can be kind to a stranger, and your self-esteem will increase. It doesn’t matter to which area of your life you apply the principle of kindness. Its application is universal.

Another universal rule is being proactive, assuming personal responsibility for results and taking positive action. It doesn’t matter where you apply this rule: health, relationships, emotions, spiritual beliefs, career, business, money, etc. Being responsible works no matter where you apply it.

Cheating is another universal principle. No matter where you apply it, the long-term results are negative. Cheat your health, and pay the price of sickness. Cheat in your relationship, and the cost is a loss of intimacy. Cheat in your education, and your income suffers.

But more powerful than these intra-area effects, there’s the rippling effect due to the interrelatedness of all areas. So if you apply a universal principle in one area, either positively or negatively, it ripples into all other areas. If you cheat your health, then in the long run this will hurt your career, your relationships, your finances, your emotional state, and your sense of spiritual connectedness. You can’t cheat in one area of your life without suffering the consequences in ALL areas.

Similarly, be kind to your body, and your increased positive energy will positively affect your relationships, your work, your finances, your emotions, etc. Be proactive about building a career you enjoy, and your passion will spread to every other area.

If you violate a universal principle, it negatively impacts all areas of your life. If you follow a universal principle, it positively impacts all areas of your life. Universal principles don’t compartmentalize.

So the key then is figuring out these universal principles and aligning your thoughts and actions with them. This is how you achieve congruence between all the different parts of your life.

So what are the universal principles? Stephen Covey claims that the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are based on universal principles. I tend to agree, and that’s a good place to start. But I think all of these principles can be reduced to just one: to love. Not the passive squishy emotional feeling of love, but “to love” the action verb. To love your body translates into proper diet and exercise. To love your mind equates with learning. To love others is service. To love your work is to do it passionately and enthusiastically. To love your feelings means to respect and honor the messages they send you. This verb translates into different specific actions for each area, but the underlying principle is the same. Depending on the situation, “to love” may mean to listen, to serve, to work, to relax, to touch, and so on.

When you start injecting universal principles into every area of your life, alignment will gradually occur. The parts of your life will be transformed such that all these different pieces assemble themselves into one congruent whole. You won’t feel like these different parts of your life are in competition for your time and attention. Instead you’ll feel a sense of internal cooperation. You will have a sense that exercising your body is the best thing for your health and your relationship and your career and your spirituality.

Within each area you’ll either adapt your current circumstances to align with universal principles, or you’ll let go of all the misaligned pieces and start fresh. So your career may shift slightly as you adapt, or you may switch to a whole new career. Your old relationships may transform, or they may end while you seek out new ones. It just depends on how well the external parts of your life are able to align with who you are.

Alignment comes down to working on these four questions until they all produce the same answer:

* What do you want to do? (desire)

* What can you do? (ability)

* What should you do? (purpose)

* What must you do? (need)

When these four areas are aligned, motivation occurs automatically. Thought and action are automatically balanced because you are living your purpose consciously. You won’t feel like you should be thinking when you’re acting or acting when you’re thinking. The line between thought and action will disappear. Being and doing will become the same thing.

When you experience misalignment between these four areas/questions, the natural tendency is to slow down sometimes to a crawl. You’ll feel like you have all these ideas pulling you in different directions, but you aren’t fully satisfying any of them. Your mind knows that continuing to work hard is likely to be futile and won’t solve the real problem of incongruence. It knows it’s time for you to stop, ask directions, and choose the path of alignment.

I went through this while running my games business. While I had many projects to grow the business, I knew deep down that I didn’t want to run that business for another decade. I was containerizing everything: my health over here, my relationship there, my work here, and my spirituality there. Each part of my life felt like it had its own set of rules. Eventually I started questioning whether this was the best way to live. Are we supposed to live like a collection of parts or as an integrated whole? I wondered whether it would be possible to live in such a way where there was only one set of rules governing all areas, essentially meaning that I followed my deepest spiritual beliefs in all matters. This line of questioning led me to discover just how it might be possible for all these different parts of my life might become a single, integrated whole. This would mean that my business and my conscience and my interpersonal relationships were all one. There would be no sense of separation.

In order to go through this process, I had to transform certain parts of my life while totally shifting others. I tried to transform my career initially from within, but the disconnect was big enough that it required a more dramatic shift. Other parts of my life were able to adapt more flexibly. The main reason for my shift away from my games business was that it wasn’t a strong enough outlet for service for me. I think that given enough time, the original business could have been shifted, but that wasn’t the best route for me too take. It was faster and simpler to build a new business from scratch with the goal of congruence in mind than to try to refactor the existing business.

I must say that this push for congruence in all areas turned out beautifully. I don’t feel that sense of separation between the different parts of my life anymore. My purpose says I’m here to serve and help people. My ability says I can do it through writing and speaking and running a web site. My needs say I must support myself doing it. And my passion says it’s what I love doing most. I don’t have to separate supporting myself with a job and then having fun on the weekends and thinking about spirituality at other times. Work = play = love.

When you live congruently, it’s as if all the different parts of your life lock into new positions to form a new whole that’s greater than all the individual pieces. Everything grows stronger: health, relationships, motivation, actions, results, etc.

I know that as a practical matter, it seems as though different rules often govern in different areas. Separating your spiritual beliefs from your work is very common. A lot of businesses seem to operate on the assumption that universal principles don’t exist. I don’t buy that at all. There are non-universal principles that apply just within their own domains (the rules of nutrition apply to your health but not to your work, for instance), but universal principles apply to all areas. I think that one’s spiritual beliefs are the single most important factor in choosing a career or a company to work for. If you have a deeply held belief that you hold sacred, you cannot violate it in any area of your life without suffering the consequences in all areas. You must be true to your inner self at all times. That’s the only way to be congruent and to live as a whole person instead of merely as a bag of competing parts.

When you live congruently, a quantum leap will occur in each of these four areas. Desire becomes passion. Purpose becomes mission. Need becomes abundance. Ability becomes talent. And it becomes almost ridiculously easy to achieve fulfillment in every area then because all the parts are working together in the same direction.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

Tags: law of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal growth, personal value, prosperity, successlaw of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal growth, personal value, prosperity, success

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When you want to make a change in your life, especially a big one, you’ll typically meet resistance along the way. An effective strategy for rendering such resistance powerless is the strategy of overwhelming force. This is a military strategy of course, but we can co-opt it for our own personal development as well. Instead of merely dipping your toes into the change you’d like to make, you dive into it headfirst. Instead of undercommitting resources, you overcommit.

Too often when people attempt a big change, they undercommit their personal resources. Instead of a quick victory, they end up with a quagmire akin to Viet Nam, where they have to keep putting in more and more energy just to maintain the status quo.

For example, suppose you want to lose 50 pounds. You make some moderate dietary and exercise changes. For a while they work well, and you lose the first 10 pounds. But then you get stuck at 40 pounds overweight. You keep maintaining the same diet and exercise levels, but because you’ve undercommitted your resources, your total long-term effort is much greater than it needs to be. Exercising while 40 pounds overweight, month after month, perhaps even year after year, is very hard and takes a tremendous effort and discipline to maintain, especially when your results are minimal. Simply going through your daily routine with that much weight on you will make your life much harder than necessary. My daughter weights about 45 pounds, and to carry her around for any length of time would be very difficult. I couldn’t even imagine going for a 5-mile run with her on my back. So even though the strategy of overwhelming force requires a greater up-front investment, in the long run it can save you a great deal of time and energy.

Think of all the personal resources you can use to apply overwhelming force to one of your goals your intelligence, intuition, skills, talents, time, money, family, relationships, reputation, assets, environment, etc. If you find that you’re stuck in a stalement vs. the resistance working against you (whether internal or external), then perhaps it’s time to apply to the strategy of overwhelming force and just get the job done. Bring enough of these additional resources online until you reach the point where you not only feel you’ll overcome all resistance you feel certain you’ll squash it.

Ask yourself, “What would it take for me not only to achieve this goal but to absolutely dominate it?” What would you consider overkill? Imagine your goal as if you’re planning a battle that you MUST win, regardless of the cost. Write down what you think it would take to be certain of success.

If you think you have an effective kill strategy for your goal, but it isn’t working too well, perhaps you’ve underestimated the resistance. Don’t feel bad if you find yourself in this situation great military leaders have been punished by this mistake as well. Accept that your kill strategy may in fact be underkill, and what you think of as overkill may be just what you need.

Once you see your overwhelming force strategy written down on paper, you may be thinking, “Wow this would work, but it would take a lot of work to get it going.” The goal may be more “expensive” than you first realized, and some sacrifice may be required. So this is when you have to decide whether the goal is actually worth doing. Is it worth the price to you, or is it truly too expensive and not worth the effort?

Once you figure out what it will really cost to achieve your goal, you can then decide whether you’re willing to pay that price or not. Often we fail to achieve goals quickly because deep down we feel the price is too high, but we don’t want to accept that. So we try to cheat by undercommitting resources, hoping the goal can be achieved with far less effort. In a handful of situations, we get lucky and achieve the goal more cheaply. But in most situations, we waste tremendous time and energy pursuing goals that never get achieved.

Imagine what your life would be like if you could achieve most of your goals on the first try because you applied overwhelming force. Your first diet took you quickly to your goal weight. Your first attempt to quit smoking lead you to become a permanent nonsmoker. Your first attempt to find a fantastic job succeeded. No rework, retesting, repeating, recommitting, revamping, re-anything. Applying the strategy of overwhelming force can even be fun too, such as when you have the goal of getting pregnant.

You might recognize that this is another application of the principle of facing reality as explained in the previous podcast.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

Tags: law of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal value, prosperity, success, valueslaw of attraction, life abundance, motivation, personal value, prosperity, success, values

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