Manipulate Your Thinking to Take Action

Refuse to let life happen to you - The Kaleidoscope Project

A special thanks to

Mark

and

Moon Arica

for hosting this project. This month's theme is Taking (Right) Action.

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A passenger asked a lady to leave her front seat and go to the back of the bus, she refused.

This lady was Rosa Parks, an African American, the man who asked her to give up the seat was a white.

This incident took place because of the laws of that time, one of which was “racial segregation”.

According to the law, the back section of the bus was designated to the blacks and front section for the whites.

Rosa Parks, who disobeyed the law, was aware of the consequences she'll have to face for her refusal but she still resisted.

She was jailed for refusing to give up her seat but this incident ignited a movement challenging the system, called Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Many claim that she refused to give up her seat because she was tired, but she clarified the misconception depicting it was intentional.

She said, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Read the last sentence again.

“No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

This statement illustrates that she took an action to refuse the injustice.

She denied the unacceptable.

This story led me to think of action as a refusal.

Action is something that we take to refuse the unacceptable.

Action Is Refusal to Stay in Mediocrity

Don't you feel life forces us to stay mediocre?

The mere fact that you are alive guarantees that you will struggle, no matter what.

Problems in life are the evidence of your existence.

And we hate to face these problems.

But our minds love to have fun in the present.

So what do we do to deal with this issue?

We delegate our responsibility of grappling with these problems to our future self.

In fact, we presume that our ability to deal with these situations will automatically elevate in the future, without any effort.

But we know what actually happens.

Nothing changes in reality and the burden of the problem increases more.

And this is the perfect strategy for self sabotage.

This behavior turns out to be dangerous because these problems are tailored to keep you stuck in mediocrity, forever.

And we're not going to live forever.

So, through our behavior, we guarantee that we'll die as mediocre and we'll be like most people that are born on this planet. We'll contribute nothing to this society and we'll not be a part of a positive change.

Now think, is this acceptable to you?

Are you not here to be an exception, to be uncommon?

This is where taking the right action becomes a non negotiable.

Picture a scenario when you're counting your last breaths and regretting all the things you could've done if you were a little more sincere, a little more aware.

But we're humans, we're selfish and certainly we'll forget about this.

So think, will someone who you admire by heart and really understands you be proud of yourself?

This is why taking action becomes important wherever you are.

But what can we do to truly realise this?

The Power of Negative Thinking

I use this power everyday and before describing it I need to make a clear distinction.

I'm NOT discussing the negative thoughts, failure stories or limiting beliefs that arise unintentionally in your mind.

These kind of negative narratives pull you from taking action.

Instead, we'll harness the power of intentional negative thinking.

A kind of negative thinking that will propel us toward taking action, provide us with control to navigate based on our value system.

I daily imagine the costs of inaction. I emphasise on acknowledging what could go wrong if I don't do what I should be doing.

Fear of death is a good example. But that is exactly not fear, in other words, it's the acknowledgement, the acceptance.

I try to vividly imagine all the consequences that I'd have to face as a result of my irresponsibility in the present.

Imagine the frustration, stress and regret you'll feel when nothing has changed between who you are now and who you'll be one year later.

Painful right?

Here I'm actively trying to establish a relationship between my present and future self.

Remember, this relationship always existed. But, we tend to be ignorant of it.

Remember, we love to have fun in the present?

So, better said, I'm constantly trying to remind, be more aware of this relationship.

As I discovered more about the power of negative thinking, I found a very successful basketball coach who has written a book on it.

It's The Power of Negative Thinking by Bobby Knight.

However, I've not read the book, but managed to discover some of its insights.

You can visualize the path you have to follow. And then identify the hurdles you'll encounter and prepare for them early.

Be careful of those obstacles and praise them for being there as they'll help you stretch your limits.

Try preparing mentally by positive self talk but don't forget to first accept your flaws.

You can try to remember all the reasons something is important to you and use them to propel you further.

Next one is my favorite.

Picture the chain of negative consequences that'll be added to your life as a cost of inaction.

This will surely ignite the fire within you.

But there's still a question that makes me a little sceptical.

Is It Okay to Operate On Fear?

After writing about the power of negative thinking, I thought, is it okay to use fear as a motivation?

You may also be sceptical about it.

Well, I did some research and the answer is both satisfying and non-fulfilling.

Fear is a good source of motivation, but only in the short term because it's an extrinsic form of motivation.

It's there to avoid an outcome we don't want.

But, I think the more important thing is that it teaches us to respect and nurture the relationship between our present self and future self.

And we can eventually be internally motivated to take action.

Final Words

If there's only one takeaway you want to take from here(and I realised this while writing this) it's this - the more you delay to act now, the more you betray your future self.

Acknowledge the relationship between your present and future self and respect it.

That should be enough to propel you towards action.

If you're still here, I'd like to know how you see fear.

Thanks for reading.