A Moment of Hesitation. Now What?

So, I randomly ran into Mel Robbins's new podcast by pausing my finger on an Instagram post with this "sensational" title: "Motivation is Garbage". I was aware of my two different reactions, which made this pause and created my emotional dissonance.

The first was, "Mmmm, well, my whole life, I teach myself how to create motivation as part of my skill set as an entrepreneur, so…?"

The second was, "Damn, you right!"

This line, "Motivation is Garbage", was said by Mel Robbins, a well-known motivational speaker.

So why did I feel the urgency to share it with you (as I wasn't writing like this for years)?

Because it is so F@#*ing right.

Over the past decade, my journey has been an amazing rollercoaster, including running my first business at the age of 29 after my second child and having an amazing first year as a solo entrepreneur with outstanding achievements following my journey. While almost everything is amazing with my business, other parts were starting to crack in my life, and BOOM, in 2016, I got an opportunity to move to Singapore. I told myself it was great timing to try something different and bigger, so I did.

2016-2020 I took this adventure and launched my second business in Singapore (that's for another story), and it was constantly evolving.

Fast forward, in parallel from 2017 till today, I am a founded link of our amazing start-up, OUTCERT (this story is for another long cup of coffee), as this is a journey of 6 years bootstrapped start-up that deals with all great levels of challenges from partnerships, values, learning and unlearning, fundraising, growing and others.

I can say that every new level I reached got me to another group of setbacks and pitfalls, and yet (:, I guess this is the natural rule of growth. ?

Now let me connect the dots for you. ?

In this journey of ours, entrepreneurs, we MUST keep evolving; we constantly need to break destructive patterns and create good ones instead. We face ongoing challenges and carry the GREAT BIG title of "Leaders". Expectations, expectations, expectations. This is without even mentioning other circles of communications, relationships and others we lead as well (:

So let's get back to "Motivation is Garbage" again.

We do not own the privilege of creating automated daily dopamine (in a natural way); even if it seems like we are, we know there is no "happily ever after" in this entrepreneurship world. There is no finish line to success.

Yes, we are big visionary people. We invent, solve and sell our dreams, and always say, "We Can!" But the truth is that this is not an automated machine at all. It is a long journey of learning, unlearning, resilience and always stepping out of our comfort zone.

Our brain wants to keep us alive, so it will always resist us with every new challenge, opportunity, pain, etc. We cannot wait to be motivated for the next thing we should/must/do not have a choice to do.

Our thoughts are like a "Trojan Horse" that will always give us a fight back to motivation. Therefore, we must push ourselves to take action when we do not feel motivated; it is another crucial skill for us entrepreneurs. We must learn how to "activate motivation" so that our activation will create energy and not vice versa.

Mel Robbins suggests “The 5 Second Rule”. It would help if you try it. “It advocates that people should start completing a possibly unpleasant task within 5 seconds. Otherwise, they may try to postpone the completion of the task. The technique thus tries to strengthen an?impulse?to move from thinking to action before objections prevent this.”

Robbins explains that you, like everyone else, have 5 seconds to act out before your mind convinces you to do otherwise.?It creates a process to combat the subconscious mind and forces us to act on our ideas.

As someone who personally experienced the days when I had to push myself into action when I was not feeling like doing so, I stopped thinking and took action. Well, guess what? It works.

Now that we are extending our funds and dealing with more challenges, I reminded myself why this way of behaviour has a ripple effect in my life. This skill might not impact overnight, but absolutely over time. I forward it to you as a small reminder for these moments when you don't feel like jumping out of bed to solve another problem. Just get up, because "Motivation is Garbage" sometimes (:

When you ARE motivated by the great stuff of life as music, smiles, and small successes - embrace them and use the momentum, but when you don't and start hesitating, MOVE!