The importance of taking action cannot be overstated but do you ever feel like you are working hard with an anchor tied to your back. Feelings of exhaustion or lack of motivation are common problems that we all have. It is certainly possible to fix these issues but the solution may not be as obvious as just learning to become more motivated or being more disciplined. Motivation is a short term fix that will eventually run out and discipline may last longer but you will eventually reach burn out. So, how do you fix this? In this article I will explain how I broke bad habits that held me back and how you can do the same.
I was in a situation where I was feeling tired all the time and it made it hard to work and even harder to concentrate. I realized that sleeping was my issue because it would many times take more than an hour for me to fall asleep. At first, I would take melatonin before going to sleep and try to get to bed earlier so I had more time to fall asleep. The melatonin would help but realized that I would have to to take more and more to fall asleep and it may get to the point where I couldn’t sleep with out it. I didn’t want to be dependent on that to sleep and getting to bed earlier helped but it would still take me an hour to get to sleep which took up a lot of time and I still didn’t feel completely rested.
What I realized was that doing more things was not helping me fall asleep and get proper rest. What I need to do was stop doing things that hurt my sleep. Listening to podcasts while trying to sleep was my biggest problem. I have since started listing to soft music with no lyrics before bed and have been falling asleep faster and I am much more rested the next day.
This story applies to many things. You may be trying to fix a problem by doing more that really needs fixed by doing less; By cutting things out that negatively effect your results. In some ways, cutting out things that you like doing but is hurting you can be harder than doing more things to cover up the underlying problem. I knew that listing to podcasts while trying to sleep was likely the problem but I liked doing it so I tried other things to fix the problem instead of doing what really needed done. Look at your life and figure out where you might be doing the same. Your future self will thank you once those bad habits are gone.
