WHAT’S YOUR FIRST STEP TOWARD MOMENTUM? || What do you do when you’re feeling stuck or unmotivated but need to get something done?

When I was in seminary, we had to write a lot of papers. Sometimes–shocker–I would wait until close to the deadline to start. Often, the longer I waited to start, the bigger the task started to feel until it was almost overwhelming. 

When this happened, my dear friend Erica and I had a trick we used to get ourselves to take the first step out of stuck and build some momentum.

1. Name our situation to the other person.

2. Declare our intended action, usually in the form of “I can write that paper in 2 hours!”

3. Then the supportive friend would say “Write that paper!”

Even if I didn’t finish the paper in the declared time, it was still a win. This gave me the motivation I needed to focus for said period of time and at the end, I had always made progress.

I had forgotten about this trick until recently. I was at a retreat with my speaker cohort and my colleague Jenn Whitmer (@jenn_whitmer) was workshopping a segment of her talk that included some practical, actionable advice based on her extensive  Enneagram coaching wisdom.

She said, if you’re feeling stuck, decide what you’re going to do and then count down:

5

4

3

2

1

Go!

It was such a lightbulb moment for me. So simple, yet so powerful. 

Lately though, my energy has been down and I’ve been needing more force to propel me into action; so, I’ve been using the modification that we were using on retreat when we declared we are ready to do something big:

5-4-3-2-1-BOOM! 💥

It’s a little bit silly.

I add gestures.

It makes me laugh.

It makes feel capable and ready.

It’s my first step toward momentum. 

5-4-3-2-1-BOOM! 💥

🌱For what task or project do you need to 5-4-3-2-1-Boom!?