The Dreamers Guide to Taking Action

Raise your hand if you’re a dreamer! 🙋‍♀️

Raise your hand if you you’re a dreamer but you struggle to actually accomplish your dreams! 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️ (<– ME, sis.)

Y’all, can we take a hot second to talk about dreams and goals? New goals are sparkly, right? They’re dreamy and exciting. Is there anything better than the feeling of new beginnings? The nervousness and excitement welling up in your stomach? The motivation and determination that you WILL reach this goal this time?

And then life happens. Fear. Doubt. Lack of motivation. Or what seems to get me the most: Lack of follow through. Basically finding a new goal to go after instead of working on the one I originally set out to achieve. 😖

If you’re a dreamer too, who’s set out to achieve some lofty goals, then you know that the “dreaming” part is SUPER fun. The taking action part, though? Noooot so much.

So here’s a few things I’ve been working on to get myself from the fun, shiny, glitzy DREAMING phase, to the even better and totally awesome ACCOMPLISHED phase!

Make room for discomfort.

Ew, right? I mean, what person in their right mind wants to be uncomfortable? Mmm… no thank you.

I think the only way to get around this thought is to flip the script and retrain the brain. Instead of seeing it as “getting uncomfortable” try looking at discomfort as the key to success with your goal.

So, don’t say, “Ug, I have to get uncomfortable to do this THING.” Say, “The only way I’m going to rock this THING is to get uncomfortable, so I better start now!”

So easy, right? (Yes, I’m being sarcastic.) Let’s be real, it will take practice to come to terms with this. It still isn’t easy for me to get uncomfortable. I still don’t find it fun to stick my neck out there and I still worry that I’ll say or do something totally dumb. But, friend, we have to start somewhere. Maybe embracing discomfort is a good place to start.

Check in with your fear.

As I mentioned before, I don’t like to get uncomfortable, but FEAR? Man, fear is probably the largest reason I don’t take action. I constantly have questions swirling around in my head: What if I can’t figure out how to do this? What if I totally fail? What if I look embarrassing? What if, what if, what if… the list goes on and on.

In my personal experience, I’ve noticed a lot of this ties into the fear of what other people will think of me. Maybe you’re struggling with that, too? If so, I’ve covered this topic in depth on this blog post. Please read this if you’re feel like you’re being held back from other people’s opinions!

I’ll leave one last thing here about fear – It’s a quote I adore and think of often – FEAR IS A LIAR. Fear will make you believe things that aren’t true to try to hold you back. Keep fightin, mama! Don’t let fear be the reason you stop taking action on your goals!

Think about how you’ll feel once you start taking action.

Here’s the thing I know about myself: I will stress and fret and mull over something forevvvveeerrrr. And then, after I do the dang thing, I feel immediately relieved and wonder why the heck I even waited so long to take action!

If you’re struggling to get started on a goal, or if you’re working on one and feel like you’re stalling to take the next step, just take the next step! Think of how good you’ll feel once you get going. Or once you get past that seemingly HUGE roadblock that turned out to be kinda not-so-huge after all.

Start Small.

Maybe the hardest thing about taking action is that everything can look so big and so time consuming and so overwhelming sometimes. Plus, I’m just kind of an instant gratification person anyway, so when it starts to take too long or it gets too hard or too overwhelming, I develop squirrel syndrome and move on to something else. 🤦‍♀️

My best advice to get past the overwhelm (that leads to squirrel syndrome)? Start small. Pick one small thing off your list of 50 bajillion, and just do that one small thing. Put all your energy into that one small thing. Then wake up tomorrow and pick another small thing. And another, and another, and another.

I promise that consistently doing the small things will keep inching you toward your goal, even if it’s taking longer than you thought. Be a turtle, not a rabbit: slow and steady wins the race.

Do what you can with what you have.

This kind of flows into the point above, but I can’t end this post without leaving you with a little bit of encouragement.

Friend, let me remind you that you don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to have it all figured out. For me, I can research and research and research till my eyeballs fall out, but research doesn’t get me anywhere when it comes to actually taking action.

I’m not an expert, but if I had to guess, I’d say that God is simply asking us to be a good steward with the things He’s given us. Small things. Daily tasks. Taking action often and when possible.

Try not to let the overwhelm get to you or to get too distracted by the shininess of your dreams that you don’t ever take action.

Wrapping Up.

Dreaming is fun. Dreaming is for inspirational quotes and Pinterest boards and journals. But taking action can be really REALLY hard. Know that you’re not alone and remember that if you fall off the wagon, you can always get back up and try again.

Keep pushing yourself forward, sis! Keep reaching for those goals and those dreams and remember that taking action will be the thing to get ya there.

**OVER TO YOU: What do you struggle with most when it comes to taking action? Share your story in the comments below!