Why You Need to Get On the Action Bus
Gadhawa, Nepal
My first exposure to motivational thinking was in a West Vancouver living room, sitting on a shag carpet looking up at a giant of a man as he shouted at our small group for over two hours before leading us on a back yard fire walk overlooking the Lions Gate Bridge. The giant was Tony Robbins and he was determined to get us thinking right.
“The power of positive thinking,” he would write in his breakthrough book Awaken the Giant Within, “is the ability to generate a feeling of certainty in yourself when nothing in the environment supports you.”
The promise was intoxicating: whatever you want can be had with the right thoughts and “massive, determined action.”
But what if on the road from positive thinking you bump into feelings and get stopped in your tracks?
Maybe you need to get on a different bus.
Three buses
In life there are three buses. They come along all day, but take you in very different directions.
The Feeling bus is the busiest and travels through your emotional state. Do you feel happy, motivated, inspired, committed, or anxious? It’s a popular bus—mostly because people never get off.
The Thinking bus takes you to worries, stories, memories, perceptions, and decisions. Maybe you should check your email, or Facebook, or move that project forward, or lace up your shoes and head to the gym. The Thinking bus goes around in circles a lot.
And then there is the Action bus. It doesn’t come around as often as the other two, but it's all about one step forward, moving closer to a goal. The Action bus doesn’t wait for the other buses - it’s always moving forward - and every ride takes you to a new place. The Action bus ethos might be best exemplified by author William Faulkner musing: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”
The problem happens when we get on the Feeling bus and never get off.
Feelings first
In a competition, the Feeling bus would always come in first. Research at Caltech found that our bodies’ sensory system gathers data some 100 million times faster than our thoughts. If you hit your finger with a hammer, the pain is immediate. Thinking you are clumsy comes later.
It is no different than feeling anxious about a client complaint, needing to make sales calls, or having to make peace with your partner about the little chat over breakfast that went sideways.
Feelings precede thoughts.
When you want to make a change in your life you can expect to have an equal and competing feeling that creates resistance.
Going to bed earlier competes with relaxing with your favourite Netflix series.
Exercise in the morning competes with reading the news or sleeping in.
Organizing your priorities for the day completes with the temporary satisfaction of responding to emails.
Until you get on the Action bus.
Feelings last
In a presentation last week a woman complained there was never enough time for the exercise she knows she needs. “Every morning I think I’m going to get in at least 30 minutes of exercise.” She told me. But, as her day progresses the booked meetings, email, and interruptions suck up any available minutes and push her exercise plan into the next day.
My suggestion was to take action. Before the day starts, block time for what’s most important - like exercise. Rather than hoping she will feel motivated to go to yoga, or reach out to clients or coach a team member, she already has it planned. Take the action and let feelings all in behind.
Another person ends every workday by closing her email reader so that in the morning she is less distracted as she plans her day.
Yet another adjusted the sleep settings on his phone to get into a routine of going to bed earlier.
In every case they transferred from the Thinking bus to the Action bus and let feelings follow.
Action first
I can change, you can change, anyone can change the patterns that run their lives. We know that because we’ve all experienced change. Yet somehow we think we are fully formed. “Human beings are works in progress,” wrote psychologist Dan Gilbert, in Stumbling on Happiness, “that mistakenly think they’re finished.
When you got your first job, met your best friend, learned a new sport or met the love of your life. That action changed how you felt, how you think and the course of your life. Action changed your thinking and thinking changed how you felt.
Struggling with productivity? Maybe you should take action to brighten up your workspace.
In a study at Hewlett Packard employees were split into two groups. One group was asked to work in a disorderly, overcrowded space. The other group was set up in a brightly lit, open space. Both groups received their workspace without complaint. As you might guess, the second group outperformed the first by a large margin. Productivity was 400% better, stress was 50% less, blood pressure was lower, even short-term memory was better.
Action (create a bright, inviting workspace) led to improved thinking/performance and feelings.
Small wins
We all want something. When I present to audiences my focus is helping them make Small Wins to promote progress toward a goal. And there’s always a gap between where they are at in some aspect of life (time, social, physical, mental) and where they want to be. They know what they want, but the progress is missing. “If you do not change direction,” Lao-Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “you may end up where you’re heading.”
These are high achievers who can’t figure out how to get out the door and go for a walk on a regular basis, or plan their day so that email doesn’t win over more important project work, or get the sleep they need. “Action may not always bring happiness,” wrote Benjamin Disraeli, “but there is no happiness without action.”
They are waiting for the wrong bus.
You can spend your days waiting for the right Feeling bus, or going around in circles on the Thinking bus, or get on the Action bus and see where it takes you.
Enjoyed this nudge? Here are 3 more posts all about goal setting and creating small wins:
Small Wins - Why Little Steps are the Path to Big Rewards
Keynotes and workshops by Hugh Culver
