The Art Of Showing Up
The most important part of being effective is simply showing up yet it’s a big struggle that challenges everyone at one point or another. Here are some reasons why this happens and ways to overcome it.
It’s hard to get started
We have something we think is important to accomplish yet we struggle to get started. We know intellectually that if we skip working on that thing, we will get nothing done. If we get started, we will get something done and usually a lot more than we expected. So why is it so hard to get started?
Anxiety is trying to protect us
Anxiety is often a result of thoughts we have about a task. Those thoughts can range from “I’m not looking forward to it”, “it’s going to be painful”, “I’ll have to confront someone and that’s not going to be fun”. These thoughts trigger the Amygdala in our brains to light up. The Amygdala is responsible for detecting danger and preparing us to deal with it by pumping adrenaline into our body and getting us ready to fight or flight. This adrenaline rush makes us feel uneasy and anxious. We usually interpret this as a negative feeling
Habits
Habits are things that we do automatically without thinking much. Habits include brushing our teeth in the morning, getting dressed, drinking a morning coffee, and checking our smart phone when we are bored. We form habits when we experience a trigger. A trigger is a thought (e.g. “I’m bored”) or is created by something we see, hear, or feel (“Bagel in the Kitchen”)
Anticipated Reward
The trigger causes a thought about an anticipated reward. “I’m bored” can be followed by “looking at my phone will be so fun”. Then we check our email or the news and we see a message from a friend or learn something new. These are rewards that reinforce a habit. Another example is “that bagel will be so yummy”. We eat the bagel and get the yummy reward.
Anxiety & Habits
Both Anxiety and Habits cause us to avoid starting tasks. Anxiety is a trigger that makes us think how we can avoid it (flight). We anticipate a reward if we look at our phone. We do it, and get rewarded.
These are both powerful mechanisms that are part of who we are and help us make sense of the world. Anxiety keeps us safe by causing us to fight or flight. Habits help us automatically adopt behaviors that benefit us and avoid behaviors that do not (touching a hot pot, we automatically avoid). The problem is that the modern world is full of distractions and things that intentionally create habits for profit (e.g. Facebook, Youtube, gambling, smart phones, etc.) So what can we do about it? We can use this knowledge to our advantage and help us show up.
Fight, Flight, or Reason?
We usually think when we are anxious that our only options are to fight or flight. There is a third option and it’s extremely powerful. We can use the intellectual side of our brains to understand the situation beyond our feelings. For example, we may feel anxiety about doing a writing assignment. Our intellectual part can recall that we actually enjoy writing and every time we do it, it’s a lot of fun. This can be used to reduce the anxiety by telling our Amygdala there is no danger. We can accomplish this by changing the dialogue in our heads. “Last time I did writing, it was fun.” We can “show up” and do the thing we were anxious about. Once we do, we’ll notice the anxiety dissipates because we are no longer having worried thoughts.
Use anxiety to help you focus
A high diver that climbs a tall ladder and is standing 20-30 feet above the pool is feeling anxiety. Adrenaline is pumping, his brain is telling him to run. His intellectual side is telling him to focus, to be precise, to use the enhanced alertness to his advantage and make the perfect dive. In the same way we can use the anxiety and our intellect to help rather than hold us back.
Leverage habits to show up
Another way to “show up” is to leverage habits. One of the way to form new habits is to make the thing we want to do easy and have a reward to anticipate when we are done (recall the checking of our phone, super easy, nice reward). We can create a scenario for ourselves where we’ll do the writing assignment for 5 minutes (no big deal) and then watch a little video (or something else that makes sense) after as a reward.
It may seem crazy that this works because we are setting up an artificial situation for ourselves. Our natural tendency to form habits because of anticipated and actual rewards kicks in, even if we are making the rules. It also turns out that in our mind it’s only 5 minutes (seems easy), but once we get into that 5 minutes, it actually becomes pleasurable because we are accomplishing and we tend to do more. We can use the same mechanism that makes Youtube and Facebook so addictive, to set ourselves up for success and “show up”.
Give it a try
So next time you are having difficulty showing up, use your intellectual side to think about previous times you accomplished a similar task and how you felt about it. Also ask yourself what is the worst case and how can you use the anxiety to help you focus. After that, use the power of habits to get started by planning only 5 minutes followed by a reward. These tips will help you show up and be more likely to accomplish your goals.
