Maybe I Can with Debbie Weiss

Ep. 81: A Sprinkle of Action

• Debbie Weiss

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In this inspiring episode of "Maybe I Can: The Power of Action," we explore the transformative power of taking decisive steps towards achieving our goals. We start by setting the foundation of why action is crucial after preparation and planning, discussing the common fears that prevent us from moving forward, such as the fear of failure. Through personal anecdotes we delve into overcoming these fears by breaking tasks into manageable micro-actions. We also share practical advice on creating effective morning routines and prioritizing tasks to maximize daily productivity. The episode concludes with a call to listeners to adopt the "Maybe I Can" mindset, encouraging them to take small but powerful steps each day towards their dreams.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Maybe I Can, exploring possibilities, one sprinkle at a time. If you've ever found yourself asking is this all there is to life, then you're in the right place. I'm Debbie author, speaker, entrepreneur and coach, and every Tuesday I'm here to share a sprinkle of hope and inspiration. Together, we'll uncover the more More joy, more fulfillment, more prosperity, more fun. We'll share stories of transformation, actionable tips and that little nudge you need to take the next step. So let's embark on this journey of discovery and say Maybe I to a life filled with more, ready to find out. Let's get started. The Maybe I Can Show starts now. Hi everyone, and welcome back. My name is Debbie Weiss and if this is your first time here, welcome, and if it's not, well then welcome back.

Speaker 1:

Today's topic is a sprinkle of action, and in past episodes we kind of laid the foundation, talking about a sprinkle of mindset, of belief, about taking responsibility and dreaming, just to name a few. They're all foundational, but if you don't take action, you can't have success. All those plans that you've created remain a dream, and I'm going to start today with kind of an impromptu story that I really didn't plan on using, because it just came to me this morning when I was talking to my brother, and so, in advance, michael, I'm sorry for throwing you under the bus, but you know what can I say? You're a good example, so be happy about it. So I'm chatting with my brother this morning. He is an empty nester, he has grandchildren, he and his wife both work from home, and he was saying that he got up today and he felt almost like Groundhog Day. Every day he wakes up, he gets dressed, he does the whole what's it called you know the Zoom thing where he's wearing shorts on the bottom but a nice shirt on the top because that's what's on camera, and they, he and his wife talk in the morning about what should we do for dinner, because they're at the stage where they're basically just doing cookout, takeout or something quick out or something quick, and they both go to their rooms, their offices, they work all day. They come back together at the end of the day, figure out the dinner thing, eat, watch TV, go to sleep, wake up and do it again the next day. And I said to him well, I get it, because I would assume that it's a challenge to constantly be working from home. And he agreed and I said well, you know, maybe you want to think about different ways that you can get out of the house. And I said to him I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

Even though I've never worked from home full time, it was still. My life prior to the last five years was kind of the same right, and maybe you have the same thing. I mean, this is kind of what life is. There's a monotony to it and for me, you know, it was just physically going somewhere to work and whatever the other things I had to do. And I said to him but you know, now every day I get up and I'm excited for what's to come, because, even though I'm still working at my day job, I have created a life for myself where I have so many other things going on and so many other things that I'm excited about. And even when my quote unquote work day ends and sometimes it doesn't end, it barely rarely ever ends at five o'clock. But that's because I want it to keep going, not because somebody is forcing me. And I rarely have those nights where I just sit down and watch TV, and not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're complaining about it, well then there is something wrong.

Speaker 1:

And I said to him you know, and I, of course, you know, had unwanted suggestions about different things that they could do and, you know, find something to do at night. And we talked about all these things and he's like yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, yeah, yeah, we really should do that. And I thought to myself you're not doing anything, who are you kidding? And that's cool, you don't have to do anything. But don't expect anything to change. If you're not going to take action, nothing's going to change. It's going to stay the same. And that's why today's topic is so incredibly important, because, with everything that we've talked about and all the planning and dreaming, and it's wonderful and we need to start there, but so many of us stop there, right?

Speaker 1:

I, a few months ago, was talking to a woman at the gym something about me writing a second book and she's like oh, my goodness, you know, a second book, I don't even believe it. She said I was thinking about it and I came across something the other day that was collecting dust on a shelf and it was a project that I started three years ago and it's still sitting there. And I said what happened? And she said I just stopped. You know other things got in the way and she said I wonder where would I be now if I hadn't let that collect dust on the shelf and look. You know what I think in different times of our lives. We can all understand that, we can all relate to that.

Speaker 1:

So often, I think we always have a reason why we hesitate to take action. Maybe it's not the right time, right? It's not the right time right now because everything's not perfect. I have all these things going on and all these commitments, so after X, y and Z is done, then it'll be the perfect time Ever. Use that excuse. I certainly have, and chances are it never is the perfect time, right. No, because life isn't that easy and uncomplicated. We can always come up with a reason why it's not the perfect time.

Speaker 1:

Then there's always the excuse I'm ready, I'm not ready, I don't know enough, and uh, for me that that has definitely been a good excuse for me is that I don't feel qualified. I don't, I don't know how to do a podcast. What am I supposed to say? How, say, how do I even do it? I don't even understand how to do it. I better figure this all out before I start, because otherwise it won't be good, and then people won't listen and I will have embarrassed myself and I told myself that for, oh, about a year, until one day, really honestly, my business coach just pushed me and she said just do it. I don't know where Nike came up with that tagline, but, man, it is so true, right, just do it already. Stop, stop waiting. Stop waiting for the perfect time. Another one is oh, I haven't mapped everything out, right, my planning isn't perfect.

Speaker 1:

We always think that everything has to be perfect before we start. It's an excuse. And why do we make excuses like this, right? And I think we don't realize. We think that sometimes we don't have a choice. We think we take action everyday, actions like going to work, paying our bills, going grocery shopping. Well, I had to do it. Well, you know, really, you had a choice. You might not think of it as a choice because I didn't think of it as a choice, but when you really peel back the layers and you think about it, you are making a choice and you are choosing to take action.

Speaker 1:

What happens if you don't want to work? Don't work, right, but what are the ramifications of that? Well, you won't make any money and maybe you'll have no other source of income or enough source of income that you won't be able to live where you currently live, and maybe you won't have enough money to pay rent, and then you'll be in a homeless shelter or you'll be on the street. But you could choose that, right, but you're not Now. I know that could sound extreme, and it's the same thing with, obviously, if you don't go food shopping, what's going to happen? You don't have anything to eat, but you're still making a choice. What happens if you don't pay your income taxes? I have to pay my income taxes. Well, not really. You don't have to. However, just be prepared for the consequences, right, either being fined or you know you do this so much or so egregiously that you're sent to jail. But you don't have to. Nobody's making you, and so why then, if you're making yourself, do those things? Why are you convincing yourself not to do other things? Why are you convincing yourself not to do other things?

Speaker 1:

Going back to when I was married, we were married for a couple of years, gary and I, and we got married. When we got married, I was 30 and he was 36. And when I was 32 or 33, we started to try and have a baby, and that didn't really work out. I never could get pregnant. And we started down this whole infertility whirlwind. And I remember meeting a couple who was doing IVF in vitro fertilization and they were telling me about all that it entailed, with the injections and the tests and how she felt and oh, just everything. And I was like I was just blown away and I thought you are so brave, how are you doing this? I could never do that. And then I did. Why? Because my desire to get pregnant was greater than any of those fears. And so I did. And I not only did it once, I did it six times and if you don't know the end to the story, after three times I had son number one and the next time son number two, I'm very, very happy to say, son number two, a big miracle.

Speaker 1:

But that's another episode. How come I could do that? But yet there's other things that I choose not to do and I think it's our. It's our why, it's our desire. Right, if we have such a strong desire? You work because you have such a strong desire not to be homeless, and I had such a strong desire to be a mom and I had already decided, after it looked like I was not going to have my second son, that I still had a strong desire to be a mom. That wasn't changing and I had already begun exploring other alternatives.

Speaker 1:

Now that I thought that the IVF journey was not going to work for me, it didn't matter. Fear of failure it didn't stop me because my desire, my why, my want was so strong. You know, with the infertility, was I afraid of being embarrassed? No, that's something that I'm not afraid of being embarrassed about. It is what it is and it's medical. But so often I think it's the fear of trying, taking action, failing and being embarrassed beliefs that we talked about several episodes ago, about those limiting beliefs of fear of being judged or not good enough. And it's't let it be paralyzing, because when it is, then nothing's going to change your life's not going to change Any dreams that you have. It's not going to happen, for goodness sake. It's almost like the joke that I say oh, I would need to win the lottery. Yeah, well, I don't even play the lottery. How am I going to win? I don't even take the action to play the lottery. That's certainly not about fear, that's just I don't know stupidity. If that's what I think I'm going to win the lottery.

Speaker 1:

Back when I was I don't want to tell you how young, a very young teenager I began smoking and back in those days in the mid-70s, people smoked like it was just becoming. I think the Surgeon General's warning was just becoming like a thing that people really started taking seriously. And both my parents smoked. My parents smoked. You know. We would drive in the car with the windows rolled up with both of them smoking, or they'd leave the window open just a little bit to flick their ashes out the window. You know when they weren't using that gross ashtray in the car. Remember when cars had ashtrays like that. They smelled so bad Anyhow.

Speaker 1:

And when I got into my 20s, you know all the places you used to be able to smoke everywhere. You smoked at malls, you smoked in airplanes, you smoked in movie theaters, like there was no place that was off limits and that started to change. And then people started really. It started feeling stigmatized and I didn't want to quit, like I think you know, in your twenties and even thirties or moving on, you feel like, uh, you know, there'll always be time for that. Nothing's going to happen to me at this stage of my life and I loved smoking, loved smoking, loved smoking, loved smoking, loved everything about it. And I didn't want to quit and I was 27.

Speaker 1:

I got a very bad case of mono, and so to hack up a lung and thought to myself, what am I doing? Like? I feel so crummy right now, how can I even be smoking? It's ridiculous. So I said, ok, I'm not going to smoke for a couple of hours, even though it was the habit, you know, it was just that habit that I was missing. But I didn't smoke for a couple of hours and then, once it got to be two o'clock, I thought, well, you know what. You've made it. You know four hours, let's see if you can make it another four. And I did. And I had another cigarette right before bed because, my goodness, what was I going to? Go the whole day and only smoke one cigarette? I, you know that was unheard of and same kind of feeling.

Speaker 1:

And the next day I didn't have a cigarette waking up and I told myself, okay, just for the morning. And then I extended it to the afternoon and I just kept playing this little game with myself and I wound up not smoking for about three days in a row and I wound up not smoking for about three days in a row and I thought to myself am I going to quit? Well, I don't know. I don't know if I'm ready to say I'm quitting, but I kept arguing with myself, saying when will you ever get another chance to get kind of this far ahead in the quitting journey where you're not really feeling it because you feel so crummy with the motto? And even though I didn't want to quit, I knew I was going to have to quit and the whole thing, and I thought, well, I should tell someone. And then I thought to myself no, I'm not going to tell anyone, because if I tell someone and I don't do it, then I'm going to be embarrassed. And I'm going going to tell anyone because if I tell someone and I don't do it, then I'm going to be embarrassed and I'm going to be a failure. So I am not going to tell anyone, I am just going to see where this takes me.

Speaker 1:

And I continued and when I got to day six without having a cigarette, I said that's it, there's no turning back. And I told people and I have never had a puff of a cigarette since then. I'm happy to say If they ever say it's good for you, I would go back to it. But it's been. I don't know how many years now, and I did it, but saying it out loud made me hold myself accountable.

Speaker 1:

I took small micro actions that led to a major life change. Now, look, people quit. You know cold turkey and all of that, and everybody has their different ways of being successful. But when I think about everything that I have been successful in whether it's losing weight, quitting smoking, writing my memoir and writing my soon-to-be-released book it's all been about the small actions. When we set a goal, it can be so overwhelming. We need to break it down into small, bite-sized pieces and make it less daunting.

Speaker 1:

And one of the ways that I really found success was that and this in itself was an action that I had to acquire over time by taking small actions. But in the morning I began a journaling practice where I said here is my overarching goal. I would have one main goal, and for the longest time it was losing weight. Okay, and so that was my one main goal, and then in my journal I would write what three small things am I going to do today, three micro actions that are going to take me closer to that goal and I would write them down Maybe it's drinking eight glasses of of water, tracking what I eat today, and going for a walk and I would take that journal and I would keep it with me all day, opened, opened in front of me. So I was always reminded and it seems like nothing, but over time, these small actions translated into success. These small, consistent steps lead to progress over time.

Speaker 1:

Something else that I learned that I had shied away from was realizing that I'm a morning person. That wasn't the hard part, but it was realizing that I needed to start my day with the most difficult task, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do all the easy stuff. I would have my to-do list whether it was my personal to-do list, my work to-do list and I'd want to check off as many boxes as I could, because that makes me feel good, like I'm accomplishing something. And then, by the time I got down to a few tasks, it was the afternoon where I'm not my best. And now it seemed so hard.

Speaker 1:

Do the toughest thing first, get it over with, get it out of the way. You will feel so good. It'll amaze you. It is difficult to do. I'm telling you, it's a challenging practice, but you will be shocked at the benefit, because that just puts you on a roll, right. Oh well, look, I did that. What else can I do? And it just moves you, moves you along quickly and more energized and gives you more confidence. You just go through the rest of your day with so much more confidence, through the rest of your day with so much more confidence. You know I make it all sound easy, but life will you know, even if you're doing all the things, something will happen. Right, because that's life. You can't get distracted. Even if you have to veer off the course, right, you can't veer off so much that you are that woman that looks back three years from now and finds that project that she was working on sitting on a shelf with all dust all over it.

Speaker 1:

Don't use your circumstances as an excuse. That's my life's theme, right? That is my life's message that has. Everything that I do and talk about now comes from that idea, because that's what I did. That's what I did for 50 plus years of my life. I used all the circumstances around me to stop me, to stop me. In everything, every dream, every action, there was always a reason, there was always a circumstance and, quite frankly, it's an excuse. I have a gift. I have a gift.

Speaker 1:

If excuse maker is ever turned into an occupation, I am going to go to the head of the class because I could make excuses like nobody else. And here's the thing I didn't even know I was making excuses. I mean I did, but I legitimized them in my mind. I would, you know, tell myself well, of course, I mean, this is happening and this is happening. Who would expect that I could do that? We can't let that sidetrack us. Maybe maybe you just have to rethink those micro actions. Maybe they have to be smaller. Maybe in my example, I couldn't drink eight glasses of water for whatever reason, but I could drink four. That's okay. That's okay because you're still taking a step forward. If I drink none now and I drink one, well, there you go, I'm moving in the right direction. And I think so often it seems inconsequential, because maybe drinking one glass of water one day is certainly inconsequential is certainly inconsequential, but drinking one glass of water over 365 days, compared to zero glasses over 365 days, is impactful. These things add up.

Speaker 1:

I don't want you to be that person who is intimidated by the size of your goal. I want you to tackle your goal. Figure out how you're going to tackle that goal with small, bite-sized steps. The thing is, you've got to be consistent. You've got to revisit it every day. This is not a one and done. You have to figure out what's going to work for you. When carrying a journal around didn't work for me, I, every morning, instead of in a journal, I wrote it on an index card. That's easy to stick in my briefcase or my bag and bring it to my office and tape it to my computer. So I'm staring at that all day.

Speaker 1:

I want you this week to take one small action, add one small action that you're going to do every day towards your goal. And please email me, dm me on Instagram, facebook, tiktok, linkedin, all the places and let me know what that action is. And I want to leave you with a quote by James Clear who, in Atomic Habits, says reflect on how every action is a vote for the person you wish to become. Okay, that's what I've got for you today. Go out there and just do it. See you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for spending part of your day with me here on. Maybe I Can exploring possibilities, one sprinkle at a time. It's been great having you and I hope you're leaving with a spark to light up your journey to more. Remember every big change starts with a single maybe. If you're ready to kickstart that change but not sure where to begin, I've got just the thing for you Head over to download my free guide, the One Critical Step to Kickstart Change and take that all-important first step. Let's make those maybes into reality, one sprinkle at a time. Catch you next Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern, 1 pm Pacific, with more stories, tips and that extra push you might need. I'm Debbie saying goodbye for now, but always remember maybe, just maybe, you can.

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Debbie Weiss

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