Why You’re Not Taking Action (And How to Change That Today)

 In this episode, we explore why we feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure where to start when chasing our goals. I share personal experiences of procrastination and how I’ve learned to move forward with clarity and purpose. 

You’ll discover simple, practical steps to break down big dreams into manageable actions, overcome setbacks, and build momentum. We also dive into the power of trust, patience, and taking aligned action without overthinking the future. 

If you’ve ever felt lost or distracted from your path, this episode will help you refocus, take control, and start creating the life you truly want. 

Transcript

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have you ever had a clear vision of what you want, but still find yourself doing everything except the thing that actually moves you forward? That feeling of overwhelm, procrastination. Or not knowing where to start. It's something we all face. And in today's episode, I'm going to break down how to move through that. I'm going to share how I approach going from feeling stuck to build a momentum from creating a podcast, running retreats, and stepping into the life I actually want. Welcome to You Matter. I matter, a transformational podcast about reconnecting with what truly matters. I'm your host James, and each week is an opportunity to explore a little bit deeper who you really are with amazing guests. We explore topics such as purpose, connection, commitment, and what it really means to live more consciously. If you've been feeling disconnected from yourself, from others, or from life, you are in the right place. Join us on new matter. I matter. Now. Let's begin. Do you ever have times when you don't have a clue what to do? Or maybe you have an idea or a dream, but you don't know how to take the steps, or maybe you just feel overwhelmed by it all. You procrastinate. You end up watching TV for the entire day rather than doing work. You do health chores, you want, you do everything that you can apart from the things that you actually set out to do or you need to do. I am going to talk about a few ways in which I have created things in my life. Dreams, aspirations, goals, and how I have done it myself personally. Now, the reason I suppose I can talk about this is because I have been, and on the rare, on the other occasion, I do procrastinate. I do get overwhelmed. I do find myself. Finding anything I can except for what I'm meant to be doing or what I can be doing. And so, yeah, this is what I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about how do we manifest or how do we create the things that we want. So you've got this big idea of maybe you wanna help the world and, but you don't know where to start. And you end up just not getting it done at all. Now what I found, what I found with my dream, so my dream has always been to work for myself and to create a life where I'm solely responsible for myself, which means that I can. I can dictate when I work. I can dictate how I work. I can kind of go for walks when I want. I can set times throughout the day when I'm more productive. I can work out how I work best, and these are great. I love this kind of lifestyle, and it also means that because of what I'm doing, I can work anywhere in the world if I wanted to. Now, this hasn't always been easy. For me, this has been a eight year journey. I'm a, I'm a nowhere, I'm nowhere near where I wanna be, not by a long shot. I'm just really getting going on this path. And what I'm noticing is that I am, I'm progressing faster now. Definitely I am progressing and moving faster. I can, I can see everything changing. Things are happening. Um, so like. This episode, I think, is gonna be nine episode 95, and that was, uh, two years ago. I didn't even think I'd be doing a podcast, and yet I'm on episode 95. Yeah, I, I'm also, I, I ran my first retreat last week. I've got another four booked in this year. I've, I'm writing a book. I'm about halfway through the book. I'm more so looking at starting coaching. That hasn't, I haven't started to really do anything on that yet, but I know, you know, when I get time, that'll be something I focus on now. All these things, including the house that I live in and getting and going through, the whole process of getting the house weren't always easy. It required a lot of faith, a lot of trust in my, in myself, and the process and trusting that. The right thing will happen at the right time, and I would always be showing the right steps that I need to take and not worrying about, um, the third or fourth or second step, uh, third, fourth or fifth step. So let's start off by you. So first thing is you've got a stream. You've got this stream. You can, you know what you kind of wanna do. I, I always started off by creating goals around it. So like. For, for myself, one of my goals this moment in time is to get to a hundred podcast episodes, and I've been like that since. Um, I think I, first, I, when I started the podcast, I first aimed for 25 and I aimed for 50 and now, and then I aimed for a hundred episodes. And I'm actually, by the end of this year, I wanna buy, I want, I'm looking at aiming to hit 140 by the end of this, uh, this year. So yeah, it's just kind of breaking it down into little small trunk achievable trunks. And then within that goal of hitting a hundred or hitting 140, I have to be in a place of creating an episode once a week. And in some weeks there's gonna be two episodes with the retreat. My, yeah. My, the idea of the retreat is to just get a date set in, you know, I've got an idea of a retreat, let's get a date set in so then we know exactly when we're aiming for and then to go from there. And so, yeah, with, with a goal, it's always ideal to know what you want to achieve, so. Make it achievable as in, you know, saying that you wanna create a podcast is a great starting point with regards to a goal, but it's getting a little bit more specific. What's your goal? What's your, your goal, all of your podcast, what's your podcast episode gonna be about? Or what's your podcast gonna be about? What kind of people do you want to engage with? Uh, kind of getting clear on. Uh, possible steps. Getting clear on what other people have done. And so, yeah, setting a goal is all about really understanding what you want, how you're gonna do it, and by when. So basically, if your goal is to have a hundred episodes, that could be a hundred episodes in the next 10 years or the next five years. So by having an, an idea of am we gonna hit a hundred episodes by, uh, on this occasion, it's gonna be by five weeks time is, you know, it is giving it a timeframe and the timeframe actually gives it a sense of urgency or a sense of a sense of now.'cause if you are aiming for a to hit a hundred episodes by next year. You could quite easily procrastinate more and more and more. And so by giving it a date and a bit of urgency, I feel like your brain kicks in automatically. I feel like it suddenly has like, okay, I've got something to aim for, but I'm by when, and so I know that I need to get this done, this episode done by next week, the following episode by then following week, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, I feel like. It is getting and having an idea of what you want as a dream or an aspiration. And then from there, creating, creating a goal. So if it's a book, maybe your goal is to do, you know what I want by the end of the month, I want to have a clear idea of what type of book I am creating. Uh, and or you might say, okay, I want to have my book finished by a year's time. That is a goal that is achievable, and so on and so on, and it gives you enough time to really figure out what your next steps are for the book. The next thing I wanna talk about is with your, with goals. It's very easy to get overwhelmed, and I feel like this is where people get overwhelmed and procrastinate because I, I get overwhelmed and procrastinate quite easily on this kind of step, so I have to be clear on what is the, what is this next step I need to take? So I don't worry ab, I don't worry actually about the. Uh, so take these example of the podcast episodes with the podcast episodes. I might have an idea of guests I want to invite. I might get in contact with the guests and I might kind of organize a, uh, inter kind of a chat with them, a 20 minute chat, see if they're the right fit, but I'm not worrying about that episode going out in two or three weeks time. I'm looking at the next episode and obviously these episodes where I'm recording it on my, on my own. They, I tend to do them two or three days before, uh, they go out. I am, I, at one point I was, I was like seven episodes in advance, but I kind of lost that and I'm, so, I'm, I'm going week by week. It is going out the following, the following week. If that makes sense. So basically I will do an episode and it will either go out that week or it'll go out the week after when I recorded it. But by getting clear on the next step and working on just the, just the next step, you take away the overwhelm of having to do too much too soon. So I'll give, I'll give you a quick story. About, I think it was back in 2016, I think it was, it was 2016 and um, I had actually just broke up with a ex-partner and I kind of was in quite a bad, I was in, I was in a very bad way. I was lost. I didn't know what to do. But one thing I did know is that I wanted to get my own house now. On this journey of finding, getting, finding my house, I obviously looked on the internet for the, the houses I allow myself to then go and visit the house. So wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't thinking about the whole. Process of buying a house. I was thinking about the next steps, and the next step then was to look at the house. And actually every time I went into a house, I decided, you know what? I love this house. This house. This is for me. This house is for me. I'll jump in thinking, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I'll go into the next house and the next house be like, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is the one. This is the one. And eventually I found the one that I'm living in, and it was like, wow. It's like a, it's had loads of different rooms. It was like a rabbit, Warren had its own sauna garden. It was a nice house. It wasn't brand new and it, it was quite a bit of character to it. And I was like, yes, this is the one. This is the one. And yeah, throughout this journey of getting this house, I would always take the next step. Going see the solicitor go in and seeing the, uh, the, the mortgage, um, about the mortgages to see about the bank. Bank. Detailed accounts obviously put in an offer and I obviously focus on each one as it as it came up. And the thing is, there are times when we're always gonna go through setbacks. There's always gonna be times when we go through setbacks and this house. It took me nine months to get, so it took in nine months of being patient and waiting and yeah, carrying on with the process, the next step and the next step and the next step. And then I, there was a point where literally the house fell through, not once but twice. I remember each time, each time people saying, oh, it's all right. It's all right. Go look at another house. Go look at another house. But I had complete faith that this will be my house, and so I didn't even look at other houses. I didn't even look at the houses, and I knew that I would get it. I just, I just knew I would get it. And even, you know, even a point where this was like 10, 15 grand above, uh, what I could offer. And the people actually agreed to my offer of, I think it was 2 7 4 or 174, sorry, 174,000, and they agreed to the offer and reduced it by 15,000. And so yeah, I, I absolutely knew that would happen. I was patient, I trusted the process and I allowed myself just, and, and allowed myself just to have this complete trust in it. And I got it. I got the house, and then nine months, 10 months later, I moved into the house. It was such a satisfying, and this whole thing of getting the house proved to me that when you trust the process. When you have a goal, when you take each step as it comes and you are open to it all, and you just have complete faith, you can achieve anything. You can get it if you keep your mind, as if you keep your mind to it. And that was a big eye-opener for me in the, in the ways of manifesting and getting what you want, creating what you want, kind of thing. Now. Another thing I wanna talk about is being open to change. So you might have this idea of a goal, but what you actually get in the end might not be what you think. And this is for good. And this is, I think, I feel like it's for good reason because sometimes what we actually asked for actually wanted might not be in our best interest. And so getting the. The alternative or something else might be even better for us. And we only realize that, um, once it's happened down the line. And so it's obviously having a goal, keeping your focus on the goal and trusting that you're gonna get it, but also being open to what comes, trusting that it might not be what you think and it, and it will more than likely. If it isn't what you think, we'll be 10 times better than what you thought. Because our, I feel like our mind is there is limited to what we know, to what we learned, what we see. But when we have trust in something bigger than themselves, they know. I feel like this thing that's bigger than ourselves knows what we want and what we need more than we do. So it might have this idea of what this plan, you know what, James, I'm gonna give you something 10 times better and, and then again, it's about trusting the process. Trust. Keep trust. You know what I'm all about? Trust. Trust, trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. Faith. Faith. Faith. Faith. Faith. Faith. Faith. Having so, you know, I feel so, so strongly about trust and having faith in the process. Because I know from my own personal experience, when you have that trust and faith, you get everything that you want When you focused. It's unreal. It's unreal. And yeah. So I want to quickly add in a little bit extra in this moment about. I believe a new way of being, a new way of that we are shifting into a way that we can work with both the, the, the masculine of doing and the feminine of allowing. And that comes all through, and I think I've mentioned it before in other episodes, about allowing yourself to personally. Come be. So firstly, be present, come into the state of presence, be present in your body. Mm-hmm. Allow yourself to be present in your body so that you connect to yourself. And actually just, I just wanna quickly just mention, I was in London this weekend doing a course of relating level two and. What I realized is that usually I feel really disconnected in London because I don't really, I didn't really, I don't really like it. It's too many people, and I feel like it's just very overwhelming and so much going on. But one of the realizations that I made, not in the course, but generally that weekend, is that you can, and I knew this before, but I feel like it's, it's almost, it's, I mean, I'm starting to embody it, is that you can feel disconnected. In a woodland, in nature in almost anywhere. And that means you can almost, you can be disconnected in a big city, but at the same time, if you are disconnected from yourself, I feel like you're always gonna be disconnected from everything. But if you allow yourself to connect to yourself. To really tune into yourself, into presence, into your heart space. Really allow yourself to connect to your body. I feel like wherever you go, it does not matter whether it's in a woodland, whether it's inner city, whether it's uh, in somewhere in of nowhere, or wherever it is or place you hate. I feel like if you are connected to yourself, you will be connected to anywhere. Anyone, anywhere.'cause I fully believe that to with everything, with, with trust, with presence, with, um, with connection. It all begins with coming back to ourselves. So creating connection in ourselves, creating trust in ourselves, so it's trusting ourself internally. And then naturally, externally, we trust everything externally. And the same with connection. If you connect to yourself internally, you will naturally feel connected to everything externally. And that's a big, big lesson I've learned that weekend. Anyway, I go off a little bit off a tangent here and what I was talking about wanting to wanna talk about a little bit of, uh. Last bit guidance on manifesting is to, is changing in the way we see things. So being in a place of receiving, so we, we know what we want, we have this goal, but then once you have this goal, allow yourself to go and sit in a quiet place, whether you meditate, whether it's a woodland, whether it's a conservatory, whether it's a bath, uh, at a table outside, allow yourself to become. Present in the present moment. In fact, allow yourself to enjoy the presence of the moment and allow yourself to be in this place of presence, of receiving, of allowing, and allow whatever comes through to come through. Now, you might have an intention for this bit, so you might have an intention of what's the next step for blood, uh, whatever the goal is. But then allow yourself to be in that place of presence, and you can have a journal and write down what comes through. Quite often I'll sit in my conservatory with a cup of coffee and I will discuss about, um, what's, yeah, I will, I will sit in there and I'll be in a set of presence and I'll just jot down on paper when little things come into my mind. And now it might, this could be like lots of different things and it could be a load of, uh, rubbish, but it doesn't matter. The more that you practice this. The more that it happen and you know, the more easier it gets. And then once you've done like 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes of presence and you've perhaps you've got some guidance and you've got some, uh, key steps, then the next thing is take inspired action. So you've done them. The feminine part. The feminine part has been a state of allowing. The next step is to allow yourself to drop into the masculine. Now that you've got the guidance. Go and take them inspired Action. Action steps. What is it? You take these action steps that came through for you, or it might be you sit in place of receiving and you decide, you know what comes through is I need to go for a walk and there may be on this walk. It's where you receive the steps that you need. But I, I believe, and, and this is what I've been doing quite a bit for my, with regards to what I'm, my business, is being in a place of allowing, allow the guidance to come in, the intuition, the higher power, the higher thing that's higher than us. Um, allow that to come in, whatever needs to come in, action, that step come and sit down again. Receive, then take action, receive, then take action. Receive, take action. And what you'll find is that you'll start tuning in and you get better and better and better at this. And more and more stuff will come through. And then there'll be times when you are walking around and it'll, all these ideas will just float in. So, yeah, I fully believe that is going to, that is probably one of the best ways I think you can do in, uh. In this fast paced world and create something completely, completely you, you know, that's what I fully believe. So, yeah, we have talked about quite a bit today, but it's more, I just wanted to give you a, a kind of a structure, a bit of a structure. So we talked about, here are the couple of steps, talked about setting a goal and the importance setting goal. Talked about, obviously always taking the next step, not worrying about two or three steps down the line. We talked about setbacks and how setbacks are always gonna happen, but it's how we navigate setbacks. Talked about being open to change and what we want isn't always gonna be what we think it is in our head. I talk massively about trust and faith, uh, about. And then we finally finished off, actually, I talked about how being connected to ourselves is the key to be creating connection outside ourselves. And we finished off with being in a state of both the masculine and the feminine. So the actually allowing and the doing so allowing yourself to receive guidance, then to action that receive guidance. So yeah. That is my take on it all. Thank you for listening. If something in today's conversation resonated, take a moment to sit with it. And if you feel called, share this episode with someone who might need it to you matter. I matter is a growing space, and if you would like to stay connected. You're welcome to follow or subscribe wherever you are listening. It really helps us work to reach people. It's meant for. These conversations matter. You matter. I matter. Until next time, take care of yourself and the relationships in your life.