The One You Feed - Mini Episode with Eric

Episode Date: March 9, 2014

Hi Everyone...trying something new. Eric goes solo for a quick talk on getting moving when you feel stuck. We will be back with a normal episode on our usual release day, Tuesday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey everybody it's Eric from the one you feed and

I'm doing something a little bit different today it's just me and I'll be talking to you about one of the concepts that comes up on the podcast a lot I've gotten feedback from a bunch of listeners saying they'd like to hear more from Chris and I, who we are, and just hear more from us in general. So this is an attempt at doing that. We don't have all the fancy audio equipment.

I'm not at Chris's, so I am sitting at my house. So this will not sound as good as it normally does, but we will go with what we have. And I think going with what we have is a good way to segue into the concept I want to talk about today, because it comes up over and over again on the show, and it's the idea of taking action even when we don't feel like it. and we don't feel like it. This idea that our mood, we have to be in the right mood to do something, is very perilous for us,

and I'm as guilty of it as anybody. And doing the podcast right now, this actual talking, is an example of me trying to break through that. I didn't really feel like doing it right now. It's something I've been wanting to do. I had a lot of good excuses about how I wasn't ready or I needed to do this or I needed to do that. And finally, I simply said, all right, plug in, let's go. So here we are.

And getting unstuck is a lot like that when we're feeling stuck in a spot and unable to take action that we know that we need to take. There are some tools that we can use to break that down. And I think the first tool that is just to realize that we're stuck, that we're procrastinating, even recognize what we're doing. Todd Henry said on the podcast at one point that you must be conscious of how today's choices beget tomorrow's regrets. So it's important for us just to break out of the habitual stream and realize that we are not using our time as well as we would like. And I think that's really a clear first step. The second thing for me that I do is I try and break the work down in

my mind into the smallest possible increments that I can. This does a couple things for me, because I get stuck and have a hard time doing things, usually for one of two reasons. I'll probably think of a third before I'm done, but we'll start with the first two. The first one is that it feels overwhelming. It's too much to do. It just seems like it's a long way to get there, etc. So what I do, if I break it down into the smallest possible chunk I can, I've just really reduced the amount of time and the overwhelming feeling. And then the second thing that I run into a lot is that I don't, I'm not quite sure what to do, or I can't see my way all the way to the end of the task or whatever the work is. And again, by breaking it down into small pieces of work, I can find one that I can get after. So for example, today doing this, I simply said, all right, I'm going to plug it in and I'm going to talk and

we'll see what happens. And that was enough for me to break it down into a very small piece. I didn't have to worry about how he'd edit the final piece. I didn't have to worry about whether it was any good, whether it was going to be any music. I was going to plug in and talk. And I took the pressure off myself also that it had to work. I was just going to do it. And then, so that's an example of breaking things down into a really small piece. Another classic one for me is getting through my email inbox as an example. If I'm overwhelmed and there's a ton, I will just set a timer for myself. I'll set it for two minutes or five minutes and say, all right, I'm going to get started on this. That's usually enough to get me moving.

And then when the timer goes off, I'm usually in motion and I can keep going. And that has been a way that I've learned to tackle all kinds of things, whether it be cleaning out my email inbox, recording a podcast, exercising. Exercising is one where it's, let me get the clothes on to go to the gym. That'll be my first thing that I do. So I break it down to that level. Cleaning the house is another classical one. Set the timer, five minutes, let me see what I can get done. Usually after five minutes, like I said, I'm moving, I feel better, and I want to keep going. And this is something I think that we all wrestle with. And I do think it's one of the key components to living a better life is being able to motivate ourselves when we don't feel like it,

we're not in the mood. Our moods are extremely capricious and not a great way to base our life on how we feel. And yet I think that's what a lot of us do. I know I certainly have done that plenty of times in the past and still can do it today if I'm not staying on top of it. There's a phrase that says something like, we can't think our way into right action. We have to act our way into right thinking. And this is an example of that. A very small, breaking the task down into the smallest increment that I can think of and then committing to doing that increment and ideally committing to do it right now seems to help an awful lot with doing those things. So that is all for our short little chat here together. Hopefully it was helpful to you guys.

I love the listener feedback. I'd love to hear from you guys. Anything that you want to hear more of, you want to hear less of, it's great to hear from you. I know we're getting lots and lots of listens and downloads, but the more I hear from you guys, the better that is. So thanks so much for listening to the show. I hope that it's helping you in feeding your good wolf, and we'll talk again soon. Thanks very much. See ya.