Hey Reader

Lately I've been obsessed (and driving Vogel up the wall 😝) with a song called "Do It Anyway" by Yoshi2.0. In the lyrics, he runs through all the different emotions you could be feeling and reminds you to do the thing anyway.

It’s been stuck in my head, partly because of the catchy tune, and partly because it’s true.

We can do it scared.

We can do it stressed.

We can do it unsure, overwhelmed, or completely terrified.

If I'd waited until I felt 100% ready to do scary things, we wouldn't have the JashiiCorrin YouTube channel, I wouldn't have this newsletter to you each week, and I wouldn't have just spoken on the stage at GO Wild.

(This coming from the person who cried their way out of a compulsory university presentation because she'd have to speak in front of a class of 20 students 😝)

Sure, we can do things scared or feeling uncertain, but how does one even?

Given that the advice of "just do it" is never helpful for me, let's have a closer look 👀

The idea - Don't wait for a perfect mindset to take action

A lot of feelings can hold us back from getting things done, but they don't have to.

I have three strategies I'm using at the moment to help me "feel my feelings" and then still take action.

Some > all

One of life's great fallacies is that we have to feel motivated to do things; action follows motivation.

Sure, feeling motivated helps, but it isn't actually a prerequisite.

Motivation and action are more so in a cycle with each other. While we can wait until we're motivated to take action, often taking action will build motivation for us.

Knowing this, the strategy I try to employ is "just getting started".

If I'm feeling major resistance towards doing something, I aim to give the task 2-5 minutes of my time just as a way to get the ball rolling.

I will literally set a timer for myself for 2-5 minutes, get to work, and aim to stay on task until I hear the alarm go off.

The key here is that I can stop at any time I want after those few minutes are up.

Sometimes, just those initial minutes of work will have built up enough motivation for me to keep going. Other times though, the alarm will sound and I'll drop everything

Doing some of the thing is better than doing none of it.

If feeling unmotivated, sad, or anxious is holding me back from taking action, the "just getting started" trick is a go to for me.

Use an alter ego

This is for those times when fear is the one holding us back.

Rather than having us "do the thing", we get someone else to do it. More specifically, our alter ego.

Our alter ego is the version of us who isn't scared of this situation. They're bold, confident, unapologetically themselves, and have any other positive quality that's going to be helpful for the situation.

This trick is used by performers like Beyoncé and Adele to help with their stage presence, and can be thought of as the "fake it 'til you make it" tactic; we're playing pretend about being confident in a situation that lowkey terrifies us.

Now I'm not suggesting we're going to claim credentials we haven't really earned or anything like that, but more so we're borrowing confidence from a version of ourselves that isn't paralysed by the fears we have.

By stepping into the persona of this alter ego, we can give ourselves some distance from the fears that are holding us back and get things done.

Scared Excited

One trick I've been using with myself recently is intentionally interpreting my fear responses as excitement responses.

The way our body responds to feeling afraid has decent overlap with its response to excitement.

Things like an increased heart rate, dilated pupils, and sweaty palms will happen both when we're fearful and when we're excited.

In situations where I'm afraid, I work to change my internal dialogue to explain those symptoms as ones of excitement rather than fear.

Does this make me less afraid? No, not really. But it helps lessen the impact of that fear by highlighting all the reasons to be pumped about this situation 😈

One question I use to help with interpreting my fear as excitement is:

By doing things that scare us, we're rewarded with feeling pride in ourselves, feeling empowered, and an expanded comfort zone.

And of course, sometimes we're rewarded with feeling relief that it's over 😂

This was the main tactic I used at GO Wild.

I was excited, sure. But also genuinely afraid. Big eyes, dry throat, slightly (very) unhinged energy 👀 terrified.

But I did it anyway.

Was it perfect? Certainly not.

Have I been replaying all the stuff-ups in my head over and over? You betcha 😂

But I still came off the stage with further evidence that I have done hard things and can continue to do hard things, even if they scare me 💪

If you want to check out snippets from that presentation, and the trip overall, we've got a video over on the vlog channel!

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🎶I do it anyway 🎶

When it comes to getting things done, whether we're scared, feeling down, or generally unmotivated, we don't have to let those feelings hold us back.

The aim isn't to not feel those things. It's to feel them and get things done anyway.

Whatever feelings are showing up, you’re allowed to carry them with you and still take action.

Let's take action

What's something you've been avoiding? Not because it's an impossible feat, but because it brings up uncomfortable feelings you'd rather avoid.

Thinking about this task, ask yourself:

Waiting for the perfect mood often means putting things off forever.

We don't need to be perfect, we just need the smallest bit of bravery to get started.

Until next time!

- Jess

PS. If you want to listen to the part of the song I have stuck in my head, you can find that here 😂 And yes, I did sing the song to myself before stepping out on stage at GO Wild 😝

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