Why Women Stop Taking Actions
The Action-Delaying Dilemma: Why women may be more prone to analysis paralysis than men
Everything is going great! Your client is motivated … She's excited about the changes that are coming her way … She believes in you, she believes in the plan, and she believes in herself
And then she stops taking the actions …. She stops following the “plan” ... the excitement, and her belief that it will ever happen for her, has dried up
What happened???
She was going so well ...
And you do all you can to get her back on track.
You remind her why she started with you in the first place, you remind her of her hopes and dreams, and do everything you can to inspire her to start taking action again …
... but nothing you do seems to make any headway.
Frustrating for you
and frustrating for her
So what did happen?
Why is it that so many women just give up on their dreams and on themselves?
It’s because of the programs, beliefs, thoughts, the incessant negative head chatter, that so many women have running in the background rises up and becomes deafening.
It’s like this constant "hum" that they can sometimes drown out, but it never fully goes away.
It’s because of how our brains function, how we process information, how we perceive ourselves, others and the world and because of everything that we’ve experienced in life that have formed our beliefs (plus those that have been passed on in our DNA through epigenetics).
Women are more prone to spend time (sometimes too much time) ruminating and going over the event a million times in their head … “I should have done this, or I should have said that”
We beat ourselves up for all the things we did and all the things we didn’t do, and that causes us to question ourselves and leads to inaction.
And that inaction perpetuates the internal struggle and self doubt.
It feeds the fear so much that it feels very real to us and it seems like no amount of logic or positive talk can change that. Of course there are some women who are very good at pushing through, at “feeling the fear and doing it anyway” but for the majority of women, that’s not the case.
You see, one of the jobs of our unconscious mind is to keep us safe and one way it does that is to move us away from pain.
This is why it can be so hard to step outside our comfort zones because “out there” is, what your unconscious mind perceives as, “pain”.
Let me give you an example of how that can play out in life …
Your client comes to you because she wants to achieve “ABC” goal (maybe it’s around health, diet, fitness, money, work, relationships, etc)
She’s all excited; her conviction, determination and motivation are off the charts.
She’s prioritising time to take the actions, and this enthusiasm will last as long as it lasts for her (some women it only lasts for days, others it’s weeks, and others it’s months).
It’s dependent on how long she can “hold the cork under the water” before it inevitably bobs to the surface again and she finds herself playing out the tried and true patterns of procrastination, avoidance and justification.
Yes, she’ll feel like a failure but it's nothing compared to the embarrassment or the hurt or the rejection that she “could” experience if she did continue down the path.
Remember, it’s not logical for women, it’s emotional and when we’re emotional our brain doesn’t actually allow us to think straight because all the lights in the front (where we do our thinking) turn off and the lights in the back turn on (they have proven this under brain scans), so we are literally dumber when we’re highly emotional.
And it doesn’t matter that it’s not “real” … have you ever been in a situation where you thought something was real but when you actually stopped, realised it wasn’t?
It’s like if you were hiking …
You’re having a really lovely time, admiring nature and the fresh air...
Then all of a sudden, out of the corner of your eye you see something and you think it’s a snake!
So you jump ...
Maybe let out a little scream
Your heart starts racing and you clutch your chest
BUT when you look again ...
You realise it was only a stick!
So you start to calm down
In that moment, your unconscious mind didn’t know that it wasn’t “real” and reacted the same way it would have if it was.
This is why it doesn't matter that the thoughts we have and the scenarios we make up in our heads aren’t “real”, we “think” they are and our bodies react the way they would as if they were actually happening to us.
It’s often so much worse than reality … we have a pretty good imagination and it’s all the self doubt and insecurities that fuel that imagination to make it into something that’s bigger than Ben Hur.
And it’s enough to make us stop taking action, to justify that we didn’t really want that “thing” anyway, that we’re happy how we are, others have it worse than we do and look at all the things I have that I should be grateful for … we can talk ourselves in and out of anything!
When what’s really happening is that your unconscious mind is just trying to keep you “safe” by moving you away from what IT perceives to be the bigger of two “pains”.
And we end up “settling” for a mediocre life when it could be so much more.
Most men don’t do this as much as women because they’re better at compartmentalising - work is work, home is home and things don’t overlap (because of how THEIR brains work).
Man's Brain
Woman's Brain
Women need to BE Happy, Content, Confident FIRST
and then the “doing” - taking the action steps (in fact, when we “be” first, we can allow ourselves to be led, which is more in alignment of how women create), becomes easy.
Your clients will have more success with you, which makes you feel good - it’s why you started your business in the first place, isn’t it?
They feel good, you feel good and everyone else in their life (and your life) get to benefit from all that feel good - it’s a win / win / win / win!
Interested in becoming accredited in the same process I use that makes my clients stop procrastinating and get off the “paralysis by analysis” merry-go-round?
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Interested on a personal level to stop all that overthinking and indecision from ruling your life and start “doing” with ease?
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