A few nights ago, my friend Neghar and I were out to dinner at one of our fav restaurants here in LA. And thanks to #moderation365, we enjoyed splitting a delicious Italian chopped salad, some fried cauliflower, a chicken dish and even a small pasta dish.

As we sat there enjoying the meal, we talked about things like moderation and mindfulness and mindset and relationships (as one does, ha), and at one point Neg said, “People always ask me, ‘How? I get it intellectually, but HOW do you actually do it?’”

And I agreed because whether it’s trusting yourself enough to have bites of your favorite food without overindulging or getting the gym when you are tired, or even having an honest but scary conversation with a loved one, “How?” is always the follow-up.

It’s one of the criticisms of self-help and even therapy—that the focus is so much on thinking that people continue to stay in a place of processing, and as a result, never take action.

It’s actually been shown in research that when people think about doing a thing, they feel a sense of accomplishment almost as if they’d actually done it, so they don’t feel as compelled to actually act!

As for me, I am fascinated with doing. If you know me, or have ever worked with me, you know that action is the mantra. Why? Because having the experience is the greatest elucidator. It’s the thing that reveals the next steps. It’s the thing that both gets you the wins and also the lessons.

And while that sounds easy, in practice doing something hard or different or scary is much more difficult.

So here’s the deal. Ninety percent of mindset work or changing your circumstances is about awareness. We become aware of times when we want to play the victim. We become aware of times when we are engaging in negative self-talk. We become aware of the self-limiting beliefs we have. We become aware of our self-defeating patterns.

And awareness is always the first step. It’s seeing that you do, indeed, have a say in how you respond to things, and it’s an affirmation that you always have control over your attitude and how you perceive your world.

Great, because once you have awareness that you would like to do something different, you are then open to actually doing it.

This is the last 10%--the actually doing something different. When the rubber meets the road, what do you choose? Do you choose the thing you have always done or do you choose new?

By the way, often both choices are tough. Neither feel awesome. So don’t expect to ever be completely ready to make a new choice.

But I think it was Tony Robbins who said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

In today’s post, I share some examples around HOW to actually start eating moderately, HOW to address some of the stickiness in your relationships and HOW to make those big leaps when it comes to your career.

You can read the full article here.

Let me know what you think! And have a great weekend ;)

Xo,

Jill

P.S. If you might, you know, be interested in taking uncomfortable action, be sure to join my free course, #ActionAcademy, going on right now. The goal of the course is to take a ton of action over the next several weeks towards your goals, with the help of the simple weekly blueprint I am sharing, and the help of an amazing group of like-minded women holding one another accountable in our exclusive closed Facebook group. It's fun, and legit risk-free. Join us here!