Momentum: The Importance Of Taking Action

We are momentum based beings. When we keep moving forward, we thrive. When we stop, we stagnate.

There’s a positive feedback loop when you keep taking action. As soon as you stop, that loop ends, and unfortunately we tend to focus on the last result we got (which was negative). But if you keep adapting, keep adjusting, keep learning, and keep trying– then with each incremental step you gain more confidence for the next attempt. You’ll know more, you’ll know what not to do, and you’ll have a greater chance of achieving your goal.

If you think of us as momentum based beings, and focus on getting started, it can help with taking action, even if it seems like a small action. That’s how you get to the goal — you take incremental steps. And that’s obviously less intimidating than just looking at the big overarching goal. Break it down, keep taking little steps, and eventually you’ll get all the way to the big goal.

A Quick Analogy

One analogy for this concept is traffic. When you’re driving on the freeway, you’re making progress. Suddenly, things slow down and you have to temporarily come to a stop.  Things crawl forward, you hit the gas a little bit, you move forward. You’re always moving a little bit. And obviously it’s preferred to move faster in most cases, but what would happen if you were to pull off to the side of the road and say “this is stupid, it’s not working… I’m done with this.” Would you ever get there? No, of course not. But if you stay on the freeway, and put up with the slow traffic, and inch forward bit by bit – you will eventually get to your destination.

And what happens sometimes is: you’re sitting in traffic, and then suddenly there’s a speedup for no reason. You don’t even see an accident or anything, but you get to surge forward. This happens in life as well. The more you keep pressing on, and chipping away at your goal, suddenly you’ll get huge bursts of progress. And of course you might hit another slowdown. But the point is: never stop. Never give up and pull to the side of the road and say “this isn’t working.” There’s nothing wrong with changing lanes, but you should always keep pressing forward.