I try to take walks around my neighborhood every day. There is something about being outside and the rhythmic nature of walking that helps me think. One sunny day about two months ago I realized something simple yet fundamental to how I live my life. I had to “get my mind right” before I did anything. If I was going to lift weights, I needed to inundate myself with caffeine. If I was going to work on school stuff, I needed to be in the right mood to start. If I was going to write (which rarely happened) everything had to be just right. But on this walk, I discovered something. I had to change my state before I acted. And I realized I had it backwards. The truth is that action creates a state change. Acting changes your mood. It was so simple, I didn’t understand why it took me this long to realize this.
So, I started to experiment. If it was time to lift and I didn’t feel like it, I did anyways. And the wild part is my workouts began to improve dramatically. Since I wasn’t flooding my system with caffeine anymore, I could focus without the wild gods of caffeine flowing through my veins. My resting heart rate was lower, which translated into being able to push myself harder without gassing out.
I also tried it with school. I set a certain time I would start classwork, and I decided to start no matter how I felt mentally or physically. My output and quality started to increase. I began finishing classwork early. I was proud that I had completed something difficult despite how I felt.
I learned that action equals state change. Meaning if I wanted to feel better, be it depression, anxiety, or just in a funk, then I had to take action to change how I felt. I could not wait until the perfect moment. It’s like CCR sang “’Cause someday never comes.”
This concept is simple but hard to do in the beginning. I messed up plenty attempting to apply this principle to my life. But I believe it can change your life, because it has mine. It’s hard to act when depression is pressing you 6 feet into your bed or anxiety makes it feel like you want to jump out of your own skin. But it really is a tactic that works. It doesn’t have to be anything grand or dramatic. It could be something as simple as taking out the trash, brushing your teeth, or taking a 5-minute walk. Because all those actions compound. They seem small in the beginning, because they are, but after doing them over a span of a days they start to add up. Even a great Oak tree is a sapling at one point. The point is to start. That’s what I did, and it has changed my life.
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