The Challenge to Try Something New (Again)

Are you avoiding a new habit or something that could help you be more productive because you've tried it once? Here's encouragement to try again!

Excited to talk to you today about trying things more than once. This sounds like a really simple idea, but I want to give you the pep talk today to be able to think about things that you can do or try again in your life.

Try, try again

Often with coaching clients, I hear things like “I tried meditation once…” or “I tried using a paper planner once…” “I tried you know delegating that task once…” All kinds of different things that we have in our lives that we know can be really helpful. There's a lot of scientific evidence about that this could help or other people have told you in your life that that could be helpful and we say “Oh, I've tried that once.”

And it implies I'm not doing it ever again or that's not for me, I'm not that kind of person, all these kinds of things.

One of the biggest blocks I had about something I thought I was never going to do was about running. I just had this persona of I'm not a runner. I've never run before. It's not going to happen. That's great that other people do it, I'm not going to do it right. It's just like we get into these traps of thinking that's not me. I'm not going to do that again or give it a try.

Well take a step back and really think about how we encourage children to keep trying things like what if you said – first time you're riding a bike, “I tried riding a bike once, it just didn’t work out for me.”

Keep practicing

Everybody knows that one time doesn't work, right? That you have to keep practicing and you have to keep seeing, you know, how goes. This doesn’t mean we have to try endlessly. I mean, maybe eventually decide you just don't like riding bikes, but it doesn't mean that you’ve said, “I tried it once and I'm done.” That's true for a lot of things and again back to the meditation, a lot of people find they have to keep practicing at it or come and go from it over time just to really make it stick. Different ways we can build those habits.

I had that problem about yoga for a long time. Sometimes I would struggle with it, I’d dabble in it, and it's only recently that I really felt like it's really sticking. I really see the benefit and what everybody goes on about all the time. So exercise is a common one, but also the productivity things in our lives.

What are the things that you keep ignoring because you say “I tried it once and I'm not going back” to whether that's the plan or method that you use, the way you take notes, the way your smartphone set up, the way your laptop’s organized, all of those things that we get kind of trapped in our traditional way.

I want to challenge you to think about one thing you can do this week that might be another attempt at something that didn't go so well before, but could be something you’d try again – something simple because it could really make a difference.

Want to stop procrastinating? Leave your details below, and I’ll send you my tips for reclaiming your time.