 So, this question is about willpower and how important willpower is in terms of procrastination and personal productivity. If you've seen any of my other videos, you'll know I don't focus on willpower, I focus on something else, something far more powerful, which is actually self-compassion, but we'll get to that. This question starts and says, I can stick to a plan of action for a few days at a time. Then I always slide back. Once I was even able to complete thirty days in a row, I assume of implementing a change or a behaviour. I was hoping that this would become a habit that would stick. Unfortunately this didn't happen and I ended up going back to my old ways again, well I'm sure many of us have been there before, trying to implement something and hoping that this habit formation will take hold. So many people say it's 60 or 90 days, but I'm skeptical of all that to be honest. I think there's something else more important than this. And I'm not a huge fan of trying to see yourself like a piece of software and trying to, you know, like you're an app that needs to be upgraded or something. There's something more deep than this. You're not just purely something that needs to be conditioned, okay? But let me just read forward here. Okay, so this didn't happen. For me this looks like inconsistency, frustration and disappointment. Originally I was having procrastination issues with study, but since finishing school it has shown up in other areas of my life. It will. It will. Unless we begin to acknowledge what it is that's actually underneath it, we'll get through something, maybe with a great deal of difficulty and struggle and indecision. But it will probably come back. Okay, so things that really should be fun for me, painting, which I was always good at or exercise, are now areas I struggle to stay consistent with. I know that in order to achieve any real progress or level of skill, I'll need to stay consistent over time. But some days my motivation just isn't there and I fail to take action. How can I become consistent and end this pattern of sliding back into old patterns after short term success and that's from Anthony. So Anthony, what I would say is, first of all, very common what you're experiencing and it's great that you're interested in really understanding it in a deeper level because it's not just about building willpower. That's not what this is about. Usually we're all obsessed with this thing called willpower and it's actually we're just, well, there's something wrong with me, I don't have enough willpower, I need to get more willpower, it's putting ourselves down and it's needless. So consistency is important and consistency is really one of the fundamental aspects of success, there's no doubt about it. Consistency in what is a question I love to ask because consistency in action, maybe. Maybe that's a part of it, but that's not what the root cause of it is. Consistency in inner work, intimacy. Am I consistently with myself and understanding myself and my emotions and what it is that I need, what excites me, what doesn't excite me. Consistently self-aware, growing self-awareness consistently is really the consistency we're talking about. Are we consistently in the right mindset? Really, that's all that matters. If you get to the point where you're consistently working on my mindset, all the action in the world follows after that. And you may notice that your emotional states are the thing that are sabotaging you. You implement these changes and you stick with them for a while, but what is it that always trips us up? It's our emotion. It's our some negative feeling comes up and then that's the thing that sabotages us. And negative feelings can't simply be acted away, if you know what I mean. We can't just change behavior alone and expect our emotions to fall into place. Emotions have to be met where emotions are. And that's an inner job, right? That's an inside job that needs to be looked at. If that's the case, pushing harder, taking more action won't necessarily accomplish things, accomplish anything. It'll actually probably what it'll do is it'll build resentment in us for the things that we're engaging with and we would like to see growth in. So what I would say for this is do a little experiment with one of the areas that you're procrastinating in, OK? And have that, OK? Whereas I used to focus on I'm going to take action in this goal and maybe being consistent with that even. I'm going to take some time to just sit with my feelings about this thing for maybe 30 minutes, OK? And what I would suggest will be sit with it and in this window of time of 30 minutes, I'm going to sit with the feelings I have around it and see if I can cultivate a positive emotion about doing something in this area for those 30 minutes. And as soon as you get a sort of a positive feeling or something that excites you about the thing, then you can move into action. Now what you're doing is you're going in and you're addressing the feelings and you're doing that in your work and you're setting the right intention for yourself. If you feel terrible before you do something, that is not a sign that there's something wrong with you or that you've failed because we often we can't force our way through these horrible feelings forever. They have to be met and acknowledged and healed and let go. So don't see that as something that's gone wrong. That's very normal for all of us. It's just that we try and ignore it and bulldoze those feelings out of the way. Rather than just going in and just being, OK, what if I stay with this emotion and see and acknowledge and validate it and see if it can change into something else that would look more like a helpful thing that would move me with less resistance in this thing that I'm interested in? Writing is a huge part of this. Understanding where these negative emotions are coming from. Why does it feel so hard for me to do this thing? Why am I so overwhelmed by it? All those things can be a huge, huge help. Now, again, action is important. So if when you sit with that and immediately you start to feel better, move straight into action, it's so, so helpful. People won't like this advice again. I've said this in previous videos because we are so action oriented in our society. But what I would tell a person is five minutes of action taken with the right intention is better than 30 minutes of forced, coercive, non enjoyable action. Just for the sake of having it ticked off a list or something. If you can get into the right mindset first, have the right intention for yourself first, any action you take is like action on steroids. OK, it really is. And also what you're doing is you're acknowledging any emotions and you're not treating yourself like a machine, which we're not. You become far more consistent this way. So if you commit to this. That mindset that we tend to be in, you'll become far more consistent, a more consistent user of a very effective mindset, thinking in a more compassionate way and in a more self encouraging way. Now, what I would say is just do it as an experiment, even if you think I'm full of it. OK, and I'm telling you to ignore things. Give that a go and let me know how it works for you. And I'd be very interested to hear. I'll leave it there for now, guys, but thanks again and bye for now.