PART 07

And here’s the kicker: I knew what I needed to do to start my day right. I needed to get up on time, make breakfast, and get the kids on the bus. Then I needed to look for a job. It’s not like I had to climb Mount Everest. However, the fact that it was simple stuff actually made it worse. I had no legitimate excuse for why I couldn’t get it done.

My self-confidence was in a death spiral. If I couldn’t even get up on time, how the heck could I have faith in myself to fix the bigger financial and marriage problems that Chris and I faced? Looking back, I can see that I was losing hope.

In my case, it was getting up on time. Lying in bed every night, I would make promises to myself that tomorrow I would change:

Tomorrow, I will change. Tomorrow, I will wake up earlier. Tomorrow, I will have a better attitude and try a little harder. I will go to the gym. I’ll be nice to my husband. I’ll eat healthy. I won’t drink so much. Tomorrow I will be the future me!

And with that vision in mind and a heart full of hope, I’d set my alarm for 6 a.m. and close my eyes. And the cycle would begin the very next morning. As soon as that alarm rang, I didn’t feel like the “future me.” I felt like the old me, and the old me wanted to keep sleeping.

Yes, I thought about getting up, and then I would hesitate, roll toward the alarm, and hit the snooze button. Five seconds was all it took for me to talk myself out of it.

The reason that I didn’t get out of bed was simple: I just didn’t feel like it. I would later learn that I was stuck in what researchers call a “habit loop.” I had hit the snooze button so many mornings in a row the behavior was now a closed-loop pattern encoded in my brain.

Then one night, everything changed.

I was about to turn off the TV and head to bed when a television commercial caught my attention. There on the screen was the image of a rocket launching. I could hear the famous final five-second countdown, 5- 4- 3- 2- 1, fire and smoke filled the screen, and the shuttle launched.

I thought to myself, “That’s it, I’ll launch myself out of bed tomorrow…like a rocket. I’ll move so fast I won’t have time to talk myself out of it.” It was just an instinct. One that I could have easily dismissed. Luckily, I didn’t. I acted on it.

The fact is, I wanted to solve our problems. I didn’t want to destroy my marriage or keep feeling like the world’s worst mom. I wanted to be financially secure. I wanted to feel happy and proud of myself again

And I Desperately Wanted to Change. I Just Didn’t Know How

And this is an important point in my story. This instinct to launch myself out of bed was my inner wisdom talking. Hearing it was a tipping point. Following its instructions was life-changing. Your brain and your body send you signals to wake up and to pay attention. This idea of launching myself out of bed is an example of that. Your instincts may seem stupid in the moment, but when you honor them with deliberate action, it can change your life.

There’s more to this point about acting on your instincts than just the phrase “trust your gut.” New research from the University of Arizona, in partnership with Cornell and Duke, has shown that there’s a powerful connection between your brain and your instinct to act. When you set a goal, your brain opens up a task list.

Whenever you are near things that can help you achieve those goals, your brain fires up your instincts to signal to get that goal completed. Let me give you an example.