How many times do you go to yourself “I know should be doing this,” or “I know I need to do that but I’ll do it later,” or “I know I should do this but I don’t want to.” We all get caught up in these “I know” thoughts, but oftentimes we don’t follow through with action and actually do what we know we should.
When there is a disconnect between the knowing and the doing, it’s because we are up in our heads, up in our egos, and up in that mind space which actually prevents us from taking action. But the doing actually comes from the heart. When we get out of our heads and connect with our hearts we can cross over that bridge from just knowing into doing, and actually seeing results in your life.
Join me in this episode as I deep dive into this topic, and where I give you simple strategies you can implement today right now to accomplish more doing rather than just knowing.
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
The difference between knowing and actually doing
How our ego keeps us in our head and prevents us from taking action
Why the secret is to listen to your heart not your mind
6 ways to cross the bridge between knowing (ego) into doing (heart)
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello, hello, hey, hey, welcome to Happy Productive episode number 28. I’m Jennifer Dawn, a business coach and founder of the Best Planner Ever. Happy Productive podcast is your go to resource for learning how to bring awareness into your productivity, your goals and all your time management practices so you can set yourself up each and every day for as much love and joy and happiness as you can possibly handle.
Now today we’re going to be talking about knowing versus doing. So let’s dive in. Now, this might seem a little obvious, right? But what is the difference, truly, between knowing versus doing? Well, knowing is simply having knowledge. And it is very important, of course, because it helps us to better understand the reasons why we want to do something or how to do something. So that knowledge is of course, very, very important.
Doing however, is putting that knowledge into action. It’s the action behind a thought or an idea that really brings it into our reality, right? It’s about making that plan and then taking the steps to carry it out. It’s the process of, you’ve heard the term, “thoughts become things” well, how do thoughts become things, they become things through the doing, through the action.
Now, this might sound perfectly obvious. And you might even catch yourself saying, well, I know that Jennifer, but here’s the challenge. The challenge is bridging that gap between knowing versus doing. Think about this right now. Anything that’s going on in your life or in your business that maybe isn’t quite where you want it to be. Maybe it’s your body, your physical appearance, parents, maybe it’s a relationship, maybe your business financials are not quite where you want them to be, or you’re struggling with your team. Anything right now, right, that’s going on that’s challenge.
In that area, if you sit down and you think about it for a second, you probably know in your heart, what you should be doing about it, right? What you should be doing, I should be eating differently or exercising or firing that person I don’t really want to fire, right? But the question is, are you really doing it? That’s the question. And we have to be honest with our answer. Because often what happens we’re up in our heads, we’re in that knowing.
Yeah, I know, I know. I know, I know, I need to fire them. I know, I need to eat healthier. I know I need to change my exercise. I know I need to, you know, hire some help. I know. Right? I know. I know. I know. Right? We’re up in our heads, we’re up in our egos. And we’re up in that mind space. When we’re in that I know, I know, I know. And often it is that ego, which is telling us Oh yeah, yeah, I already know that I don’t have to pay attention to that.
Whereas action, the doing actually comes from the heart. It’s from that heart is how we experience life, how we expand our soul. And that only happens when we start to take action and we cross over from knowing to doing. The problem is that we miss out on so many things because our mind is telling us we know know know. And what happens is that ends up translating into we are not doing we are not taking action, or we’re taking the wrong kind of action each day.
For example, or keeping ourselves so busy, that we don’t have to deal with maybe something big going in our lives we don’t want to deal with or we’re keeping ourselves so distracted, right? I’m just too busy. I’m just too distracted right now to deal with this thing that I know I should be doing, but I’m not doing. So the ego makes all of that right for us. And it creates excuses and justifications. The problem is if we don’t get past this, we will not be able to step into the doing part which remember, that’s the doing that helps us really experience life and expand our soul.
So let’s just look at a couple of quick examples here. So for example, food foods, a really great one, you know, you should be eating healthy, right? But what do you actually do? What’s the doing of that? And if you take a moment and you connect with your heart, okay, connect into that heart space and ask yourself, hey, you know, what should I be eating your heart space and your body is going to tell you exactly what you should be eating. You know what the right diet is for you.
But the mind is going to let go berserk trying to talk you out of it the minute that you want to deprive yourself or you hit up against a limiting belief or you hit up against a fear right? Anytime you hit up against those things in mind is going to go berserk trying to tell you why you don’t really need to do the things that you know are in your heart that you really want to do to get yourself to that next space.
Same thing can happen with exercise. Think about it like whenever you’ve exercised how much of the battle comes from your mind, or your body? Usually, once you put the body into motion, the mind just kind of shuts up. Now, depending on what you’re doing exercise wise, I know that when I would run, and I’m not running right now because of an injury to my calf, but I know that when I would run, my mind would come up with so many reasons as to why I didn’t need to run today. And then when I’m on the treadmill, or I’m out on the road, my mind would come up with all these reasons why I could shorten the goal or stop sooner or just walk instead of running, right?
It’s that mind battle that would keep me out of the doing. And I really had to manage my mind, far more than my body. Once I put my body into motion with the exercise. And I could kind of ignore the mind as I was exercising, then you push through it. And then afterwards, oh, my gosh, the feeling afterwards is absolutely amazing. Why? Because we did it! Right, we took the action, we took a step to get closer to our vision closer to our goals closer to who we want to be in this life. And that’s why the doing is so very, very important.
Think about daily planning, one of my most favorite topics, right? Think about how your day goes, right? How often are you busy or overwhelmed, or just like, oh, my gosh, it feels like I’m drinking out of a firehose. And you know, the knowing is that you know, of course, that you should take 10 minutes a day to sit down and plan your day. But what happens, the ego, the ego talks us out of it. And it just comes up with all these reasons why I’m so busy. Well, I’m clearly just too busy to take 10 minutes to sit down and plan my day, when the truth is that the doing of sitting down and taking the 10 minutes of planning your day wouldn’t fact make the day go so much better.
And truly, it’s our heart. It’s our heart that sits our fannies in the chair and says, You know what, I don’t care what the brain is saying, you’re going to sit down, you’re going to do your planning, because you know, in your heart, it’s the right thing to do. You know, it gets it close, gets you closer to your goals. And you know, your day is going to go so much better. How many times have you talked yourself out of doing the thing that you know, is the right thing to do, but your mind came up with some ridiculous excuse or reason as to why you didn’t need to do it.
And the problem here is that we listened to the mind, okay. And the secret behind all of this is you don’t have to listen to your mind. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have to act upon it. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean that’s who you are. Just because you have a thought it doesn’t mean anything, a thought is just simply energy. And our minds are coming up with all of these random thoughts all the live long day. And it’s not that the mind isn’t a beautiful, brilliant thing. It absolutely is. And when it’s directed towards a purpose, a higher purpose and put to work, the mind can do anything, anything.
But when the mind is left, you know, without any direction or management, it can just come up with all sorts of silly, ridiculous nonsense. And it’s our jobs to be able to recognize this is just silly nonsense. I really don’t have to act upon it at all, and what’s in my heart? And how can I cross that bridge between the ego knowing and the doing in my heart?
So let’s talk about this. Some ways that you can cross that bridge every single day? Well, the first one is around awareness. Right? One of our purposes here in this podcast is to start paying attention to what’s happening. Are you up in your head? What I always like to do is I like to zoom out. So I imagine myself I’m up above my house. I’m above my office, sometimes I even pretend I’m sitting on the moon and I’m looking at the entire Earth, right? And I change that perspective. And so I zoom up, and I’m going to then observe myself and what I’m doing and what’s really happening.
And do I see myself getting all caught up in my head? Do I see myself listening to my ego? Do I see myself talking myself out of the action, which I know is in my heart? Or do I see myself being in my heart following my path, taking that action despite whatever silly nonsense my mind might be coming up with Okay, so that’s the first thing is to really start paying attention and having the awareness around what’s really really going on here am I caught up in that headspace and if I am, zoom out or do whatever works for you to get some different perspective and get out of your head.
A great way to also do this is just big, deep cleansing, relaxing breaths. So when you start feeling that resistance, right, that resistance of I know I’m supposed to be doing something right now, but I don’t want to do it. We can take those big, deep breaths and just relax and just release and let go of whatever that resistance might be actually doing it.
We can also let go of our minds a little bit here, right? Let go of that silly nonsense chatter talking you out of what you know you want to do. And just let it go, you can almost even see your mind like its own separate object, maybe it’s a balloon with helium, right, and just let it float off and up into the sky and let it go. Or think of it maybe as like a fire and it’s burning up a piece of paper in the fire. And we’re just burning up the crap that our mind is coming up with, you know, whatever visualization might work for you. Just hold on to it right so that we can separate ourselves from it.
Now, when we talk about resistance, and letting go, I really cannot emphasize the power of this enough. Whenever I’m feeling any resistance to crossing this bridge of knowing versus doing, I really do, it’s just a simple thing. But it’s so powerful I breathe, I let it go. And then I just start showing up even sometimes when your mind is still rattling on about why it doesn’t want to do whatever just It’s okay, just show up and start doing it.
And just show up and do your very best. It’s very easy sometimes to get caught up into perfection, of like, oh, if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not going to do it at all that is again, just nonsense crap your mind comes up with to keep you stuck where you are. You know, show up, do your best try, that’s really all that matters. And you’re going to get that great feeling afterwards, because you actually took some action from that heart space.
Another great tool tool is journaling, if you’re finding that your mind is just so bombarded with all these reasons why you’re going to stay up in the knowing knowing knowing. Okay, you know, you’ve met, you’ve met people who are like know it alls, right? They know everything, but they’re often not doing what they need to do to see the results that they want to see. And so they’re their ego minds are then of course, creating all these reasons and justifications of why they can still feel comfortable and their vast knowledge, but also have somehow now justified their lack of actual results.
And that’s not who we want to be here. So if you’re finding that you’re just bombarded with some of this stuff going on in the head, journal it out. And you know that I created the Best Journal Ever for this purpose explicitly. Or we can sit down, get it out of our heads onto the paper, and then we throw away that paper, we rip it up and we throw it away. And this is another great way to cross that bridge from the knowing into the doing.
When you find that you’re you know, you know so much about daily planning, but you find that, oh, I’ve got all these reasons why I’m not going to sit down and do my daily planning. Well, you know what, just sit down, just do it. Just take the time to get yourself organized. Take the time to prioritize your to do list, take the time to say no, take the time to delegate to members of your team. Because you can’t really do everything and again, and when we’re not delegating, it’s often again, the ego coming back and saying, oh, well, nobody can do it as good as you and as long as you hire team members that can do the job as good as or better than you, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be delegating to them again.
So that’s as again, it’s keeping us in the knowing and the mind and the ego saying oh no, we can do it better than you. But that’s crap. It’s total crap, throw it away. Okay, as long as you have team members that you can actually delegate to, it’s the doing the actual delegating to them that is going to get those things done faster, easier, eliminate you as the bottleneck in your business. And that’s where you’re going to really, really start to see results right and changes and it’s taking back your power around the doing here that is so so very important.
Okay, so now we know the difference between knowing the ego mind being kind of trapped in that headspace. Anytime you catch yourself going, oh, I know so much. I’m going to tell you right now, like I have, I found myself caught in that space so many times. And anytime I catch myself going, oh, look at me, whoop dee doo Look how much I know. I’m like, wait a second, there is always always always so much more to learn. And I think for so many people, as you become an expert in whatever your chosen field is, and you start to learn more and more you do start to realize that wow, there’s always more than I can learn. And it kind of brings this natural humility.
But before often you get really good at things. Sometimes you think you know more than you do. And it’s easy to then to get kind of trapped up in that ego mind, not be able to recognize the difference between Oh, look at all that I know. But what am I really doing doing is going to be the proof doing is going to be the results doing is how you expand your heart, live your purpose, and really, really get out there in the world and make a difference, which of course is what I want for you.
So I have to ask, what are you going to do with this information? Is there an area of your life where maybe you’re you’re stuck in that knowing, but you’re not really doing what you know you need to be doing in your heart. And if that’s the case, I would really encourage you to just take a small step. This doesn’t have to be on a huge scale, it doesn’t mean you change your entire diet overnight, your entire exercise schedule overnight, your entire business overnight. Doesn’t mean any of those things, it does not have to be on a huge scale.
Simply just take a step, take a step every day into the doing. And I really would encourage you to use your Best Planner Ever, this is what that A task is all about. When I created the planner, I needed that reminder to myself every single day, to just like Jennifer, just zip the lip and take action, okay? And that’s what that A task is all about. It looks really simple. They’re sitting on the page ABCD whoo, I’m organizing my day. But it’s so much more powerful than that. Your A task is that step that you’re taking towards your dreams towards your life towards your vision, towards who you want to be as a person, when you’re living from your higher self. And that’s what the A task is all about.
And sometimes it’s a five minute task, it’s a phone call, it’s an email, it’s delegating, it’s, you know, hiring, it’s whatever it happens to be for you. But it doesn’t always have to be, you know, a huge three hour thing every day. It can be one simple task, it’s, you know, hiring that coach, it’s taking that step that you know, in your heart that you need to take. And that’s what that A task is all about. And it’s about asking ourselves each and every day, what should I be doing today? What one step should I be doing today to drive my dreams forward, and then you’ll know what that stuff is because it will be in your heart and then you do it and nothing stops you. You do it. Very small steps, but steps that you take every single day.
So I hope you’re going to hear this podcast and go, Hey, you know this area of my life, I’m kind of stuck in the knowing and I really need to be more on the doing. And I hope you just take one small step each day. And then one small, small step turns into a little bigger step and a little bigger step until before you know it, you’ve built the habit and you’re just right in there taking action and you’re seeing so many great results from it all. I promise that if you take you know 1-3 a tasks a day, these can all be small, small tasks and you do 123 of these every single day, you’re going to open so many doors you won’t even know what to do with all of the opportunities and the information and the great things that come to you.
Okay, now if you would like some more help with this, please come check me out. You can find me at jenniferdawncoaching.com if today’s the day that you’re like I really need to find a better time management system please consider checking out my Best Planner Ever and you can find us at bestplannerever.com Thank you so very much for listening. I know your time is precious. I appreciate so much you spending it with me. Now take this information, go out there start doing doing doing and have a Happy Productive day. Bye!
xo
Jennifer