Self-Negotiation

The inner voice is a powerful force. It is what drives action or inaction. It is who knows you the best. It is always around. The inner voice knows who you want to be while also telling you not to change. The inner voice is where self-negotiation comes into play. The theme for this topic comes from the thoughts I had this morning lying in bed, not wanting to get up. There will also be similarities to one of my prior newsletters on “winning the seconds.”

I desire and want to wake up early and head to the gym. I say I desire and want this because currently, in an honest assessment of myself, I do not have this habit instilled. There have been many days over the last month when my alarm goes off and I shut it off and go back to bed. These days are the same days where my day gets started 2 or 3 hours later, where I feel behind, and where I do not accomplish everything I want to accomplish. I know I have the desire to get up early and want to instill this change, but my biggest opponent to this is myself and that inner voice.

Waking up yesterday, I self-negotiated. I let my mind tell me I would get up in 30 minutes. 30 minutes came and that same voice told me I did not need to lift and could not understand why I even tried to leave the warm confines of my bed. That inner voice negotiated with me and told me the best action was no action. The best action was rolling over and going to bed. The rest of my day told me the “best action” at 5:30 in the morning was actually the worst.

Today, my alarm went off and those same thoughts came rushing in. My inner voice had a full PowerPoint presentation prepared as to why I should not get up and why going back to bed was the best opportunity. My inner voice laid the offer out perfectly, all I had to do was think about it and say yes. I thought about it for a couple of minutes and opted to decline. I sat up, got up, and went to the gym. I did not let my inner voice self-negotiate to hurt what I wanted to achieve.

Self-negotiating causes me to doubt. It causes me not to act. It causes me regret in the long run. Rarely will I have a positive come out of self-negotiating, and it is never positive when I listen to my inner voice early in the morning. Sometimes the best action is leaving the negotiation table and moving on.