The Mind Plays Tricks On Us!

It's day 40 of documenting 2025.

Happy Sunday, Ami
Cheers to the new week!
I wish you more strength, more grace, more blessings 🥰

I have a very funny story to tell.
Of how my mind tricked me.
It's funny to me but it may not be to you.
So it started yesterday.
Particularly last night, after dinner, I had the thought of calling my closest friend.
He stays overseas and our time zones are different.
While it was nighttime here, it was afternoon over there.
But I remembered the fact that I would have to wake up early the next morning.

"Maybe Sundays should be my off-days, when I can stay up late", I thought.
That was the only reason I thought of that. So I could call my friend.
My mind picked up on that.
I got tired when it was past 11pm, droopy eyes and loud yawns.
I crawled into bed by midnight, after writing down tasks I would do when I woke up in the morning.
However.......
The alarm sounded this morning.
I woke up, because of it.
Guess what I did next?
I climbed back into bed.
Unfortunately 😅

Why I find it funny?
Because I don't even remember the reason why.
All I know is I was still in sleep mode....now I'm guessing it's because of the thought I had last night.
When I woke up 3 hours later, I was like,
"What?? It's already day break."
I felt bad for a moment.
I didn't do lesson 3 of my certification course, I didn't prepare my posts for the week.....
Didn't do anything I wrote on my task list.

On a normal day, I would beat myself up because of this.
You know what?
I was even thinking of starting this post with, "I screwed up 😔"
(To be honest!)
But I take it on a lighter note.
A cue I'm getting from this 'mistake' is, 'I should sleep in on Sunday mornings'.
I have to admit, I feel refreshed.
An extra 3 hours of sleep never felt so good 😄
(I know someone who would be saying, "I told you so!")

That's all about my funny story.
Whether it's funny to you or not depends on how you see it.
I have something else to share tho...
It's something I learned from a book I read....a book by Mel Robbins.
In my own words, I would say,
"The mind has a way of making us hesitate when we want to make a particular change".

Let me quote her directly.
"Basically, your mind tricks you into thinking things through. And the moment you get tricked into doing this, you’ll get trapped by your thoughts.
Your mind has a million ways to talk you out of acting. That’s the neurological reason why it’s so hard to change."

"Your brain is afraid of things that feel uncertain, scary, or new, so it will do whatever it can to talk you out of doing those things.
It is part of your hard-wiring, and this hesitation happens really fast. That is why you have to act even faster to beat it."

"That moment of hesitation is a killer. Hesitation sends a stress signal to your brain.
It’s a red flag that signals something’s wrong—and your brain is goes into protection mode.
This is how we are wired to fail. Think about this for a minute."

Hmm 🤔
We are wired to fail?
Action really beats hesitation.
But what if we know the action to take but still can't get ourselves to do it?
Mel proposed her five second rule.

"But what you will soon learn is that moment of hesitation can also be used to your advantage.
Every time you catch yourself hesitating, it is a push moment!
The five-second window is opened and it is time to 5, 4, 3, 2,  1 to push yourself forward and be bigger than your excuses."

I actually applied this rule two days ago.
It was in the morning and I had to do a bit of laundry (my little brother's clothes).
But I sat down, hesitating again.
Then I counted 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, pushed myself off the chair and got to work.
It's something that works and there's science behind it.
I haven't read the whole book yet, but I get what it's trying to say.

I've shared the quotes for the day.
And I also want to say something on this hesitation of a thing.
So, few days ago, I started my certification course.
That same morning, I wrote about how I realized that I've been doing the whole content marketing thing wrong.
You can read it here.
But then I thought of waiting till I was done with the course before 'starting over'.
But last night, I thought of something.
What if I just revamped my existing pages?

Here's the thing.
'Starting over' for me means deleting whatever existed before.
And starting from scratch.
Usually when it comes to social media, I delete the page, the followers, the posts...everything.

But this time, it's different.

I have a newsletter and a Facebook page, which I started with the aim of selling products.
But I'm making a switch from products to services.
My pages don't follow that theme....
Instead of deleting them completely, I thought of leveraging the small audience I've built.
Substack - 61 subscribers, Facebook - 34 followers.

I've posted more than 50 times on both platforms, so my first 50 is out of the way.
So, I'm just going to come clean and inform my audience of the change.
Those that want to stay will stay and I won't stop those that want to leave.

It's all about staying true to myself.
On this journey, I'm learning to do more of the things that make me uncomfortable.
This would be one of them.
I hope this week goes well for me.
I pray it goes better for you.
Cheers to the new week 🍷

Thanks for reading, my friend 😊
I could call you Ami, that's 'friend' in French.
But that title is getting reserved.
Kinda like a special title.
Either way, by reading my post, you're already my friend.
Thank you 🙏
I'll see you tomorrow.

By the way, I'm Duon Ada.
And I'm documenting 2025.