You know those mornings when you wake up and your bed feels so good you just want to stay there all day long? (This is me almost every morning—particularly on cold winter mornings!) It feels good for a while, just relaxing and thinking; drifting in and out of sleep. But as the hours pass on, getting up can become challenging. We lose all motivation to do it. This doesn’t just happen with getting out of bed in the morning, it happens in all areas of our  lives. Inertia happens, and we just stay stuck.

There is always tomorrow, right?

If you work for yourself with no time clock or boss waiting for you, this can be especially seductive. “I’ll get around to making those calls or changing my website or starting my business” – you get my point. But this is just a mind trap. Taking action, even when you don’t want to, is definitely better than being stuck!

Change your action, you change your behavior. Change your behavior, it changes your life!

In choosing to stay in bed (or play Words with Friends® or reorganize your sock drawer), you’re also pushing aside possible opportunities. What if that great next client is just one phone call away? Or the solution to that sticky issue is just a few calculations away? What if that perfect collaborative partner is at the networking event you’re avoiding?

If you feel like days go by and you haven’t accomplished anything, take action. Think of all the possible things you could do to move forward. They don’t have to be huge actions, you just need to complete them on a daily basis.

I suggest picking three actions that would impact your business and to do them every day for the next 21 days. Why 21 days? Common wisdom says it takes 21 days to form a habit. Make it a part of your schedule and choose someone to keep you accountable. This way you will move forward; you’ll feel good about it and you’ll prove to yourself that you can do it.

The task that once seemed so daunting becomes no big deal

I know this sounds overly simple, but it’s true. I saw how powerful this is while I was in Dubrovnik, Croatia. My partner and I purchased an apartment in Budapest, Hungary, which we renovated from floor to ceiling. We were just about ready to wrap-up the renovation and do the final shooting for HGTV’s House Hunters International one December a few years ago, and we needed to leave Hungary for a period of time because we didn’t have a residence visa.

Since we had our dogs Bailey and Brodee with us, we didn’t want to fly back to the U.S. (flying over with them in the airplane cargo section was traumatic enough.) So we decided to go to Croatia and settled on Dubrovnik. I was happy how this was all turning out because it was SO cold in Budapest. I am not a big fan of the cold, particularly when I’m schlepping around the city.

So we left Budapest and drove to Croatia right around Christmas. While I loved being in Europe, I was feeling like I was not being very productive. It wasn’t like I was staying in bed, but things just weren’t moving around me. There were these brilliant plans (even if I say so myself) that I wanted to put into action and nothing was happening with them. They were always getting displaced; something always came up. Not only that, there were personal projects that were on the backburner too, and they had been there for a while; like writing my book.

I decided that since a new year was looming, it was time for me to create a new action plan.

Every morning, right after my meditation, I was going to come up with three tasks that would move our company forward and I would make sure that if nothing else got done, those tasks WOULD be accomplished.

What’s amazing is that not only did those tasks get accomplished, all the other projects that were on the backburner began to move as well. Interesting how that works.

And with that: Stop lying in bed and get active!