The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology

Taking action is one of the most important skills you can master if you wish to maintain good mental health.

The Demon of Boredom usually employs distraction as his tool. He lures our minds into connecting with something other than what we need to do.

Eknath Easwaran, a meditation teacher whose writings on mindfulness are some of the most insightful I’ve ever read.

Notice the feeling, recognize it for what it is, take a deep breath, and shift your energies to that which needs doing.

And somewhere along the road you may discover that there is no such thing as the “right” decision. There is just the action you take and the new situation you face as a result.

What about your own imagination? What about your own creativity? Are you making time to express yourself—your experience, your ideas, your unborn creations?

Stephen Pressfield is the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and historical novels including Gates of Fire. His struggles to earn a living as a writer (it took 17 years to get his first paycheck) are detailed in The War of Art. His excerpt in this book is from Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way. Copyright 2011. Reprinted

Can you move forward in the face of uncertainty? Can you co-exist with confusion and not-knowing and take the next step? Small steps are an elegant approach to indecision. That’s because each of those small steps sends ripples out into the world. Your situation is never the same from day to day, because the world is in a dynamic state of flux.

Clarity of purpose is a critical factor when dealing with boredom.