Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Another lesson on action
I talked today to an online business owner that I share ideas with. He has a nice site, and plans a major expansion of it "soon." I put the "soon" in quotation marks because he's been telling me for months now about his planned expansion. Today, he showed me page after page packed with pictures of potential products he's considering adding to his site. He even offered to let me borrow a CD he had of thousands of products that his connections can get for him.
I've stopped taking him seriously about his expansion. Each time we talk, I ask him when he plans to start it. Each time his answer is vague as he wants to look for more products for an even broader array of choices. "Next week" he'll be ready. And when the next week rolls around, the timeline changes to the next week after that—week after week for months now.
But where would he be right now if he had actually started when he first talked of starting? He'd probably have hundreds of those products up right now instead of merely bookmarking more wholesalers and looking through more catalogs planning for a future expansion that never comes.
When you keep putting off taking the actions that you hope will bring you success, you put yourself in a position where you guarantee yourself of not reaching your goal—you can't possibly reach your goal because you're not doing a blasted thing to reach it.
The sad thing about it is that this inaction that robs you of success is usually done to safeguard the dream of the very success that you're sabotaging.
You convince yourself that success is only a few steps away. Of course, if you actually do something instead of just talking about it, there's always the chance that your plans won't work out as you hope. So the only way to guarantee that your dream of success won't crumble under the risks you'll have to take to earn your success is to sacrifice any chance of actually achieving it.
But is that all you want? A dream of success? You can't dream your way to success. You have to act. And that means you have to risk your dreams. But you know what? Even if you act and your dreams don't pan out, that doesn't mean you've failed. It just adds to your experience that makes you more capable of succeeding along another route.
Don't just dream. Don't just talk. Act.
Jeff
I talked today to an online business owner that I share ideas with. He has a nice site, and plans a major expansion of it "soon." I put the "soon" in quotation marks because he's been telling me for months now about his planned expansion. Today, he showed me page after page packed with pictures of potential products he's considering adding to his site. He even offered to let me borrow a CD he had of thousands of products that his connections can get for him.
I've stopped taking him seriously about his expansion. Each time we talk, I ask him when he plans to start it. Each time his answer is vague as he wants to look for more products for an even broader array of choices. "Next week" he'll be ready. And when the next week rolls around, the timeline changes to the next week after that—week after week for months now.
But where would he be right now if he had actually started when he first talked of starting? He'd probably have hundreds of those products up right now instead of merely bookmarking more wholesalers and looking through more catalogs planning for a future expansion that never comes.
When you keep putting off taking the actions that you hope will bring you success, you put yourself in a position where you guarantee yourself of not reaching your goal—you can't possibly reach your goal because you're not doing a blasted thing to reach it.
The sad thing about it is that this inaction that robs you of success is usually done to safeguard the dream of the very success that you're sabotaging.
You convince yourself that success is only a few steps away. Of course, if you actually do something instead of just talking about it, there's always the chance that your plans won't work out as you hope. So the only way to guarantee that your dream of success won't crumble under the risks you'll have to take to earn your success is to sacrifice any chance of actually achieving it.
But is that all you want? A dream of success? You can't dream your way to success. You have to act. And that means you have to risk your dreams. But you know what? Even if you act and your dreams don't pan out, that doesn't mean you've failed. It just adds to your experience that makes you more capable of succeeding along another route.
Don't just dream. Don't just talk. Act.
Jeff
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