Not taking action is the #1 barrier to success, the #1 reason why people fail in their attempts to change their lives through personal development, and #1 reason why people often start things up but don't finish them off.
The irony is that nearly all of the self-help and personal development books, cd's, courses and programmes I have ever come across place their emphasis on taking action NOW.
So what is it that causes us to falter?
Spending more time reading than doing
I know I've been guilty of this one in the past.
There are a number of reasons for falling into this trap, but the key ones are:
- it's actually more fun to read up on great ways to achieve your goals than to actually do it;
- it's safer to read than to have a go at something and risk failing;
- taking action can be hard - it often involves a lot of time and effort and stepping outside of our comfort zone.
I need to understand the context before I do anything...
Have you run into this one before?
For example, you reach the end of a chapter and it has a set of exercises - but you think to yourself, that's great, some stuff to do, but let's read the next chapter to make sure I understand it in context before doing it - I want to know how it fits into the bigger picture first...
Big mistake. How often have you done this and not actually managed to go back and do the exercise?
Ok, so it is good to re-read these books and do the exercises as you go along that way - but that is eating into the time you could have been spending actually making some changes in your life instead of just reading about how!
Focusing on the wrong things - take the right action now!
The final key one is about what kind of action you take.
The grand, life-changing things you can do are all very important and need to happen, but not at the expense of everything else in your life. Sometimes it is important to do the mundane, day-to-day stuff before you sit down and think about the bigger picture.
There's a lot out there about how focussing on strengths over weaknesses is important - but ensuring that you have the right focus in life is really very important too.
A focus on strengths is not the same as avoiding doing important things you don't want to do. Mundane examples include washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, doing that little bit extra work you know will make a massive difference but you just can't really be bothered...
You know deep down what you should be doing right now - so stop reading this post and do it!
...okay, so if you're currently in a position where you can't do that thing you have been meaning to do but haven't got round to, make sure you do so as soon as you can. In the meantime, I found the following couple of posts when searching on this topic that are worth reading:
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