Taking action - Are you sitting around waiting for your goals to come to you?

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided

 Tony Robbins

I struggled a little when trying to write this week’s motivational post. I'd chosen a topic, but I wasn’t really 'feeling it' and so kept putting off writing the article. Yesterday however, I was hit like a bolt of lightening with a new topic. One that fired me up, and if you've read any of my previous work you'll know I have no problem writing when I'm fired up about something! I had an experience that reminded me of how often I see a particular problem. This was my experience

I was at work and started talking to a lovely older gentleman on holiday in Australia, lets call him Mr Overseas. Not long into the conversation, he mentioned that he had been looking to purchase some handkerchiefs. He was after a wholesaler. It seems in the country he is from, there is a limited supply of handkerchiefs and it was his intention to buy up big and take them home in his luggage to resell them. Smart idea I thought. It turns out however that Mr Overseas is also struggling to find handkerchiefs here in Australia. He mentioned how he couldn’t see why it was so difficult, there had to be a handkerchief wholesaler somewhere. Why couldn’t he find any anywhere? He had asked one store to call a wholesaler, but the particular wholesaler that the store had called had gone out of business, thank you GFC. So far, this is the closest he’d been to finding handkerchiefs in two countries! At that point another older gentleman joined the conversation and suggested Mr Overseas look in the yellow pages, or speak to a government trade organization that could direct him to a Chinese importer. Mr Overseas hadn’t done either of these things. I started to get a gut feeling that I knew what the problem was, so I finally asked ‘Have you Googled it?’ To which Mr Overseas replied ‘No, I haven’t’. The conversation went on for a few more minutes before Mr Overseas wandered off with some suggestions, but it left me thinking - What exactly HAD Mr Overseas done to find the handkerchiefs he had had such a hard time finding? The answer - Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am pretty certain that his own country DOES have handkerchiefs; he just didn’t try to find them. He did nothing, and yet was quite happy to explain to a complete stranger how difficult it was for him to find them, and then pick my brain for solutions to his problem, which, by the way, I’m almost certain he wont act on.

Oh this is so familiar! I thought to myself ‘I have a blog post!’ So often I see people do just what Mr Overseas did. They have something they want. They ‘decide’ to take action, maybe even take 1 or 2 small steps (Mr Overseas asked a store assistant to phone a wholesaler) and then they sit and wait for what they want to fall into their laps.

When I had a weight loss clinic, it amazed me how many clients would pay a substantial amount of money for a complete program, and then not turn up to their second appointment. They wanted to lose weight; they’d taken the first step of booking in to see me, and paying for a program. Then they sat at home doing nothing different and expected their lives to change. Really? What would frustrate me even more were the ones who turned up every week having not followed any of my advice, as if showing up at the clinic weekly was enough to shed the kilo’s. Funny thing – The clients that got the results, they were the ones who took the action.

As a species it seems that we often want the results without the effort. We so desperately want things to be different, but we’re not prepared to challenge ourselves, to push outside our comfort zone. Why? I believe its because its hard. It’s uncomfortable to change, to do things differently, and to make the time. It’s easy to throw money at it, drive to a consult and sit their making excuses.

As with anything in life, if you want results, you have to take action. A thought without an action means nothing at all. If you’re someone who is beginning their journey to heath and/or weight loss, the great news for you is that you don’t have to take huge leaps and bounds to create change. You never have to turn your world on its head overnight. Small changes made consistently over time will lead to results.

I believe in the power of daily activity. In the beginning in particular, it works brilliantly to just choose one thing; ‘today I will make my own dinner instead of getting take away’; ‘today I won’t eat any junk food’; ‘Today I will eat a vegetable I haven’t tried before’; ‘today I will walk around the block and back’. Just one thing. For Mr Overseas, it could be that he Googled ‘handkerchief wholesaler Australia’ on day, maybe the next day he calls one of them, and another the next day. Maybe if that isn’t working, he does call some sort of trade organization. With a single step daily I guarantee you he’ll have a wholesaler in no time. All he’d have to do then is order the handkerchiefs!

Don’t be like Mr Overseas. He will never find his handkerchiefs no matter which country he goes too or how many people he asks where he’ll find them. Be the person who is moving in the direction of their dreams. Be the person who worked for it, no matter how tough it got. I’ve been that person who fought tooth and nail to get something for myself, and let me tell you, there is no better feeling than having achieved your goal. The harder you fight, the sweeter the victory.

Chris