A LITTLE WORD CALLED ACTION !!!

Good day all,

I was going over the 70 plus posts I have on here and was surprised to see there has not been anything on action. For a blog on Success that seems a bit odd, so I want to dedicate some time to the subject. I remember when the movie The Secret came out, many people criticized it as being too un-realistic because, and this was what I heard, “you can’t just sit on your butt and wish for things to happen”.  That is absolutely not what the movie implied but never the less that was one of the criticism I heard. This also seems to be a point of resistance when I talk with people about the law of attraction. It seems like people expect things to just happen. Well that is not the case.

Action is necessary. I once went to one of Bryan Tracy’s seminars in San Diego when I was younger. Sometime in the 2^nd day or so the subject of action had come up. Mr. Tracy pulled out a crisp $100 out of his wallet and held it up and said “who wants this one hundred dollar bill?”. All the hands in the audience shot up, including mine. He did not move. Once again he asked  “who wants this one hundred dollar bill?” This went on for about 5 minutes. He then said, “does anyone really want this one hundred dollar bill?” Slowly one person got out of their seat and walked cautiously to the front stage and stood right bellow Mr. Tracy looking up at him hesitantly. Mr. Tracy asked again, not looking down at the person, but staring into the crowed “who wants this one hundred dollar bill?” The bold guy walked around and jumped on stage and actually went up to Bryan Tracy, albeit hesitantly, and reached for the bill. We could all see the hesitation, but he finally took the $100 bill out of Bryan Tracy’s hand, and walked back to his seat and sat down.  The audience was silent for a minute. I have since seen this demonstration at Bryan Tracy, Jack Canfield, Rich Dad’s and Donald Trump’s coaching sessions. You can bet that in those places I sat in the front and I was the guy sprinting to the front to get the $5, or $20 dollar bill. Bryan Tracy asked “what made him different than the rest of you?” That was a question that haunted me the rest of that seminar. Personally I did not even think about getting up. I just raised my hand expecting to be picked like 99% of the audience.  That is what happens in the real world. 99% of people think ideas, sometimes really great ideas, but do absolutely nothing about it.  Then one day they see something similar to their idea on T.V. and say “I thought about that”.  Who ever said “Knowledge is power” was not quite correct. The application and action on knowledge is where the power lies.

Visualization and affirmations are designed to bring opportunities to you on which you have to act on.  If you have what Napoleon Hill called “a burning desire” then taking action in pursuit of success will be the only logical next step. That is why it is so important to have feeling during your visualization and goal setting. You need to be burning with the desire and take action despite the fear. When I was sitting in that audience I was afraid of walking up to Bryan Tracy and getting the $100. I thought to myself “Oh it can’t be as easy as that”. I wondered what if I go up there and be made a fool of.  You see thousands of thoughts came to me of what could go wrong and those froze me from taking action. But once I learned the knowledge the next time I saw that demonstration there was no fear and in fact I was racing to the front of the stage. Taking action has the consequence of teaching you knowledge that will make further actions easier and less scary. You learn by doing. Sometimes from your mistakes, and sometimes from practice. Theoretical knowledge will always contain that element of fear because you have not really experienced it in action. I was once told 95% of the things that you think will go wrong will never happen. But that is what consumes most of our thoughts, and that is what keeps most people from achieving the type of success they deserve.  In most cases nothing ever happens without  you taking action for what you want.

I am a first time author. No one knows me from the next guy on the street. I have no contacts, or experience in the field of writing. I have published a book and it is available on www.xlibris.com, www.amazon.com, and www.bn.com. Does that mean I will be on the NY Times’ best seller list just like that? Hell no. I have to market it. I have to go out there and let people know that my book is out there. It is work but to me it does not feel like work why? Because that is my passion. I want to bring the information of goal setting, basic finance and the law of attraction to the young people the way I wished someone had told me when I was younger. So it is my burning desire to change people’s lives. If I can impact one young person’s life for the better then the whole effort is worthwhile for me.  That  burning desire to bring something back to the community is what I have to depend on when the fear sais “who do you think you are to have a book signing?” Or “why would they sell your book in that place?”. It also keeps me going on when people say “no”. Every no I get gets me one step closer to being on that best seller list. More importantly every no I get teaches me something that I did not know before about my marketing plan of action. None of it can happen until I start to take that first step of putting myself out there  and sell my book.  We all have heard the story of how it took Thomas Edison 10,000 tries to get the electric light bulb right. Can you imagine if he had just thought about the project and never actually started to put those plans into action and never quit until he actually succeeded? Well the name Edison would have been an unknown if that was the course of action he had taken. Because weather you act or not act you are taking action. One is going to propel you further in your endeavor to success, and the other will just keep things as they are.

So get enthusiastic about your dreams. Put your goals on paper and make small action steps towards them and start today. Start now to take one small step towards your goal. Do something every day that will get you closer to the goal. It does not have to be a home run but it has to be an active step towards your goal. Imagine a year from now thinking where you would have been if for 365 days you have taken a small step every day towards your goal. Now think of the lack of action that most people reading this blog or any other motivational course do. I have been one of those people for a long time. I had shelves full of courses I have taken where I get excited in the course but then the weekend comes and work and family life comes, and those plans just remain plans. Nothing can come of them if they are just plans.

I hope this motivates you to take action towards something that you have been longing for today. I hope this sparks a fire within you that sais if I want success I need to act now. It is not hard. Just like the zen saying states “ a journey of 10,000 miles starts with a single step”. Take that single step towards one of your goal today and see how you feel. Once you conquer the fear and procrastination feel the joy and enthusiasm of being the conqueror. Good luck and best wishes for your success. As always feel free to pass this along to anyone you think may benefit from it.