What Are You Waiting For?

What are you waiting for?

For Monday?
For the New Year?
For someone  to love you, notice you, admire you?
For you to be thinner, wiser, in shape, better skilled?
For the perfect moment, perfect place, perfect person?
To be perfect yourself?

We all have dreams and ideas.  We all would love for them to come to fruition.  The only thing separating us from those whose dreams become a reality... is taking action.  We have to break the habit of 'waiting' and learn to make the most of the moment we are in.  There will never be a better time.  There is a Chinese proverb that states "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The second best time is now."  You can get caught up in recriminations about not having taken action sooner or you can simply begin.  Now is better than never.

For many of us, our fears serve to hold us back and prevent us from fulfilling our dreams.  Two of the biggest and most common fears that limit our success are the Fear of Failure and the Fear of Rejection.  However, giving in to these fears creates hesitation and indecision instead of action.  We can learn to conquer our fears by cultivating a habit of courage, the courage to take action.

The following ideas are offered as suggestions, ideas and perspectives to help you narrow the gap between your intentions and your actions.  Use these as a guide to help you shift from inaction to action, to help in moving out of the 'waiting room'.

1.  Don't wait for 'Perfect'.  There is no perfect person, time or place. There will always be something that is not 'right'.  If you focus on what is 'missing', rather than everything that is there, you will never be satisfied and will therefore never move forward.  Focus instead on everything that is 'right' about the opportunity and your skills.  Recognise when things are 'good enough' to move forward.  Conditions will never be perfect, but they will often be good enough to get started.  Use your actions to help drive them closer to the perfection you seek.

2.  Do.  Build your confidence, your track record, your experience, and your action-taking-muscles by simply Doing-Stuff.  Taking action and getting things done is the best proof of your ability that there is.  You can't just think about doing, you need to take action. The longer that ideas sit in your head the weaker and more distant they become.  The more that you learn to take action, the easier that taking action becomes.

3.  Deal with your Fears by Taking Action.  One of the best cures for your fears is to simply push through them by taking action.  It is typically all of our 'worrying' that feeds our fears.  Taking action eliminates the worry, teaching us that things were not as bad as we had made them out to be.  A great lesson to take forward when we challenge other fears that are holding us back.

4.  Ideas Alone Don't Bring Success.  It is not your ideas that make you successful but the implementation of them.  An average idea - acted upon - will take you further than a dozen brilliant ideas that are simply taking up head space.

5.  Shift What Ifs to Why Nots.  What ifs are worries.  These are thoughts of 'what if this happens?' that hold us back.  In an effort to avoid them we fail to take action.  Instead, shift your 'what if' scenarios to 'why not' scenarios.  Why not try?  Why not you?

6.  Small Steps.  Instead of thinking of the giant step needed to shift you from here to there, break it down into small, manageable steps.  When we view 'everything', all at once, it can seem daunting.  However, look only to what you can do Now.  What is one small step that you can take - right now - that moves you forward.  Do it.  Then look for the next small step you can take... and repeat.  Every small forward step takes you closer to your goal.

You have dreams, you have ambitions, you have ideas waiting to be implemented.  There will never be a better time.  If you are not currently moving forward on fulfilling your dreams then it is time to seriously ask yourself... What am I waiting for?  Listen to the answer and then take steps to eliminate those barriers, giving you a clear path to truly achieving everything you want from your life.

Keep On Keeping On

We all have dreams.  We all have goals.  Some of us reach them, some of us don't.  

We all hit obstacles and roadblocks that deter us.  We experience setbacks and failures.  Some of us give up in the face of these challenges, some of us don't.

Often the key difference between those who 'make it', and those that don't, is simply that successful people keep on keeping on.  They see the hurdles and obstacles as simply something that needs to be overcome.  They don't allow themselves to become overwhelmed and demoralized by the challenges, they don't listen to the critics, to the armchair quarterbacks that find it easier to sit back and share 'why' something won't work rather than jumping in and helping something to succeed.  Instead, they keep their eye on the goal and find another way.

They learn from the lesson of failure, determining what didn't work and why, and fix it.  Each setback creates a stronger and better defined path to the future they envision.  It's not an easy journey.  The path is littered with the detritus of those that have walked it before but abandoned the effort along the way.  Those that didn't manage to stay the course are far too likely to help you abandon your efforts than they are to rally behind you and help keep you on your path. Having you abandon your dream helps vindicate their choice to abandon theirs.  Don't let their loss of faith cause you to lose yours.

If everyone simply gave up when things got tough then we would not have electricity, we would never have walked on the moon, we would never have broken the four minute mile; there would be no Apple, no polio vaccine, no cars.  The luxuries we enjoy today came not from people that only had a dream, but from those with the dream and the perseverance to see them through.

What path are you standing on?  Is it the path leading to the fulfillment of your dream (you know the one!) or are you standing on some side path?  The walking may be easier there but it is a path that never reaches your desired goal.  It may veer close occasionally, giving you a glimpse of the dream once again, but if you don't push through all of the scrub brush and rubble separating you, and get back on the path to your dream, you will simply continue to walk the path you're on, demoralized by the reminder of the abandoned dream.  

Perseverance is a powerful thing.  It can help us to achieve great things in our lives.  Success often comes not to those that are smarter or stronger but simply to those who keep at it a little bit longer, those that hang in and keep on trying.  

Successful people are clear about what their dream is though.  If your vision is to be a successful entrepreneur then you don't stick with a poor business concept and keep 'trying' to make that work.  Learn from that mistake and choose a better vehicle.  Many successful entrepreneurs that you speak with had many unsuccessful businesses first.  We often learn best through trial and error, but we have to recognise and learn from the attempts.  Are you learning from yours?

We all get knocked down by life.  The only thing separating those at the top, from those at the bottom, is the climb.  If you give up at any point during the climb you will not, can not, reach the summit. Those who succeed are those who simply kept moving forward, one small step at a time, knowing that doing nothing was not an option.  Sometimes, the greatest secret to achievement and Success is to simply Keep on Keeping On.