Do you spend a lot of time talking about your dreams? If you are passionate about your vision for the future, I bet you do. You love to share your ideas and goals with others. But at a certain point, you have to stop talking and start doing. That’s the difference between being a talker or a doer.
If you want to achieve results, do something to make your dreams real and achieve your goals. You can’t just talk about them. Action is the only thing that will help you achieve the results you desire. You have to do something to realize your dream.
Sometimes it just feels easier—safer—to talk about what you want. I get it…but that won’t help you achieve the results you desire or get what you want.
Talking Lowers Your Energy
I remember when I went out to Taos, New Mexico, to work with the late Stuart Wilde. He taught that it was better not to talk about your goals and dreams at all—with anyone! He said it dissipated the energy around the dream.
What I have experienced is this: When you talk a lot about what you want and never take action, you lose energy for the dream. It may seem as if you are building energy as you talk. After all, you get excited and inspired as you share your goal. Your enthusiasm and passion are wetted.
Then you stop talking…and your energy plummets. Suddenly, you feel less inclined to take action than you did before you began sharing your goal. Why? Because you realize you haven’t taken action—and probably won’t take action, and that makes you feel horrible about yourself. Plus, it’s depressing to understand that you still haven’t done anything to move toward your goal (or have done very little besides talk). And it’s embarrassing, right?
Doing Raises Your Energy
I get it… I’ve been talking about writing some books for years…years! And when people ask me about them, or I mention them, I end up beating myself up and feeling enormously embarrassed. Not to mention that I feel I’ve lost credibility—especially with my agent and some acquisitions editors who voiced an interest in my work. Like you, I then end up stuck in negative and low energy, which does nothing at all to help me take action.
But if I take action…even do just one thing, like write for 30 minutes…my energy changes. It become higher and more postive, and that pushes me forward. It increases my motivation to take another action.
Each time you talk rather than do, you perpetuate this cycle and decrease your ability to do something that moves you forward.
As I mentioned in last week’s post, Get Inspired by Your Success, you can change this cycle by taking action. When you do even something small, take a tiny step toward your goal, you change your energy. And that positive energy pushes you forward. The sense of accomplishment generates the inspiration, motivation, and desire to take another step and then another and so on.
How to Start Doing
Today, make a list of the goals you only talk about or talk about more than you work toward. Pick one that you genuinely want to achieve. Then ask yourself:
- Do I need or want to achieve this goal? While need can spur us to action, want is a more powerful driver. And if you don’t want to make this dream real, you’ll never take action. (Read this post to learn more about need vs. want.)
- Why do I want to achieve this goal? Connect with an emotional reason for accomplishing it. If you don’t feel passion, desire, inspiration, motivation, and enthusiasm for the end result, you’ll do nothing.
Finally, to move from talker to doer, increase your sense of urgency around accomplishing your goal. To do this, answer the following questions:
- What will happen if I don’t achieve this goal? Will you or someone else (or both) be impacted if you don’t take action?
- What will happen if I do achieve this goal? Will you are someone else (or both) be positively impacted if you do take action?
Create Mortality Motivation
In the language of high performance coaching, we call this “mortality motivation.” If the Angle of Death arrived on your doorstep today—and you hadn’t realized your dream, how would you feel? What would you regret?
Don’t have regrets at the end of your life…or tonight when you go to bed or tomorrow morning when you wake up. Do something to move you toward the realization of your dream.
Become a doer. Once you’ve done something (achieved your goal), then you can talk about it. Share your results proudly!
What are you going to do (rather than talk about) this week??
Never miss one of my videos! Click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Photo copyright: QuinceMedia / 95 images
