Remember that amazing idea that you were always going to do something with but never got around to? Are your friends busy making plans, following their passion and achieving their goals, while you’re still thinking about it? Do you find yourself always sacrificing for somebody else’s benefit and never moving ahead with your own dream?
How is that working for you? Well, guess what? You can stop being passive and stuck right now, with a few steps to get you from hoping to happening.
But first, how can you tell if you’re living passively?
Let’s start with areas of your life where you want to change or you want to accomplish something. See if these situations sound familiar:
• You have no written plan or step-by-step strategy.
• You keep thinking that “someday” you’ll be ready.
• You think that somehow circumstances are finally going to come together, you’ll finally get the right Twitter cover graphic, and you’ll finally discover the secret that will absolve you from responsibility.
• You believe that you and your business are completely subject to outside forces such as the economy and the latest news story that email is dying.
Why haven’t you made a written plan?
There could be several reasons:
• You believe the statistics about businesses that fail and Social Media that supposedly isn’t effective and other guesses readily available on the internet.
• You’re just hoping. You hope your Facebook likes will increase. You hope your email list will grow.
• Your fear of the unknown keeps you from doing the things you know you should do.
• You don’t know how to do the things related to the changes you want to make and the things you want to accomplish.
Before you get down on yourself and resign yourself to fate, tell yourself the truth about what you can do to get from hoping to happening:
Equip and empower yourself with knowledge about HOW to do things.
Take a course, Google a phrase, search YouTube and begin to gain the skill you need. Give yourself some time and practice—remember that the way to become skilled at something is to do it over and over.
YOU be the determining factor in your success.
It’s easy to get caught up in all of the factors surrounding you—your upbringing, your current circumstances or your age—and forget that YOU are the most important factor.
Make a plan. And not just in your head.
Writing down your plan forces you to clarify and figure out the details.
Take action on your plan.
Ah, here we get to the nitty gritty. Learn and do, learn and do. Don’t learn, learn, learn and never get around to doing. Learning without doing just keeps you in an endless cycle of hoping and waiting for someday and somehow.
Rather than your future being determined by an unavoidable fate, your future is going to be determined by the plans you make and the action you take.
It’s one thing to read the theory, it’s another to implement.
Here are some practical action steps to take this week:
1. Choose one personal or business area of your life in which you want to change or to accomplish something. Start small while you’re learning a new habit. You want to learn and do, so keep it doable.
2. Equip yourself by learning the how-to’s for this one thing. This could be training on how to increase Facebook likes, or how to build a Twitter following.
3. Write down a simple, step-by-step plan. Don’t give in to the temptation to keep it in your head. Make it a series of sticky notes if you want, but DO write it down.
4. Take action. YOU be the determining factor, not what you see when you look around. Somebody, somewhere, has been in worse circumstances than you and they have succeeded at what you want to do.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re moving ahead in your business when you’re really living the passive life and avoiding a plan. Plug in to the power of skill, plans and action to get from hoping to happening!
Charlotte Siems works with Boom! Social in the Boom! Social Media Mastery training program. She serves clients as a member of the Boom Care Squad, with a specialty in mindset coaching. Charlotte’s lifelong study of personal development and her experiences in raising a large family equipped her to build a successful online business from the ground up. She is uniquely qualified to help others create success in their life and business.
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Great, empowering tips to motivate those with fantastic ideas! Taking action in one specific area, learning those details, and focusing are solid tips to narrow scope and make starting a business seem less daunting.
Thanks, Erica–the “less daunting” part is great for all of us!
Thank you, Jessica! Although it’s definitely important to hope and dream, the doing is what gets us there!