Stop Talking & Start Doing
This is a guest post by Alex Fayle of SomedaySyndrome.
In one of my favorite fantasy books, Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, the main character Cimorene finds herself about to be married off to a Prince she can’t stand. Eventually she finds herself in a conversation with a talking frog who asks her what she is going to do about the situation.
Cimorene tells him about all the people she’s talked to and complained to. He replies with: “I didn’t ask you what you’d said about it. I asked what you’re going to do. Nine times out of ten, talking is a way of avoiding doing things.”
Guilty! I have such a vivid imagination, that if I start talking about my goals or dreams, I don’t actually need to complete them. In my mind, I reach the end of the journey, celebrate the success, collect the accolades and revel in the money I’ve raked in.
All without having to lift a finger.
I connect with the future on a highly emotional level and feel all the positive emotions associated with success. And I’m done. I don’t need to do actually go through the effort of getting there – that’s just too much work.
Visualizing Action, Not Outcome
A lot of self-development people say that you need to fully visualize your outcome if you want to reach it. Talking to others about it makes it real and makes you accountable. However in his excellent book 59 Seconds, Richard Wiseman looks at studies which prove that visualizing your future too well actually hinders the likelihood of you completing it.
Instead of visualizing the outcome, Wiseman reports, you’ll have more success with your goals if you visualize yourself taking action that leads you toward your goal.
Let’s look at an example. I’m currently working on the draft of a novel. To motivate myself say I try picturing the novel finished and on bookshelves in stores with my name at the top of the bestseller list.
Will that honestly motivate me? No, because there’s no imagery of the work it will take me to get there. In fact there’s a good chance the image will demotivate me and lead to working less instead of more.
Why? Because the gap between where I am (blank page) and where I want to be (bestselling novel) is too big. I can’t see how to get from here to there and so don’t even get started.
However, if I picture myself sitting with my laptop writing each day, celebrating the progress I make then I’m likely to follow through on the vision because it’s only a small step from here to there. I don’t need think about the end result, only the next step in the process.
Action Provides Its Own Rewards
Many people talk rather than act as a way to gain validation from others without actually making progress or changing their lives. These are the people who take endless personal development courses and read every personal development book and blog out there, talking to everyone and anyone about what they’re learning.
And it feels great. They know what their dreams are. They can talk until their jaw falls off about what they want to achieve someday and everyone around them pats them on the back and says “good for you!”
By talking so much, however, these people don’t act. They’re content with the preparation but never start the journey.
These people are addicted to validation and have found an easy way to get it. All their talk makes it seem to the outside world that they’re taking action, but in the end they have nothing to show for it.
When people take action to make internal changes there is often no immediate payoff, no pats on the back for the small steps we take. Lasting change takes a long time and is hard work. Talking is fast and easy.
If you’re like this at all, stop talking. Set yourself a goal – some small habit that you want to change – and take the first step towards achieving it. Give yourself a pat on the back for doing so then move onto the next step.
And this way you’ll learn that action provides its own rewards, its own validation because as you move towards your goal you will see your progress and feel validation coming from within.
At this point, once you are over the validation addiction, go find yourself a forum or group of some sort. Talk to the people in this forum or group about your actions and your progress as a sort of accountability tracking rather than for validation. When you use talking for accountability you lean on the support of others (and provide support to them in turn) to help you take action, and not to boost a failing ego.
Over on Someday Syndrome, I offer a free Accountability Clinic that mixes weekly email reminders with a forum for reporting in on goals, action and obstacles. For my writing goals, I also belong to Forward Motion Writers to keep myself accountable fiction-wise.
Remember, someday never becomes today no matter how much you talk about it. So, if you were Cimorene, what would your answer to the frog be? What action will you take to achieve your dreams?
Alex Fayle is a professional nagger – his most hated word is “someday” and has devoted his life to helping others get rid of it from their vocabularies. Through his site Someday Syndrome (http://www.somedaysyndrome.com), Alex works as a lifestyle designer to help people make big changes in their lives and stop the procrastination habit.
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Posted by Alex Shalman in Uncategorized | November 4, 2009 | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumble | Print | 18 comments
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Bingo. I can 100% guarantee all of us visualize our result not the action.
Hi Alex(you don’t know which Alex I am talking to yet~).
This is a solid point though. I had read much about Toastmasters over the last many months, and then had been talking about it for the last month or two, before I jumped and went to one of their meetings this week. Had I just gone to a meeting after the fourth time reading about it, the other time spent thinking about it would not have been used for that, and might have been used for something else. At times, talking is an unfitting substitute for some quick action.
That’s true about not getting a pat on the back when you do more action than talking. Sometimes there is a void where positive reinforcement would be, which is what makes taking action look more difficult.
Cool to read.
Great post. I agree 100%. It’s so easy to fall in the trap of reading lots of personal development material and talking about it, but taking little action. This year I’ve been slogging through the BASICS really slowly. 7 Habits. Getting in a workout routine. Self Hypnosis session once a week. Basically re-reading the fundamentals and actually DOING all of it. The results have been TREMENDOUS. Sometimes I get antsy knowing there’s so much more cool stuff that I could be reading about personal development, but DOING is so much more important than reading or talking. Great post Alex. I hope it inspires everyone to get off their ass and take ACTION!
@fas
When I read about the study in 59 Seconds, I thought “Of course! That’s why I don’t recommend visualizing to my clients!” It was good to have a reason for what was intuitive to me.
@Armen
Sometimes talking is a way to break down the fear barriers we put up. For example the idea of Toastmasters might have held some fear for you, so by taking your time you kind of slid around the fear instead of running headlong into it.
As for the validation – that’s why I belong to forums – so that I document my progress and that I get the back pats (and give them too!)
@Ben
Glad you like the post and I’m also happy that you’ve been seeing tremendous results through taking action. Woo hoo!
AND, if there’s anyone wondering where I’ve gone, and why I haven’t been writing, I think this post speaks for me. I’ve had to shut up, so I can act on this anatomy and biochemistry combined cumulative midterm, and then the thing after, and the one after!
Dental school is NO joke.
This got me thinking. I will not picture graduation. I’ll just put a mirror in front of my desk, so instead of having to take the time to visualize myself studying, I can just look up and watch my facial hair grow.
Exactly Alex.
When our Actions outweigh our words we will see what we desire come into fruition
A motivating post about the power and importance of taking action. I really enjoyed reading this and will look forward to seeing more of your writing
I have a question
are u writing the guest posts for free, or u are payed for it?
Thanks
@Alex
That’s a great idea re the mirror. Way to go at thinking sideways!
@Amanda
Glad you enjoyed it! Feel free to check out my site for more articles (as well of course as hanging out here an enjoying more of Alex’s posts).
@BloggerGirl
I wrote this guest post for free – why do you ask?
“…visualizing your future too well actually hinders the likelihood of you completing it…”
I sometimes find myself guilty of that.
Very nice article. I enjoyed reading it. Many thanks.
@Johanne
So, you going to picture you doing something towards your goal now instead of picturing the goal itself?
but visualizing your goal is something automatic,it always happens.So how do you do it?
this is really amazing. today i needed some kind of inspiration and by god’s grace i got it.thanx alex for writing such a good stuff. thanx a lot.
a great article, needed to read something like this today. Look forward to more from everyone. LadyJ aka Jacki
Hi Alex, I have been following your website since early 2008. I think some of your postings really do spell out practicality dead straight, like this one for instance. Yes, a lot of times we do everything else but not what we are suppose to which is actually the reason for us doing all those other things, confusing, well its like doing all the pre-rituals before running a 100meter race but not running the race itself, we never just get started which which is by itself the most important thing to do…I agree with the visualization part quite a bit, action is what we should be picturing not the outcome, because no action= no outcome and the visualization becomes some what of wishful thinking..
On a separate note, you have inspired me to come up with my own blog (www.johncentsworth.blogspot.com), its not much, but do check it out (Alex) and everyone else, i would love to know what you all think, you may even sign up as followers if you like it, but i should not get too far ahead of myself
….cheers.
Once we have a goal, we need only take consistent action in the direction of that goal, and achieving it becomes inevitable.
I would argue visualize your outcome, identify your way points and do a work breakdown structure to map out the work to get there.
The beauty of this approach is that somebody who’s been there, done that (and has the t-shirt to prove it), can review your map — and point out key issues and find you some short-cuts.