Article 167 - Let Results Speak for Themselves

Moving forward in life and career when faced with a difficult choice to take a risk or play it safe

Many of us can be very creative when telling others about our ambitious goals and plans, which we hope to accomplish someday. However, when it comes to taking any actionable steps towards those plans, all of the sudden once who seemed to be confident and determined individual, disappears somewhere. But what happened? Why once confident, determined, and goal-focused individual capitulates and retreats into the shadows? Did the goal change? Or did the goal become less important? I don’t believe that it’s either one of those things. I think it’s a sense of internal fear of the unknown and fear of change that’s at play here. People typically don’t give up on their goals and dreams, but instead, we often retreat and put our plans in ‘I’ll do it later’ folder of our mind with hopes to retrieve them at a later time, which almost never happens. Once we put something away, that space gets filled up with something else, some other want or need. And, in addition of us feeling a sense of disappointment inside for our lack of action, we are creating a brand of procrastinator and someone who’s words do not hold much weight in the real life. So, next time when we tell someone that we plan on starting to work on an important new goal of ours, our words are no longer being taken seriously. Why? Because, we’ve been in similar situation before and did not keep our word and our commitment to ourselves and others. So, why should anyone believe us when we are not giving them any reason to do so based on prior history, creating an empty noise without any meaningful action to back them up with?

Instead of talking about what we hope to achieve one day, we should actually take action, take steps to pursue our goals and plans, even if those steps are very small. The main goal is to create an action and keep fueling those steps with continuous progress that we create along the way. Yes, it can be very scary to start something new and move pass our comfort zone, and even more difficult to keep moving forward and keep trying, even when things get very tough, or when we do not see any results of our hard work for a long time. However, if we never try and actually stick with our plan of reaching a specific goal, we would never know what we are capable of, and will continue to live surrounded by doubt and uncertainty while standing still in our comfort zone and expecting for things to change. What we seek may be just around the corner, but if we give up and stop pursuing our objectives, we would never know how close to reaching those objectives we may have been.

So many times, I’ve been tempted to stop pursuing my personal and professional goals in life. However, each time I had to remind myself why I set the goals that I did and why I cannot stop. I also reminded myself of everyone who depends on me and that it’s not just about what I want but also individuals who believe in me and look up to me as their source of inspiration and motivation. The result is, I keep on going, no matter what, and would hope that anyone who has goals and dreams in life that they want to pursue would do exactly the same. As Walt Disney once said: “The way to get started is to quit talking and being doing.” So, let’s get after it, let’s stop talking about our goals and start working towards achieving them.

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