‘Many a false step is made by standing still’
– Unknown
of people tell me that they’d also like to write a book. When I tell them that they should, and it’s really not that difficult if you’re prepared to stick with it, I normally get a long list of reasons why they can’t. Chief among these reasons is the belief that they have no talent for writing. The answer to this perceived problem is to develop their talent for writing, and the way to do that is to write! If you want to be a painter, then paint. If you want to travel the world, then travel. If you want to be a millionaire, start up a business. And if you want to be writer, then write.
I’m greatly amused by the term ‘writer’s block’. In case you’ve never come across this term before, writer’s block is what writers call an apparent affliction (i.e. a profound lack of inspiration) that temporarily robs them of their ability to write. No other craft has the luxury of a block and I don’t see why we writers should consider ourselves to be anything special! To illustrate how absurd this idea is, what would you think of a plumber who couldn’t come and fix your leaky water pipes because they were suffering from plumber’s block ?!? Sometimes my writing just flows out of me; other times I have to force it. Either way the important thing is that I write. Without the action of writing, I’m simply not a writer.
I’d challenge you to think of anything you value that didn’t require some action to bring it into your life? I can’t think of a single thing! You can wish and hope for things as much as you like; you’ll never get them until you make a determined effort to get them.
As a martial arts instructor, I regularly get people telling me that they’d love to study the martial arts, but they wouldn’t know what to do! Well, how will they ever know what to do if they never get started? This experience is common to almost every instructor I’ve ever talked to. This is very similar to the people, and there are a lot of them, who say they’d like to go to
The Importance of Action
the gym but aren’t fit enough! Isn’t that why people go to the gym in the first place?
By giving reasons why they can’t do something, people either have no real interest in the activity (but are saying they do out of politeness), they are adopting the victim mentality in order to avoid leaving the comfort zone, or they don’t understand the importance of action. To progress towards any goal, you need to act. You need to take the first step. If you want to write that book, then start writing. If you want to get fitter, start exercising. If you want that dream job, start making calls and sending off that CV. Action always comes first! Mental strength, self-belief, talent and confidence all come later. It’s impossible to grow in any way without first gaining experience of the activity. And the only way to get experience is through action.
The amount of effort we can put into procrastination would be better spent on advancing us towards our goals. Underlying any procrastination is the desire to stay in the comfort zone for as long as possible. To make any progress, we need to act, and we need to act now! Delay can be dangerous.
By delaying our positive action we give mental resistance more time to grow and we give negative thoughts more time to rattle around in our heads. We will come up with more and more reasons not to move forward. We will then start to accept those reasons and what started off as a temporary delay becomes permanent. Indeed, this is one of the primary tactics that our outdated survival mechanism uses to induce inactivity. If we really want to move forward, the negative, fearful part of our mind may try to convince us that one day we really will act, but not just yet.
Throughout my time in the martial arts, I’ve regularly found myself in unnerving situations. What I’ve found is that inactivity makes fear grow stronger. As an example, let’s say that I’m about to have a heavy spar with a more able and larger
opponent. If I procrastinate and try to put off that fight by sparring with other people first (like I did in my early days in the martial arts) my fear of that big fight will grow. It’s almost as if your subconscious observes your fearful actions and then uses them as justification to increase those fear levels.
I’ve found that the best way to get rid of fear is to face the situation head on. If I decide to spar with the person I’m scared of first, the negative, whinging part of my brain is made to shut up! It can’t keep telling me I’m scared because my actions demonstrate I’m not. I also begin to feel proud of myself for not letting my fear dictate and control my actions. By facing up to that fear, it begins to subside.
Fear, doubt and negativity get more intense the longer you put off the activity. By waiting for them to subside before acting, you may very well intensify those feelings. It is only through flexing our mental strength and making ourselves act that those negative feelings will begin to subside. We need to take that first step positively and with conviction.
In many ways, the first step is the most important. We tend to forget that those we admire once made that exact same step.
The martial artists that I really look up to were all beginners once. There was a time when the world’s best writers had written nothing. All the great painters had to paint their first picture.
In fact, all the greats in any field had to take a first step at some point. They, just like us, had to overcome those fears and doubts and take their initial action. Whilst some wish for things to get easier (which won’t happen) before acting, the successful get out there and get going. The unfulfilled masses wish that one day they’ll get their way; the successful go out and make their way.
Despite all the perceived difficulties that stand in your way, you need to act. And the time for that action is NOW! Not only do things get harder the longer you leave them, but you’re running out of time! I hate to be the one to break it to you, but
The Importance of Action the cold, hard fact is that you’re now closer to death than you were when you started reading this page.
Death is frequently regarded as a morbid subject and is therefore something that most people prefer not to think or talk about. We try to turn a blind eye to the fact that one day we’ll all stop breathing, and by default we live our lives like we have an eternity to do all the things we’d like to. We don’t.
Many years ago I was out walking my dog on a route that takes me close to the local cemetery. It was a cold, crisp winter’s night and I decided I’d pop into the cemetery to visit the grave of a friend who’d been killed in an accident. I knelt at the grave and read all the cards and messages by the moonlight. As I did so, I thought about how tragic his death was. He was a very nice guy and very talented. I couldn’t help thinking about what he could have achieved if he’d just had more time.
I left the grave of my friend and continued on my walk. A few minutes later, with the thoughts of my friend still in my mind, I stopped and looked up at the sky. The sky was very clear and as I stared towards the heavens I was in awe at the number of stars I could see. I thought about how the light from each one of those stars took hundreds of years to get here and about how large and timeless the universe was.
The combined thoughts of the vastness of the universe and the tragic shortness of my friend’s life converged in my mind and caused a sudden, powerful fear to surge though my body.
For the first time in my life I was acutely aware that my time on this planet was running out. With every frosty breath I was closer to the time that I would die! This was not the intellectual understanding of the limits of life that we all have, but the hard-hitting emotional reality of that fact. I knew I was running out of one-days (we all are) and that I needed to start pursuing my dreams whilst there was time left to do so.
I’ve never experienced the reality of death as acutely as I did that day. Although, at the times where I know I’m not giving
as much as I could, I wish I could feel those sensations again in order to refocus my mind.
We don’t have an eternity to do the things we want to do and to achieve all the things we want to achieve. All we have is the here and now. You can achieve anything you want. But you need to act and act now!
I
n addition to having the mental strength to achieve our goals, we also need the talent. To be a world-class footballer, you not only need the mental strength to succeed, you also need the talent to play at world-level. Contrary to much prevailing thought, talent is not something you either have or you don’t.Talent can be developed and we’ll look at how that process works in this chapter.
As we progress towards our goals, mental resistance is not the only type of resistance we will experience. In addition to the resistance that exists within our minds, we will also experience resistance in the form of changes and obstacles in the outside world. We will refer to these outside challenges as external resistance.
We will only ever experience external resistance if we lack, or think we lack, the talent needed to accomplish a given task. If we have the talent, we will accomplish the required task with ease. There will be no external resistance. Just as our mental strength enables us to overcome mental resistance, it is our skills and talents that allow us to overcome external resistance.
However, as we shall see, mental strength and talent are closely linked and have a strong effect upon one another.