Be a Winner – Take Action!
Contributed by: Phil Morley
If you are completely content with your circumstances, this post is not for you. As the Aussies say, ‘Good onya, Mate!’ For the rest of us who have still not achieved everything we want to do or be, then read on.
There is one, and only one, secret to being a winner…and it isn’t inherited wealth, brains, or good looks (although those probably don’t hurt). The true secret is that you must take action. And that action must be different from what you have been doing. Why? Because what you have been doing hasn’t worked, or else you would have stopped reading after the first sentence.
Based on the laws of physics, change requires action. It’s called inertia. Something at rest tends to stay at rest; something in motion tends to stay in motion. Think about a baseball when thrown by a pitcher. It leaves his hand at a certain speed and stays approximately that speed until it lands in the catcher’s mitt, or…and here’s where the action comes in…it is struck by the bat and goes sailing out of the park.
A change took place because an action took place. So the takeaway on this is if you want to change the direction of your life, you must take action.
Since we tend to resist change because of fear, we have to step out of our comfort zone to make this happen. The fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of being laughed at, all tend to keep us glued to one spot. But consider this; successful people would never laugh at us for trying to accomplish something. It’s always the losers, who are going nowhere with their lives, that try to hold us back. Ignore them.
The story of Joanne Rowling is a good case in point. A young, divorced, single mom, living on welfare, decided to take action. Whenever she could get her young daughter to fall asleep, she would write. Whether it was in nearby cafes or in her small flat in Edinburgh, she would write. She became depressed and nearly suicidal after her mom died, but she made herself write anyway. She did this for five years.
Barely making ends meet, she finally finished her first book. She kept writing while she struggled to find a publisher. Even while agreeing to publish her novel, he advised her to keep her day job, because she would never make any money writing children’s books. She kept writing anyway. She took action, and it paid off.
The Harry Potter series is now a global brand worth an estimated $15 billion US and has made J.K. Rowling one of the wealthiest women in the world.
She could have made excuses, felt sorry for herself, ‘kept her day job’, even succumbed to depression, but she did none of those things. She took action.
Now most of us may not have a worldwide bestseller tucked away in our brains, but each of us has a set of talents and skills shaped by our experiences that is unlike anyone else in the world. That’s what makes us unique. So don’t squander it. Explore it instead. Find out what makes you tick, what gets you excited, then take action, any action, that moves you a little closer to what you’d really like to do or be if nothing was holding back…because nothing is holding you back!
Be a winner…take action!
Phil Morley is a COG, publicist, writer, blogger, architect, and entrepreneur who helps small to medium size firms get great exposure for their business or organization. He serves as Chief PR Guy for www.newsreleasepro.com.
Be a Winner – Take Action! – © Phil Morley – 2009 All Rights Reserved