I have an acquaintance who knows all about business. She’s knows how to start one, how to market it, how to sell it, and how to be a success at it. She reads dozens of business magazines and books on success. She knows all the buzzwords, all the famous people, all the best jobs and all the names of the companies that are moving up and making names for themselves. She’s like a business guru. She books herself in small venues to give speeches about business – how to get started, what to do when problems come up, how to be successful, and she’s filled with advice for everyone. But she has never DONE anything in business herself. She talks all the time about the companies she’s going to start, and all the success she’s going to have, the millions of dollars she’s going to make, and how she’s going to change the business world. But she never does anything. All she does is read constantly about these things, talk continually about them, and try her hardest to convince everyone around her that she is a success.
When asked why she hasn’t yet done anything to get her business plans going, she has a lot of excuses – all of which sound pretty good. “The market isn’t right for this model at this time. I am working on getting the start up capital. I am looking for investors,” and my personal favorite, “I’m still fine tuning what I want to deliver.” Okay. Well all these excuses might sound good, but years have gone by, she has no money, she struggles every month to pay her rent, she’s always scrounging around for some place to give a speech about success, and she’s really talking the talk. But that’s all it is – talk. She never steps up and starts.
There are innumerable reasons not to do things. Innumerable! If you aren’t ready or don’t really want to do something, the reasons you can come up with never end. There is an old story of a man who asked his neighbor if he could borrow his axe. The neighbor said no. He didn’t seem to be using the axe so the man asked him why he couldn’t borrow it. The neighbor said, he was sorry but he was making soup. What does soup have to do with me borrowing your axe inquired the man. Well, said the neighbor, if I don’t want to lend you my axe one excuse is as good as another. And it is.
We have a lot of reasons why we aren’t doing something we’ve been thinking we want to do. We can have as many reasons not to do things as we like. We could just say our hair is growing today or we have a bone in our arm. Really, any excuse will do. But if we want to do something there really is only one reason to do it – because we want to. That’s all. It’s simple. We want to do it and so we do it. If we don’t want to do it, we can stall. We can wait as long as we like until we’re ready to face the truth. And the real truth generally is that we’re not doing it because we don’t want to do it enough to take the steps to start.
One reason. That’s all it takes to do anything we want. One reason. Because we want to. Nothing else really matters. Think about it. One reason. And then decide.
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