Don’t Talk About It; Do It!
I always say, “Some people talk and some people walk their talk.”
In other words some people are passive and just talk about what they want to do or what they plan to do and other people put their talk into action.
You can talk about writing a best-selling novel until you are blue in the face but talk is meaningless unless you sit down and start writing. You can talk about traveling to Europe and even make plans but until you book your airfare, it’s just talk and nothing more.
I got married on my eighteenth birthday. My husband and I lived in Arizona and talked about moving to Oregon and buying our own property and building our own home. We packed everything we owned in an ancient Dodge pickup, drove to Oregon, went to work, bought property and built a house by the time I was twenty.
Now our house was what you might term a ‘hippie house’ tucked onto the side of a hill on property that was cheap because no one else was crazy enough to buy it, but it was our home. We put our talk into action.
One day we were visiting my husband’s friend, I’ll call Jim. We were sitting on the porch of Jim’s rental while he held a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other hand and told us he wished he had his own home.
I wanted to say, “Well, Jim, if you stopped smoking, drinking and talking about it and started taking some action, you could have your own home!”
Of course, I didn’t. Jim and my husband worked together and made the same amount of money so it wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it and we could. Maybe he didn’t have the confidence that he could own his own home. That’s a possibility but I think it was that Jim liked talking more than he liked walking!
I know someone who struggles with money. They never have enough money to pay their bills. They spend hours a day on-line looking up this and that because they are going to start their own business. They actually have a great business idea, one that would probably be quite a success. However, they’ve been talking about it for six years, telling me all the details of how they are going to start and run their business. They haven’t “done” even one thing about it.
About the same time another friend told me they wanted to start a business and today they are very successful and self-fulfilled because they did it, they didn’t just talk about it.
And then there is me! I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life and my dream is to be traditionally published and help the world with my words. Over the years I have written this and that, and even had a few poems, articles and essays published, but mostly I talked about it and thought about it.
I could always see this talking/not walking in other people and always took credit for walking my talk, because in most areas of my life I did take action. But when it came to my passion for writing, I kept it on the back burner. I think it was because it was what I wanted to do and I spent most of my time doing what other people wanted me to do. It was also because I didn’t value myself and what I had to say.
So I’ve looked in the mirror and called myself out and now I’m taking action. I’ve stopped talking about writing and started walking my talk. I’m in graduate school going for my MFA in writing and learning to increase my writing skills, and I’m writing every day.
I stopped talking about it and now I’m doing it!
What do you really want to do in your life? Whatever it is, get started and take action. You’ll be so glad you did!