TALKING VS. DOING

By Niki Billingslea

  I have a confession.  I have become very good at talking the talk of success so much so that I often believe my own hype.  The one thing that I cannot hide from is the fact that I have little to show for years of talk.  This is where faking it til you make it becomes a crutch.

Yes, I have had triumphs and I have certainly experienced flat out failure.  Decisively, I took lessons from all of those experiences and I am here.  HERE is the crossroads of Keep-Talking-Cause-You’re-Good-At-It Avenue and Demonstrate-What-You-Say-You-Know Boulevard.  The Avenue is stagnation and, quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing myself talking.  The Boulevard looks daunting, but it promises to be an exhilarating experience.

How do I get from talk to action?  I’m sure the achievers who read this are saying, “Duh! Make a plan. Know what you want to do.  Go deeper into your practice...blah, blah, blah.”  Instead of joining the chorus of the self-righteous, I will reach out with the compassion that seldom is extended to those who are trying to find the way.

You can adopt any system, any method and make it work for you.  There are people who will swear the only way to reach your goals is to do as they were taught or learned.  The secret is no secret.  It is the only thing standing between thought and action...the movement.  When we stop thinking, we have to do something.  That something has to be in the direction of the goal we are working toward.

I know this, right?  Why am I still in a mental space of grappling with it?  Thought.  I daresay any thought held for too long that is not followed by action is a limiting thought.  I affirm, I speak into existence, I visualize. People who are paralyzed by fear, limiting thoughts, or any other thought-forms that sabotage just have to decide to lay that baggage down and go. Like this article, it became a tangible thing only after I stopped thinking about it and began typing.  That is the challenge I work daily to overcome: turn off the mind and DO.