Hi, everyone, welcome to today’s live video. Thanks for joining me. Today I want to talk about a quote that I saw this week on a television show and it was called, “Today, not someday.” It got me thinking back to, well, why not today? Why many of us think including myself, think that dreaming of doing things someday, is actually more attractive than taking action today. I want to tell you a little story that happened to me back in 2005 when I finally went travelling.
I always dreamed after university to head off travelling, and I talked about it a lot during University, and even afterwards. I’d even actually started saving up money once I finally got a job. Years by-passed, and I continued to think about this goal or this dream of heading off travelling, but things caught on jobs, and got into writing more. Life just continued, which is fine and I was happy enough, but this dream of going traveling was something that I would talk about it, and I’d be always something that I plan to do someday.
I never actually set a goal of when that would happen, it was just something that would happen in the future. Time didn’t need one thing, it was even five years past, until one evening, I was out in the pub with some friends, and one of my friends said, “Oh, my sister is heading off traveling.” She happened to be out that evening in the pub. She said, “oh, you should talk to my sister, she’s heading off traveling, maybe better find out what she’s planning to do because you always talk about going traveling, so maybe it might be something interesting there to share some ideas. I said, “Okay, yes. That sounds like a good idea.” We got talking, and she was heading off to New Zealand, which is one of the places that I planned to visit. I was hearing and asking her questions, about when she was going, and she said, “I’m heading off in about six weeks.” I said, “Okay, that sounds great.” She said to me, “When are you going traveling yourself?” I said, “Oh, I haven’t got any plans for any particular date to go.” Then she asked me this one key question, this basically stopped me in my tracks and that was, “What stopping you?”
Once she said that, I was like, “Well, what actually is stopping me?” I’d always used the excuse or a justification for planning into the future for someday, and that was because I needed to save up money. When actually stopped and thought about it, money was no longer an issue, I had saved enough money to go traveling, I couldn’t use that as a reason for putting it off. I thought, well, what is actually stopping me and the fact of the matter was, nothing was stopping me.
That got me thinking that, well, if nothing’s stopping me, I need to either decide, right, I’m going traveling or give up on that goal or that dream. I thought, no, I’m going to go travelling here, and that actually, that’s when it became real. Actually became quite scared because the fact that I then had to take action. I had to sort out my job, I had to work on leaving it, I needed to plan leaving my flat and I was sharing with a flatmate at the time. All these things listed item, I had about things I need to do, and that was quite daunting.
I could probably very easily and just put it off and say, “Oh, yes, I’ll do that someday, but I’ve waited five years, what’s another couple of years? I thought, no, there’s no reason that was stopping me, that thing kept going over and over in my head, round and round. That’s the fact that nothing was stopping me other than myself, my excuses, my fear, whatever it was. Then I thought right, and I decided at that point, I’m going to go traveling, this is happening.
I’m thinking back now, that was quite a clear mindset change to go from someday to today and taking action now, there’s no more excuses. Yes, I was scared, but I started taking action, I started making plans for what I needed to do. There is a quote or a philosophy by a guy called, Zig Ziegler and he talks about this philosophy of Be, Do, Have. Basically means that you need to be the person you need to be, and a result of being that person, then you- -can take action or do and then off the back of being and doing, then you can have the result or the outcome, or the goal of the dream you want to achieve. Unless you have that mindset that you’re going to be that person, have the confidence, overcome whatever fears that might be holding you back, you’re never going to take the action you need. You might do things, but it may not necessarily move you forward in the right direction.
When I made that decision, and I decided that I was going to go traveling, thinking back knowing that I changed my mindset. I started to move forward in the direction of going traveling. I started to make arrangements with my job to leave it, to get career break for a year, actually never went back to the job. That helped me take a step forward. It was a little bit less scary to have that job to go back to, although I never actually did use it end. I had to sort about insurance, I had to book flights, I had to get inoculations because I was going into Southeast Asia on the way to New Zealand. A whole list of things, insurance, quite a lot of things listed I had.
Thinking about that having needing to make that moment of decision that I was going traveling, that was the ‘be’, I became a person who was then going to take action. From that point I started acting from that feeling of this goal is happening, I’m going traveling. The result, I started doing it, I started planning, taking action, moving forward in the direction of going traveling. Often I knew myself that I can take action and be busy. If you’re planning to even revise for an exam, for example, you can just end up with your house or your room as tidy as it’s ever been because you’re willing to do anything but actually do the thing you need to do.
By moving forward and actually starting booking things and speaking to my HR about leaving my job, that actually then made me believe again more that this was actually going to happen. Forward. Finally, ‘have’ which actually there was final result of this, is the thing we want achieved and in this case that was me going traveling. I want to challenge you think about it, if you’ve got some dream or goal, or something you might be planning to do. It might be something big like going traveling or it could be something simple, it could be anything. New job, health change, lose weight, get fit, run a marathon, anything. You might talk about, “I going to do that something, I’m going to run a marathon.”
I’m going to challenge you to say, start taking action today, not someday. Think about what Zig Ziegler talks about as Be, Do, Have, how that change of mindset, which makes you think about what it feels like to have that goal fulfilled, to see yourself finishing that marathon as an example and then start to become the person who is going to run marathons. Be a marathon runner, so obviously have that feeling. From that point start acting, take action go out training and the result of that mindset change, plus taking action which is going to move you move you forward. That momentum is going to build up and you get confidence, and going to feel more like someone who’s actually running a marathon, training for a marathon, that you actually will achieve that result.
That’s what I’m going to leave you with today. Today not someday and the Zig Ziegler philosophy of Be, Do, Have. Set goals, change your mindset and imagine that goal fulfilled, like it’s actually happened. The result of changing that way of feeling and thinking, you’re going to take action as a result from that perspective of feeling positive and just seeing, “Yes, this is happening.” Then you will ultimately receive that result of achieving that goal.
I hope that’s helpful. If you have any questions or any comments about that, please do leave them below. Yes, start taking action today, not someday. I had put off traveling for six years but I finally did do it. It did take that moment of action, of decision to say, “This is happening.” Taking positive action momentum forward rather than just busy work, like tidying your room and putting off the inevitable. That’s that positive action forward and then, yes achieving that result. Okay, thanks for watching. I will talk to you all next week.
Jim Rohn puts it best. “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced daily.” Are you ready to take your life to the next level? To start moving in a new direction? I would love nothing more that to see you go from stuck to succeeding; from surviving to thriving.
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced daily.” ~ Jim Rohn
I have created a seven (7) day challenge, for you. It introduces one new discipline I practice everyday.
“Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” ~ Jim Rohn
Seven days will not change your destination, but if you commit to getting up everyday determined to get from the day and not just through it, you can change the direction of your life in seven short days.
“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” ~ Jim Rohn
Ready?