Talking the Talk But Not Walking the Walk
What have you been preaching and teaching BUT…not doing yourself?
It happens to the best of us. We get in the habit of knowing the right path, the path towards health, wealth and success, we tell others all about it, and then one day we wake up only to realize that we have not been following our own awesome advice.
At a recent training, I had more than one person say something to me like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve known these things for years but I haven’t been doing them myself.” As a coach, the same thing happens to me. I’ll tell someone something so basic and simple that it seems like a no brainer, and I have said it so often to so many people that I don’t have to think much about it.
But if I notice that my results aren’t where I expect them to be, the error is normally linked to the same basic and simple things I was coaching others on.
Great example. On my flight back from California, I was wiped, and I couldn’t bring myself to do anymore work or read anything important. So, I watched a movie, a silly comedy, and when I finished that I reached in my bag and realized that I had also brought ‘The Secret’. I hadn’t watched ‘The Secret’ since it had come out, and I thought that maybe it would be worth watching for a little while.
While watching for about twenty minutes all of these ideas started pouring into my head, and I had an epiphany. I had felt as overwhelmed as I ever had over the past two months, to the point of wanting to quit. I had also been telling myself that I was “really busy”, that I might be “working harder than anyone”, that “I don’t have the time for ____(fill in the blank)!” WTF!!! But I had been believing my story and therefore, I had no time, I was behind schedule, and many things fell through the cracks or got ignored.
The epiphany hit me like a bolt of lightning! I have been believing a story about my time effectiveness for a long time, and how busy I have been for a long time SO why not change the story.
When, I got off of the plane and to my office that night I pulled out the index cards that I keep on the desk and wrote a new one:
“I am so happy and grateful that I have learned how to manage my time. I am ahead of schedule. I am early to meetings. I am so excited to feel like and to be routinely completing my T0-Do list.”
And, I haven’t felt this great about my daily tasks in months, if not years. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I magically have looked at my tasks as pieces and thought “Well, that won’t take long, I’ll just do it now.” Whereas before I was seeing the whole list as a WHOLE and thought “Look at how long that list is! I can’t possibly do all of that today!” Do you see the difference?
The question and mission for you then is this: Take a look at your situation. We all have at least one thing, so identify just one thing that you have been telling others to do but you yourself are not doing or are not doing it as consistently as you know you need. You are invited to share that one thing below and let us know how you are going to fix it.
Be Free!
Tom Weber
Instructor
Thanks much to Tom for this sweet sweet article… I now have two new, powerful post it notes sitting in front of me… I am SOOOO excited to be sailing through these tasks in joy!!!! Exactly what I needed to read at this time… Bravo Mr. T Web
Comment by Joe Paprocki — December 10, 2009 @ 9:28 am
Excellent Tom, THANK-YOU! As a leader and trainer in a marketing company that is helping familes achieve financial freedom, I need to “Walk My Talk” everyday! Today my post-it notes reads ~ “There are people out there today whom I will meet, who have the same entreprenuerial mindset as me and are praying for what I have to share with them!”
Thanks again!
Comment by Cindy Moore — December 10, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Great post Tom – I have a few, although the one that immediately comes to mind is creating a schedule for my week that excites me, and then sticking to it. I find myself easily distracted. Perhaps it’s a man thing (Ooooo…shiny!) Or doing things like reading and responding to blog posts during my scheduled work time, like this one. This final one….
So here’s what I’m going to do. I will close my email during my scheduled work time and check it only during designated breaks. AND, I will schedule shorter blocks of focused work time because when I’m in the zone, I accomplish the majority of my desired results within a short period of time.
Then I can spend the rest of the day if I wish reading emails, blogs, etc.
Comment by Bud Katheman — December 10, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Great blog. The part about you writing down how happy you were about how you learn to manage your time reminds me of what I read in “The Psycology of Persuation” by Robert B. Cialdini. He talks about how more people are committed to themselves when they write their goals down.
Comment by Sherman — December 10, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
Tom-
Great blog! I was just lamenting about how many things were on my to do list. I was looking at the whole list for this weekend as one large entity, not the little pieces that they are. I just added two more items on the list with confidence. I will finish this list.
Thanks Tom!
Comment by Steve F — December 11, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
Thank you Tom. I guess if you’re working the hardest, then I can’t be working the hardest. I guess my story is untrue, too. HA. That’s the same crap I was telling myself. My new story is that I have such a talented, loving, hard-working group of individuals around me, and together we make magic. It’s more fun being the main character in my new play.
Comment by David — December 12, 2009 @ 10:03 am
*nods, nods, nods* I know exactly what you mean, Tom. It’s amazing how much I KNOW but how little I DO. I know the theory but putting it into practice has always seemed harder.
My “one thing” is what I call BIC. It stands for “Butt In Chair” which is a writerly term for actually sitting down to do the writing side of business. I can spend hours doing everything but writing. I’ve got notebooks filled with ideas and concepts. I love to use the web design site of my business to procrastinate; I can put off the writing for months at a time. I frequently think negatively about my “failure” to write and have a whole language growing within my head about me as a non-writer. Since writing, and not web design, is what I truly want to do it is self-destructive to allow this blockage to continue to grow.
I host a freelance writing blog and on there I’ve frequently preached about how important it is to make time to write, why writing every day is vital, how to prevent writer’s block, topic after topic that discusses BIC. But I’m not doing it myself.
That ends, right now. Thank you!
Comment by Rebecca Laffar-Smith — January 9, 2010 @ 2:51 am