Wanna really turn up the heat in your life? Then use the crucial ingredient essential to turning dreams into reality – that’s action. Without placing a cake in the oven, all the mixing, folding and combination of ingredients won’t get you a finished cake. It’s ACTION that produces the final results. Let’s focus in on taking the action steps necessary to live our lives full of passion and purpose.
Talk is Cheap
“A little less conversation, a little more action”…well they didn’t call Elvis the King for nothing. He knew about action (in more ways than one, but that’s not the point). He understood talk and action were different. It can be easy to get caught up in the “what if” syndrome. I used to have a bad case of the “what if’s” myself. What if I wrote a book? What if I took this class? What if I pursue my passion? What if it doesn’t work? We all do it. It’s human nature. We talk to our friends, annoy our co-workers, and wear-out our families! Talking about something isn’t getting us any closer to the finish line than we already are. In fact, talking about it keeps us stuck.
What keeps us talking? FEAR. In The Aladdin Factor, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen remind us, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” This is otherwise referred to as the definition of insanity. They also refer to the wise words of Stan Dale, “Comfort zones are plush lined coffins. When you stay in your plush lined coffins, you die.” Let’s stop the chitchat, step out of our cushy coffins and get busy living.
Dream vs. Do
“So you say I’m a dreamer. Well I’m not the only one.” John Lennon was a dreamer, but he also understood that living our dreams requires action. Honestly, if you can dream it, you can do it. But dreaming alone can find us in Fantasy Land. We sit and spin the story in our minds. We envision living a life of grand proportions. Waking up each day and stepping into the “perfect life”. There is no perfect (I’m a recovering perfectionista too, so I speak from experience), only an original screenplay written and directed and starring our im-perfect selves. The beauty of dreams is that we CAN manifest the things we see in our minds eye. We just need to get over the “Yeah, but how?”
In Good to Great, Jim Collins shares, “We’ve allowed the way transitions look from the outside to drive our perception of what they must feel like to those going through them on the inside. From the outside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the inside, they feel completely different, more like an organic development process.” Let’s stop freaking ourselves out with negative self-talk and “how could I?” scenarios. Change does require action – but it’s not our job to know exactly how we’ll get from A-Z. Set your intention on the goal and trust that the Universe wants you to have everything your heart desires and then some. Don’t worry about the details - just set the wheels in motion.
Do vs. BE
Multi-tasking has become the norm. We get so caught up in the doing of everyday life. We get up, rush to eat, fly out the door, get to office, more multi-tasking ensues, race home, whip up or pick up some food - if we eat at all, spend some quality time with a friend, spouse, partner, kids, the TV, or the Internet and then hit the hay…beat down!
Doesn’t sounds like the secret to success, huh? Let’s flip that switch. We’re human BEING’s not human DOING’s. How might we re-frame our lives to start BEING the unique, and creative individuals we were designed to be? First, we must SLOW down. I know…crazy talk, right? You’re saying…how can I slow down? I’ve got too much on my plate as it is. Well you really CAN’T do it all. So clean up your stuff, commit to what you really want and take the required baby steps to get there.
Grab a notebook and start asking questions. What three things would I like to incorporate into my day that I am not doing right now? What three things could I eliminate in order to do those other things? What do I really want my days to look like?
What would you do with 30 more minutes a day just for you? What if you got up just 30 minutes earlier? If you’ve got kids and a spouse, let them know that you are off limits. Would you read? Journal? Work out? Meditate? Have a conversation with God? Take a walk? Have coffee outside and listen to the sounds of a new day dawning?
I understand we’re not all morning people. But are those extra 30 minutes you’re hitting the snooze button, quality sleep anyway? Let’s stop complaining that there aren’t enough hours in the day and re-arrange the 24 we’ve already got. If living your life your way requires getting up 30 minutes earlier, wouldn’t it be worth it? How could it NOT be? Be’ers become who they are intended to be. Do’ers die with overflowing in-boxes. Each and every day we have a choice. Which path do you choose? (Yes, sometimes I choose to snooze, but more often than not, I choose to nurture myself).
Imperfect Perfection
According to Deepak Chopra in, The Book of Secrets, “There is no limit to how far your influence can reach, but to find that out you must engage life with passion. When you do anything with passion, you express every aspect of who you are. Passion releases all the energy you posses. At that moment you put yourself on the line, for if you throw everything you have into a pursuit, weaknesses are also exposed. Passion brings up everything.
This inescapable fact discourages many people, who dislike the negative parts of themselves so much, or are so intimidated by them, that they hold their passion in check in the belief that life will be made safer. Perhaps it will, but at the same time they are greatly limiting their understanding of what life can bring.” “The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it from understanding what it needs to know.”
Wow! Have you ever experienced feeling like that? I have. I was a mess as I was about to launch my website. I was worried about being judged and over-exposed. That people would see all of me. The dark and the light. The good, the bad and the indifferent. The highs and the lows. Me at my finest, as well as, imperfect. I have reached a new level of understanding regarding perfection. I now know that we are ALL whole, complete and perfect AS IS. Right now. It doesn’t get any better than this, only different. I appreciate the ebb and flow of my moods more and don’t freak out when I’m feeling funky (OK, I still freak a little, but I’m working on reveling in my funkiness).
My clients have found greater success when they allow themselves to be whole and not just good. One of my clients recently got over her “good girl” complex, and her world just opened up! Try watching babies. They’ve got this down to a science. One minute they are peaches and cream and the next oil and vinegar. Are they any less beautiful when they are crying than when they are laughing? No. Simply different. Go ahead, revel in your imperfect perfection, it’s your birthright.
Karma-chameleon
Taking action requires being flexible. You might set out to move forward in one way and then events fall into place and opportunities knock on doors you didn’t even know existed. Be flexible and open to the synchronicities that play out in your life. If you open up your heart and ask the Universe to help guide you to your higher purpose, or your desired goal, you have to be open to the way these opportunities will arrive. Don’t be so fixated on “It has to look like this”, or “It needs to play out like that”.
Synchronicity is the Universal communication system. Example, yesterday I was in a colleague’s office and noticed the book, Good to Great on his desk. I commented that I’d heard about this book in an article I’d read recently. Picked the book up, gleaned it over and went back about my business. 10 minutes later, I received an e-mail from a friend with this book listed as a great resource. Hmmm, let’s count…that’s three times that book came into my awareness in about a 3-day window. I decided the universe was trying to tell me something. That book had a message for me and it was time to investigate.
I’m still reading it, but I gained a valuable and relevant quote to share with you all. Maybe that’s all I was supposed to get out of it. I’m not sure. Either way, I got the tap on my shoulder and interpreted it as, “Hey Kam. Time to pick up this book”. Had I been completely fixated on the copy I’d written prior to finding that book, this article might not have had as big of an impact. Moral to the story, stay flexible and chameleon-like. You never know when intuition will ask you to make a right instead of a left. That voice could save you from a traffic accident and it could also get you to where you need to be easier and more efficiently than you could on your own.
Jump
“There’s only so much you can learn in one place. The more that you wait. The more time that you waste.” Ahhh, that controversial genius Madonna. She is the perfect example of being chameleon-like. If she’d gotten stuck in the same sound, same look, same accent, she never would have had the successful career that’s spanned decades.
Ask yourself what you’re willing to do to move forward. Are you willing to jump? What would it take for you to courageously leap forward? What action is necessary for you to live life by design instead of by default? To live out loud and passionately and on purpose? To BE present and trust that from moment to moment you’ll get “there”. As Peter N. Zarlenga said, “Action conquers fear.” What are you waiting for? Get busy!
Kammie Kobyleski has been having coaching conversations her whole life. After working in corporate communications, marketing, training & development, and higher education, Kammie made the shift into life & career coaching and consulting. Her life’s mission is helping people fall in love with life. The integration of mind, body, spirit and personal empowerment are Kammie’s passionate focus. For free resources, articles and information visit http://www.passionmeetspurpose.com or for a complimentary 30 minute call, e-mail kammie@passionmeetspurpose.com
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