“Waiting on the world to change” -John Mayer

This is post #22 In my quest for 30 in 30.

One of the standards that I’ve set for myself is to always be a man of action. I spent a great many years waiting for good things to come my way instead of going out after them. Realizing that the time I spent waiting I could have spent living helped me to stop sitting on my hands and to get up on my feet.

From waiting for the “right time” to waiting to be sure we’re on the right path there are hundreds of excuses one can give to not take action. The problem is that they are usually just that. Excuses.

Our lives ae made up of a series of actions. From the moment we’re born to the moment we die, we are taking some form of action. Even when we sleep our bodies and minds are active. Yet actually taking intentional action is such a hard path for so many if us to follow. The reality is that it all comes down to fear.

As in so many other areas in our lives, fear had an incredibly powerful ability to control us. Given enough power we can literally live our entire lives afraid to take action because we’re afraid of the possible outcomes. Maybe we’re afraid that we’ll fail or maybe, in some cases, we’re afraid that we’ll actually succeed (see my posts on failure and success). Whatever the case may be, the fear that we allow in our lives keeps us from taking action and so we wait. We wait for conditions to be perfect, (which they never will be), we wait for just the right time (which doesn’t exist) or we wait just because we think something better may come along. The amount of time we spend waiting, for whatever reason, is time lost from our lives.

What would be the worst thing that could happen if you were to take some form of action? Is it that things might not work out exactly as you planned? Well, it should be no surprise by now that rarely does anything workout entirely as planned. There’s just simply no way for any of us to account for every possible factor in a situation. There are so many scenarios as to what can happen at a single moment that nothing in life can really be fully planned.
As far as the idea if something better goes, no reward at some future date can make up for the time lost waiting. The odds if anything great coming to your life simply by chance are rather insurmountable. True we hear stories every day about the poor sap who spent his last dollar on a lottery ticket only to win millions or the couple that finds each other in their 70′s having waited their whole lives to find one another. Yes, stories like that do happen. Luck happens. But what are you willing to sacrifice in order to wait for some sort of luck to hopefully come in at some point and save you? The truth is you’re sacrificing living and hoping for luck.

Taking action puts you back in the drivers seat of your life. Waiting for something to happen will just leave you sitting in other peoples dust. Don’t be content to keep waiting. Nothing can go wrong if you just keep moving.

I shall leave you today with a bit of prose. This is one if my favorite pieces to get my ass back in gear if I find my self waiting to long to make a move. Enjoy it and then take action.

“On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died”. -Adlai E. Stevenson

Thanks for being here. Talk to you tomorrow.
-JB
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Today’s music: Waiting On The World To Change
By: John Mayer
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