Action

Christine Kane led me to a new blog today. Christine's blog is one that I make sure to check on a regular basis. Today she led me to Anna Farmery's blog The Engaging Brand. As I explored some of her posts, I found this one that struck a chord, Steps to Achieve the IMpossible.

Anna outlined the steps you need to follow once you have a goal, or an idea. The kind of goal or idea that everyone will say is impossible. One of the things I noticed when I began work after college was how often I would hear, "It won't work." "We've tried it before." Or similar versions of those same ideas. Nothing was more demoralizing to hear. It teaches you to keep your ideas to yourself. But if I had Anna's advice, perhaps I would have made more progress.

Her first step is to make the idea concrete and public. Next is selling the idea to those who will influence the outcome. It seems that this is where most people lose steam. If they are successful in selling others on the idea, they may not know how to proceed or have the resources to do it. For years that was where I ran into trouble. This is where Anna's brilliant solutions come into play.

"Step 3 - Once you have people on board create dialogue, allow freedom of
ideas, remove all boundaries and get people to think if money was no problem,
resource was no problem, time was no problem, politics were no problem.....how
could you achieve it.

"Step 4 - Do it and do it quickly....so you can spend a greater amount of time on celebration and feeling proud of achieving the impossible."

I love this point of view she creates here. Remove all boundaries. Think as if..... We know the list of endless reasons why the impossible is impossible. We don't have the time, the money, the labor, it will never fly. We know them. We have lived them. But what does Anna do? She pops those bubbles with this simple, but perhaps not so obvious idea. Have people look at your idea with those obstacles set to the side for now. Brainstorm as if those things did not matter. What would you, or could you do then?

Can you imagine how differently the conversation might proceed this way. Can you imagine how much easier it might be to generate ideas, all kinds of creative, clever and innovative ideas this way?

But the step I love is Step 4. This is where so many of us make the possible into the impossible. Taking action. That is it. We know what we want to do. We know how to go about it even. But we just don't do it. We don't put one foot in front of the other, as I am fond of saying. That is all it takes. Movement. Action. I love how she instructs to take action quickly. That hesitation is the killer. Things move to the back of our consciousness and we no longer have the same energy or enthusiasm to pursue the idea. Now the idea that was possible has been proven impossible....simply by our inaction.

I am glad I happened upon Anna's advice. It is something I will try to live in my own life. I hope it helped you see the world a little differently too.