“You will get results only if you take action.” If they gave me one euro for every time I repeat this quote, my retirement date would be soon. The point is that taking action once is not enough.
Let me explain it. When you fully think in who you are, where you want to go and what and why you want to achieve the results that are important to you, we enter a panorama in which, if we want to reach the goal, you will need to include in your usual and well-known repertoire of behaviors many new actions.
These new actions are characterized by the fact that almost all of them:
- They shake our ego in some way (and here your most sophisticated versions of fear and excuses will take on a life of their own).
- We have never done them.
- Not everyone does them. And we have been educated not to stand out much.
- Not all serve the same or to the same extent to everyone.
- They require effort.
As in the rest of the important things in life, do not expect magical results or infallible formulas and in just 10 simple steps because the rebound effect will leave you even further from your goal than before you started.
The reality is that both you and I feel infinitely more comfortable when we do what we always do. And this is our drama. When our brain allows us to put ourselves on autopilot and pull with the usual repertoire of behaviors. That’s where we flow. What happens is that, sometimes, we flow in directions that do not favor us (or destroy us in the most extreme cases) and that is where we see the need to change. And that is where we come face to face with the enormous difficulty that human beings must break out of their automatic behavior patterns.
TO BE ABLE TO FLOW IN DIRECTIONS THAT BENEFIT US, WE HAVE TO SUFFER.
None of the actions that you start for the first time related to your talent or your personal branding strategy is going to come out by itself and effortlessly the first few times.
Nothing is further from reality. Run away, far away, from whoever sells you this. You will feel very uncomfortable, very challenged, you will feel tremendous insecurity and you will want to leave everything.
That’s why people leave the gyms in February, they have such a hard time quitting smoking, and they keep doing the same old thing in their processes to search or improve their job/results.
So, when I am asked who gets results from your clients? Or perfectly applicable also to the people that you can observe yourself in your work, in your social networks, etc. Those that initiate new actions for them. New but not random actions. Those that are part of a strategy. That they have been previously analyzed as actions that lead to more successfully goals and that others (if they have already walked that path or know how to do it, much better) have confirmed that they can find a clearer path to their goals there .
But above all, those that are capable of converting that initial forced, thought-out, costly pattern into something much more fluid, integrated, standardized, until after a lot of effort, after overcoming a tremendous initial crossing of the desert… boom it becomes something has been automated. It costs less, it comes out more naturally, it improves the feedback they get from the rest and now… finally… they flow. But here’s a call, nothing flows until you’ve made a conscious effort to turn a new action into a more automated habit.
BUT HOW IS IT ACHIEVED?
By repetition. And again. Little ant, without decaying and little by little. Whoever stays there achieves it. And be careful, also who decides to choose from among all the possible actions that take him to his goal those that, from a starting point, are closer to his ability and potential.
Let me explain with an example: to make your value proposition known in digital media you have many options. For example, to write this article on this blog for a professional colleague, I must launch actions related to my writing skills.
Other of the most used options are those that require your competence to speak. So, they will tell you to record a video. Or stories. Or a Youtube channel. Whatever is. No, no and no. Start with those actions that are closest to your level of competition. For a very simple reason: it will cost you less effort (you will be closer to the famous flow) and you will have more gasoline (the feedback from others will come to you more frequently and will be of higher quality) When you have this well-established pattern of actions, you are already starting with the next.
What do many people do? Dance on reels. Because it takes, because it gives you more engagement, because “I don’t know”. Popular wisdom always applies, and I am convinced that you remember your mother telling you about… If a person jumps into the river, will you go after him?
Well, let’s use this saying to remember that there is always a contextual and genetic variable that we forget over and over again in our illusion that everything begins and ends in our navels, and the best action plans always appear after an exhaustive analysis of all the intervening variables.
Well, choose those new and strategic actions that benefit you the most, that are closest to those points where you feel most comfortable because you will have many more options to continue, to improve and, therefore, to make a difference.
For each one of these that you already have well established, you start to play, explore and learn in those others that you feel like integrating. You repeat, you ask for feedback, you stablish indicators and dates and if there is no result of any kind out there: stop! It really isn’t a lack of commitment to your plan, it’s a matter of efficiency. That you only have one life and above all, that you are not here to waste energy.
It’s hard, I know. That’s what “personal trainers” are for. Just to evaluate with you which are the actions that best suit you, to accompany you to start them, evaluate the feedback and continue building.
If you prefer to go alone, that’s fine too and that’s exactly the idea that prompted me to write in “Pon tu talento en acción”, Esic Editorial (2021). Reflect in writing everything we see in individual training so that you can analyze all the variables that are going to impact each of the phases that you have to go through to bring your talent to the world and that allows you to mark your adapted action plan to you.
Because we are very similar, but the only way to leave a mark is to know how to adapt all these generalities to your wonderful difference.
Where are you going to start?
Elena Arnaiz Ecker
Psychologist specialized in talent and professional development.
You can get Pon tu talento en acción in this link