Idea Action = Growth

By Kate Steinbacher

“Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.” -- Arnold H. Glasgow

What causes the lack of action?

Often it is because we share our ideas with “Nay Sayers.” You know who they are in your life… “You could never pull that off!” and sometimes we are the negative ones… “I do not have every single qualification for that opened position, so I cannot apply.” Sometimes it is about fear of rejection, or even just plain fear, if I don’t stick my neck out: I can’t get hurt, I won’t fail, I won’t be judged, etc. The truth is, lack of action or follow through can keep us from realizing a more fulfilled life and or career. What other stories do we tell ourselves? “I don’t have time.” is always a good one. And yet, we occupy our precious brain cells with these ideas. We occupy our precious time with so much of the unproductive.

Getting started on the path of: Idea Action = Growth

The first step is to sort through the many ideas we may come up with. Our brains are programmed to think. Our hearts, integrity, morality and experiences help us evaluate and shed light on what might be possible. If I can think it, my hearts feels good about it, my integrity is in alignment with it, my moral and spiritual teaching and self is in agreement, then it is probably something to take another action towards. If the idea is not worthy, we can let it go, and make space in our brain for new and better ideas. Once we discover what is a worthy idea, we can create an action plan to follow through.

The second step is to create an action plan with as many steps as we currently understand are required and commit to accomplish the first one. The plan may begin simply, with more research to discover any other lurking pitfalls we did not at first look, realize.

The third step includes continual evaluation of the results of each step taken towards the idea. In my mind, it is important that we continually evaluate and test our results against our requirements, as each new step we take, could potentially uncover a serious flaw. It is also important to test the idea against what we thought we would gain by it: is that still true and is that still what we want. I have worked with many a client that got caught up in the process only to discover, down the road, they really no longer wanted the intended result.

Coach’s Challenge: How many ideas are just taking up your brain cells? Will you ever know what you are truly capable of, or how far you may be able to go until you put some of those ideas into action? If nothing else… if you evaluate them and discover they are not right for you, you can let them go, you will free up brain cells to create new concepts.