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Day 12. Sunday, September 12, 2021. Today we’re talking about creating!
Specifically, I’m talking about you creating your own ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and courses of action rather than relying on experts, thought leaders, authors, or even podcasters. 😉
Research has shown the powerful impact teaching or coaching can have on the person doing the teaching or coaching. We think if we insert our wisdom on a person trying to transform will help, but the opposite is true. Instead, when we ask a person attempting to change to tell us how they’d go about helping somebody trying to make the same one they’re working on…they engage and it can help them more figure out their own path.
That speaks to the power of creating versus consuming. Creating is more positive action. Consuming tends to be much more passive. That’s why the books, articles, podcasts, videos, seminars, and conferences rarely make much of a difference in helping us improve.
Knowing isn’t doing.
Knowledge isn’t to be discounted, but doing accelerates knowledge enabling us to better figure things out. Labs all over the world are failing at an incredibly high rate, but that failure is vital in the pursuit to solve whatever problem each lab is tackling.
Examine what you already know about whatever it is you want to improve. An easy example is weight loss because so many of us can relate to it. Is a lack of knowledge the issue? You’d think so based on the number of books and articles written about it. All of us understand we should eat a more healthy balanced diet with a modest amount of daily caloric intake. And we know we should exercise daily, even if it’s walking for just 30 minutes. The benefits of drinking water are well-established and rather common knowledge. Those last 3 sentences represent knowledge we all have about weight loss. There are thousands of little details – or big ones – that aren’t included in that, but are any of them likely to be the one missing piece of knowledge to spark us to take action? Not likely.
The real problem isn’t knowing. It’s doing. Specifically, it’s doing what we already know to do.
Get busy creating. Reduce, if only temporarily, your consumption. Wean yourself from the habit of passively taking in information thinking it’s the path forward. Picture a lab full of scientists who daily pour over white papers from all over the globe. They never test anything. No experiments are crafted and performed. No failures happen. No success either.
Success will not happen as long as we’re neglecting to do what we already know to do. It feels better to learn – conning ourselves that we’re doing something – and avoid risking failure. Not doing something doesn’t feel like failure. We fool ourselves into feeling, “Just not yet.” We’re going to do it, but we’re putting in the time to prepare. After all, preparation is a big part of success, right? We don’t want to go off half-cocked. This is why I said that consumption’s biggest negative is it fuels our procrastination. It keeps us from actually doing something – creating.
What is your very next step – the action you’ll take? And I don’t mean research, reading, listening, or watching.
I don’t remember a client ever failing to be able to answer that question. We may not know step 5, but we always know step 1. The very next step is more often than not obvious to us. So the question becomes, why don’t we do what we already know to do?
Well, it could be lots of different things, but fear is the likely culprit. Oh, I know. You’re not afraid of anything. But you’re deceiving yourself. We’re all afraid of something. Some of us are afraid of lots of things. The two most common ones I’ve found are looking foolish or stupid (insert any fear that has to do with how we appear to others) and failure (“what if it doesn’t work?”).
Would you agree that much of what ails us is our refusal to close that gap between what we already know and what we’re already doing? Stop and think about that in your life. You’re not taking any action with the knowledge you already have. What makes you think adding more knowledge on top of your existing knowledge will change that? Storing up knowledge is useless except in games of trivia.
Creating is taking the very next step. Do that one thing you already know to do. See how it works out. Adjust. Adapt. Get busy figuring it out. And know that figuring it out isn’t just a cerebral activity. It’s physical, too. Move. Do something. Create.
When I was young I aspired to be a writer. Not seriously, but it was a dream. I was quickly taught the truth about writing. Writers write.
Subjects (nouns) have verbs. I rightly concluded that if writers write then singers sing, musicians play, speakers speak, coaches coach, podcasters podcast and on and on. The people who are achieving are doing. They’re not just reading. They’re not just consuming. They’re not just learning. Mostly, they’re doing and in that doing – they’re creators who are making the biggest differences.
Lastly, when it comes to figuring out who you most want to be, creating is key. You’re writing the story of your own life. Nobody else can write your story. That doesn’t mean they won’t try, but you must wrestle the pen or keyboard from anybody who would dare live your life for you. You have to be responsible.
Starting tomorrow we’ll peel back how you can at long last get on the path to accepting the challenge to transform your life to what YOU want. Warning: it’s not magical. Or easy. It’s not complex, but it’s difficult. But you can do it. We all can.
Will YOU?
Let’s find out.
Be well. Do good. Grow great!
About the hosts: Randy Cantrell brings over 4 decades of experience as a business leader and organization builder. Lisa Norris brings almost 3 decades of experience in HR and all things "people." Their shared passion for leadership and developing high-performing cultures provoked them to focus the Grow Great podcast on city government leadership.
The work is about achieving unprecedented success through accelerated learning in helping leaders and executives "figure it out."