just do it | The Caleb Barney Collection

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do

Actions mean more than words. You can say you’re going to do x, y, and z, but if you don’t follow through, your words ring hollow. You begin to lose credibility with your peers. Maybe you have great intentions to actually do what you say, but in the end, what people remember is if you actually did the deed. So whether it is a personal goal of yours (I’m going to work out 5+ days/week), a professional goal (I’m going to call 5+ connections per day), or even relationally (telling your friends you’ll meet them out and then not showing up), if you say you’ll do something and don’t do it, people will eventually stop believing you.

Ultimately, you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. What is holding you back? Today, and each day moving forward, make a commitment to follow through on what you say AND to do the things to be the person you want to become.

On trying new things…

If there is something that you heard about, but don’t know what it is, look it up.

If there is a vegetable that you’ve seen but never tried, buy it and look up a recipe on how to cook it.

If a friend asks you to go to some new place/event and you’ve never experienced anything like it before, go for it.

Do not be afraid of trying new things. Most of the time, the economic cost is minimal. But to live a life to the fullest by experiencing as much of what it has to offer as possible? That’s invaluable.

Worry, fear, and anxiety

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.

“Worry won’t get you to where you want to go. Action is the only way…”

To me, the only potential benefit to worrying is that it might help you think of ways that things might go sideways, allowing you to plan your next move ahead of it. But if you just get good at thinking of all the angles ahead of time, putting a contingency plan in place, and then still take action, you’ll be better off.

Where people get in trouble is when they let their worries, fears, and anxiety take over. When they overthink a situation, it’s almost like they’re in quicksand and can’t move. But if they realize that many of their worries will never actually come to fruition, they’ll be better off.

Another way to think about fear is this…what do I really fear about this situation? In a worst case scenario, what is going to happen? Maybe someone will tell you no or you’ll be embarrassed. Well, get used to it. All successful people have been told “no” a lot in their lives. All successful people have had to take a chance (and often fail) to get to where they are.

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It will give you something to do (there’s always something we can be worried about), but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Getting started

You don’t have to know it all to get started, you just need to know what the next step is. If you wait until you have all of the information or until you know exactly how things will play out, you will be waiting forever. There is risk and uncertainty in everything we do in life. There is even risk and not taking action.

Determine where you are currently and where you think you want to be in the future. Once you have an end result in mind, then reverse engineer the next steps to get there. You don’t have to have everything planned out to a “T” to get started. Have a general guideline or a framework on how do you think it should look and what you need to do to get started. I guarantee that how do you think it looks and how it will eventually end up working is going to be at least a little different. But if you don’t do anything, if you wait for all the answers to come to you, if you wait for certainty, you’re going to miss your opportunity.

It will only get better if you make it better

“It” can always be better. “It” can always be improved. But it won’t magically improve…it only gets better if you make it better. The world isn’t out to get you, but it’s not out there trying to make your dreams come true either. If you want your dreams to come true, you need to do something about it. Ask yourself, first, what are the most important goals in my life (short-term and long-term). Then figure out where you need to be and what you need to get done within the next 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, 90 days, 7 days, and by the end of the day. Take an action step. What do you want? How will you get there? Go out and “do.” Because without doing, you’ll be at the same place tomorrow as you were today. And then 30 years will pass in the blink of an eye and you’ll have achieved nothing of great meaning (or, at the very least, achieved very little in comparison to if you had a goal and an action plan to achieve that goal in place).