Success is Acting What You Think

They say actions speak louder than words.  What about thoughts?

I don’t think we give enough credit to the thoughts that people have.  However, they aren’t maximized if you don’t act on them.  And we are about maximum impact here!

Winning the Visionary Game

I covered visioning in my book, Personal Finance in a Public World, Speaking of Impact Episode 64 with Michelle Gordon from Menopause Movement, E-Impact 50, and E-Impact 102.  I cannot misrepresent the importance of a big, clear, and executable vision.  I also can’t minimize the execution part.  

Every time I talk about visioning, I try to connect it to action.  A good vision must have a picture of how you are going to do something.  Without that, it’s more of a dream - a pipe dream if you will.

Don’t win the visionary game alone.

Good Actions

Not every piece of energy can be efficient.

I will admit there is a fine line between intentional action and misplaced energy.  

We’ve all had that “good intentioned moment” before.  Then, we had the, “Oh, I didn’t think of that”, moment too.

When I was about sixteen years old, my family and I took a trip to visit some family friends in New Jersey.  There were three of us and four of them.  I was the older kid and the other family’s kids were less than ten years old.  It was two brothers.  

I was never a babysitter.  I had enough trouble taking care of myself at that age.  I don’t think anyone thought I’d be a good candidate to take care of their children for a whole night.

Well, for one night, I had a chance.  Or, maybe it was an obligation. My parents and their friends were going out for a night and I was supposed to stay home and watch the kids.  

I was a pretty cool babysitter…a not-so-mature sixteen year old, good at video games, and willing to let them do just about anything.  The night was pretty uneventful until the kids were split up, ironically.  You’d think when they were together we might have some disagreements.  

I was such a fan of integrity that I caused an issue.  At one point, one of the brothers was using a toy of the others’ and I felt the need to make the owner of the toy aware.  He wasn’t too happy that his brother was using the toy, let alone doing so without asking for permission.

In hindsight, I should have let it go.  The “culprit” wasn’t doing anything to cause harm to the toy and the “owner” had no need to get upset and would have never known.  

I’m not an advocate of deception in the home but looking back I should’ve thought twice before acting.

Make sure you take good, well-thought actions.

Capitalizing

After you’ve had a good idea or vision, you evaluate the actions you can take.  Then, you do something.  This entry is all about this latter step.

I look at any step in the process of impact as a great opportunity.  Nothing is a burden.  Everything is a chance to take the next step.  You’re already making an impact.  Overnight successes are actually long processes of hard work.  We only celebrate what we can see. 

Part of capitalizing is the mindset.  The moment I started my business, Initiate Impact, I was capitalizing on a great idea and a lot of thought. 

You likely have some great ideas if you are reading this blog.  You want to make an impact so that puts you somewhere on the spectrum.

I recommend keeping a journal of ideas.  You probably don’t have the time to think deeply about every idea you come up with in the moment (or even in a week or month).  Keep those ideas and few related notes about each and the scenario you were in when you had the thought (this is key to bringing back the inspiration).  

Dedicate some time to reviewing the ideas.  I would start with a monthly session, but each person is in a different scenario.  If you have a time consuming project you are already working on, it might be a good idea to do it once a quarter, if you are more actively looking for something, try it once a week.

The key is that those ideas don’t “die” until you have the time to “kill” them.  Depending on your  penchant for ideation, you’ll have a different ratio of “kills” to “thrills”.  I have learned to be a bit of an assassin to my own list.  I have a lot of ideas - a few are good.  This means I’ve needed to learn how to quickly dispose of the bad ones.  Just about all get the chance for a “trial”.  In other words, they make it on the list and I can take some time to think about them.  But, they are disposed of pretty quickly once I have my time.  

The ideas that survive are where the real capitalizing happens.  They are each a chance to do something great.

One Shot

Cue “Lose Yourself” by Eminem.

A lot of great ideas have a small window for execution.  Note, this means they shouldn’t sit on your list for too long and you have to take your shot.  

Success is a pretty arduous process but I’d say the point of implementation is the pinnacle of an impactmakers adrenaline.  It’s where the preverbal rubber hits the road.  You can finally start to see something come to be.  

You should try to channel that energy.  It can be likened to the “plateau of latent potential” concept that I discuss in my book mentioned above.  Essentially, your well thought idea has a great chance for success but early stage progress may not be easily recognizable until a slightly more advanced level of progress is achieved.

Don’t let undetectable progress ruin your one shot.

The World Cup

One of the world’s most watched sporting events is the FIFA World Cup.  By the way, FIFA stands for, “Fédération Internationale de Football Association” or International Federation of Association Football.

The 2022 World Cup has been in Qatar.

I bring up this event because earlier today (December 3rd, 2022) I watched the United States lose to the Netherlands in the first game of the “knockout stage” or second round of the tournament.  It was a tough game if you’re a fan of the American side.  You might say they had “one shot” to move on and a great opportunity on which to capitalize.  Sadly, they didn’t capitalize on some shots during the game and it wasn’t meant to be.

This is a good example of something that takes a lot of hard work and has no guarantees of success.  The US were great underdogs from this point forward in the World Cup.  If athletics weren’t about competition and every team could “win”, they wouldn’t work.  I genuinely wouldn’t recommend taking action on an idea that has a significant likelihood of failure but I use this example as motivation.  

Assuming you’ve taken the time to think about your visions in detail, you don’t have to take action on the ones where you come out as a deep underdog.  In fact, you can stack the deck in your favor and be more like Brazil or France if we’re sticking with the World Cup example.

The Winner

Another great thing about the world of impact and generosity is that there isn’t only one winner.  Only one team will take home the trophy from Qatar.  The final is on December 18, 2022 if you’re interested.  

Success is not in action alone in the World Cup.  You might say the US had a successful trip because they advanced to the knockout stage but even as far-fetched winning the whole thing would have been, that’s really the only way to succeed.  

The work you do is different.  You can work on feeding local people and share success with someone feeding the hungry in their hometown.  You might also volunteer in an overseas mission and be successful.  Does the person who did a similar trip twice negate your success?

We can all win if we act on our best ideas.  

Rising Together

The final point that needs to be stressed in this entry is the concept of community.  Speaking of Impact episode 126 with Kasey Reiter was a great testimony to this topic.  Kasey is one of the founding partners of Rise Together Ventures.  They are a venture capital firm that seeds scaling startups’ impact dreams.  It’s a great concept in the world of investing. 

Kasey’s efforts make it into a second week of The Impactmaker Movement’s content because success in our world is found more easily in collaboration.  Two sports teams rarely have a chance to work together and find the ultimately success.  In our world, it could be argued that we cannot find the ultimate success without working together.  

With the idea of collaboration in mind, I recommend you make considering others’ needs and abilities part of your process.

When you are evaluating your ideas and especially when you’ve chosen those to act on, think about who you can work with.  

Who can help implement your idea?

Who can your idea help in their own implementation?

It’s kind of like making trade (or transfer in soccer terms) in the middle of the World Cup!

Could you imagine the US acquiring Lionel Messi for today’s game?  Ironically, he scored later in the day for Argentina.  Man, we could have used that goal!

I have no doubt you can go a long way with your own ideas and actions.  However, you can go a lot farther when you find the right people to mix those things with.

Always keep aware for collaboration in the impact space.  Success is acting what you think and sharing it at the same time.