Consumption can keep you stuck.
Reading self-help books, taking courses, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, and watching videos. These activities get you closer to your goal, right? Well, it depends. What are you doing to apply that new information? Taking notes and learning aren't enough to move the needle. The illusion of progress by consumption is a trap. I know it well. You feel like you're changing and growing, and in some ways you are. You might be thinking new thoughts and learning new concepts, but look at your results. What's different? Are you still making the same amount of money? Are you following your calendar? Are you pitching yourself to potential clients?
If you're spending all of your time consuming, you aren't moving forward. Period. I like to call it consumption purgatory. You're in charge of whether or not you move out of purgatory. What moves you out of purgatory? Action. A good starting ratio is: for every minute you spend consuming, you spend a minute taking action.
Other kinds of consumption are: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Netflix, Housewives, and reading news articles, to name a few. Before you go kicking yourself for doing these things or getting defensive - there's nothing wrong with doing these activities! There are no bad activities. In relation to reaching your goals, consumption is consumption. It doesn't matter if you're spending all your time taking courses or watching The Bachelor - if you're not also taking action, you're just consuming. And consuming doesn't move you forward.
If you have goals you're trying to reach, the first step is to gain awareness about how often you're in consumption and how often you're in action. Action can look like: pitching, writing, making offers, writing blog posts, practicing your craft, trying activities that are outside your comfort zone, meeting new people and telling them you're a photographer or life coach or a writer (these are the first two steps to making money as an entrepreneur!).
You might have heard that success is built on a pile of failures. Staying in consumption is simply refusing to fail. And if you're not failing, you're not reaching your goals. You can't get to success without failure. It's impossible. If you could already do the thing you're going after, you'd already be doing it! You're going to be bad at first. You're going to make mistakes. You might even make public mistakes! So what? It's the only way. You can't stay safe and also reach your big goals. And, P.S. it's up to you how you treat yourself after the "fail" AND it's up to you to decide that anything is a failure! Failure is just a thought. You can choose to beat yourself up and make it mean you'll never get there. OR you can be nice to yourself and decide that you've just learned one more way that doesn't get you to your goal. Which one do you think keeps you taking action? And which one makes you want to hide and never try again? It's all up to you what you make it mean. You might as well be nice to yourself and keep moving forward. Shutting down and staying where you are certainly won't get you to your goal. Taking more imperfect action will.
Failure, not consumption, is the best teacher - especially big failure. It'll get you to your dreams and goals faster than anything else. So get out there and fail.
If you want to learn more about taking action towards your goals, schedule a consult! We'll talk about where you are now, where you want to be in the future and how to get you there. Let's go!