Taking Action 101 | EP 93

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. We're here to challenge fear and shatter doubt. Let's dive in what is up everybody. Welcome back to Never Stop Building. I'm your host, sam Kauffman, always excited, pumped, grateful to be here with you Today. We're going to talk about taking action and we're going to be real, real swift and to the point.

Speaker 1: 0:28

In this episode, I'm going to break down a couple of ways that you guys can take action a lot faster, because speed wins, you know. And I want to say a couple of little cliche things as I start this out, the first one being, you know, winners pay attention to winning and losers pay attention to winners, and a lot of people spend more time comparing themselves to winners, or people that they assume and deem as winners, than they do actually taking action in their own lives. And the only people comparing themselves to winners instead of focusing on winning are fucking losers. And I don't mean to be blunt and cuss and I, you know, I always say that like I don't mean to, but I do actually mean to be blunt, the cussing I'm trying to work on a little bit for my I guess you know, for whatever reason, but I do mean to be blunt Winners focus on winning and losers focus on winners. I heard that recently. I think it was like an Alex R Mosey podcast or something, but it just like hit me like a ton of bricks that burned into my brain. You know, and the other. The other cliche thing I want to say as we get into this is the only step in your plan that is action taking is the action itself. I'm going to repeat that the only step in your plan that is action taking is the action itself. So I want to clarify what is taking action by definition. By definition, taking action is performing the act period and so if I want to, I'm going to.

Speaker 1: 2:04

If I want to hit the gym, the only action in the goal of going to get in a workout is the workout. It is not researching different workouts. It is not preparing for the workout. It is not laying out the gym clothes the night before. It is not buying protein powder to drink before the workout. It is not researching which vitamins and supplements to take after the workout. It is not taking a green supplement every morning. That's not the workout, the only step in the plan of working out. That is action taking is the workout. Everything around it is not taking action on the goal, on the thing that you want to do. That may be preparing you. It may be helping you feel more comfortable. It may be giving you a leg up in your calendar for some time management. It may give you some resources or some confidence that you need or some motivation that you're looking for to take the action. But make no mistake, it's not the action. You haven't taken action.

Speaker 1: 3:11

I talk to people a lot in their business like posting on social media, for example, planning the post, writing the post, scheduling the post, looking up what time to post, finding the perfect photo to post, hiring a videographer to create the content to make. The none of that is the actual action of posting on social media. The only thing that is the actual action is actually clicking post. That's it. If the post hasn't gone up, you haven't done anything inside of taking action to actually hit the goal that you set for yourself. Remember the preparing phase, the planning phase, the research phase. These are not the action taking phases and 99% of the time for a lot of what people struggle to do, they don't need any more research, planning, scheduling and preparedness. Unless you don't know how to use Facebook, you're fully prepared and plan to make that post. Unless you don't know where your gym is or don't have a gym membership, unless you've never worked out, ie gone on a jog or a brisk walk or a home workout. If you've never done that, maybe you need to do more planning and preparing just to get yourself. But if you've done that even once, you don't need anything else other than to show up, and what a lot of people do is this is.

Speaker 1: 4:44

The first thing to understand is that everything other than taking action is not taking action. It doesn't matter how good it makes you feel and this is the trap that people fall under is they do so much thinking and visualizing and preparing and planning and scheduling and note-taking and jotting and this and this and this that they feel like they've done something they have not. You have not. You have not taken action on the goal period. You will only feel better and feel closer for a short period of time until one day you realize, or it has pointed out to you, you have not done shit. That's the truth and it is hard to hear, and I'm sorry that it's hard to hear, but I'm not sorry to be the one to tell you, because somebody has to tell you the truth. Once you understand that, you can understand the second point here. And the second point in this entire thing is stop comparing the action you need to take to the action that somebody who's been doing it for years is taking now. Stop comparing your first step to somebody's 150th step or third step or fifth step or 12th step.

Speaker 1: 5:59

If you're on your first or second step and you are comparing yourself to people who are on their 10th, 20th, 50th, 100th, 1,000th step, you've set yourself up for complete, total failure in your head. Remember winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. So if you're focusing on the winners in the thing that you wanna take action on instead of focusing on the action in the thing you wanna take action on, you're acting like a complete loser. That's the truth. I am proud to be the one to tell you the truth. Winners focus on winning.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Winning is in the action, the daily consistent effort over a long period of time. If you're focused on anything other than the daily consistent action and I say the word action, not the daily consistent planning, not the daily consistent writing about it not the daily consistent talking to somebody about it, the daily consistent action over a long period of time. If you're focused on anything other than that, you are not focused on winning you're losing. And again, if you are comparing your first, second, third, fourth step to somebody's 40th, 50th, 60th step, you are comparing yourself to a winner and acting like a loser. It is incredibly important to stop doing that. You have to look at your next step. If you're at zero, your next step is one, and all you have to nail is taking action on the first step. Stop expecting 25th step results on step one and just be okay with doing step one, because the very winners that you are looking at that are on step 300, 600,. They're 3000 days into something that's almost a decade, by the way, those people also took step one.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Nobody and this is the third point nobody, nobody skips the first step, doesn't matter how successful they are, it doesn't matter how rich they are, it doesn't matter how great they are, it doesn't matter how talented they are, it doesn't matter how natural the gift came. Nobody skips the first step. And so if you are trying still to figure out how to skip the first step because that's the truth, right. That's what a lot of you are doing. When you sit there and you schedule and plan and prepare, all we are trying to do is figure out how to take a shortcut to the result. There's no shortcut to the result. There's no shortcut to the result.

Speaker 1: 8:49

And what our brains do is we lock in. So if we talk about health and fitness, we immediately think about the genetic freaks, the people who absolutely shortcut to the result because they were just made that way. If it's social media, we think about the people who went viral on their ninth post. If it's business, we think about the people who just skyrocketed to public offers and investors and eight, nine and 10 figure business valuations. All of a sudden, your brain takes you to the anomalies. It compares you to the four people on planet earth who actually did get incredibly lucky or create something incredibly world changing or have a body that is incredibly genetically gifted, and then you don't even take your first step because you're trying to figure out how to do what they did instead of just trying to figure out how to do what you're supposed to do right now, and you'll spend five, 10, 15 years trying to figure out how to skip step one and at the end of that road of trying to find the shortcut, you would have been 10X, where you even thought you could have been.

Speaker 1: 9:59

So many people waste a lot of their action time thinking about how to not have to take as much action, which I hate to break it to you is actually more exhausting, more depressing, more defeating, and it sets you up for a much higher probability of failure than just taking the action. If you watch any long-term successful person in an interview and I mean long-term, I don't mean the last five years, I'm talking people in their 50s, 60s and 70s they all say the same thing. What's the guarantee of success? Just don't quit. People just quit, and there's two kinds of quitters. There's the start and quit and there's the never start, and those people quit on themselves before they even get into the work.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Then you've got the people who quit once they start the work because they realize that the work is always harder than we think it's gonna be. The pain is greater than we hope. Winning sucks, winning's hard. Winning doesn't feel good. If you're not willing to get your jersey dirty, you're not winning a championship. Championship ring winners do not walk off the field clean. They walk off dirty, broken, injured.

Speaker 1: 11:16

That's just the truth and for some of you that's really why you haven't started, because some of you probably know people who've been through it. Some of you are probably friends with some people who have done some shit, who aren't currently doing some shit, and you've seen the pain and the stress and the sleeplessness and the gray hair and the weight gain and the fear. But you've watched them, not quit, but you've watched and said, man, I don't know if I can do that, but you wanna be like them and you wanna have what they have and you wanna be around the people. They're around and have the opportunity that they have and the attitude that they have and the confidence that they have. But you're not willing to do what they did. You're not willing to be who they are. You're not willing to show up like they show up. You're not willing to put everything on the line, not some, not a piece, not a comfortable risk. You're not willing to put it all on the line.

Speaker 1: 12:15

And for some of you, putting it all on the line right now just means action on the first step and you're so afraid that you'll take that first step and trick. And so the fuck, what if you do, you take that first step in trip. You're gonna fall forward, man. You're gonna fail forward. Right now you're just staying, still going backwards.

Speaker 1: 12:37

I would rather fall and fail forward a million times and bump and scrape my knees and elbows and wrists and get back up and dust myself off than keep falling backwards At least forward. I know it's in front of me. If I keep falling backwards, man, I don't know what I'm gonna bump my head on. But I'm not fucking with that. I'm not going there. That's where I came from.

Speaker 1: 13:01

I know what's back there, but there's a whole mess of demons down that road that, like, I don't even remember. I don't want to meet again. There's a whole mess of demons behind me. I don't want to meet again. And so I will fail forward every day for the rest of my life before I allow myself to trip and fall backwards and ever risk being that man again, meeting those demons again, being friends with those people again, hating myself to that level again. And all of this starts with taking action on the very first, next step in your life. So remember, hey, winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. And the only real action is doing the thing, not preparing for the thing, not planning for the thing, not scheduling the thing, not thinking about the thing, not Googling how to do the thing at the right time. It's just doing the thing. If you can lock in on those two main principles right there and then take action, you will be much further than you are right now. I'll see you guys next time.