Don’t Be the Green Ford

There’s a six-letter word that is the single most important factor in whether or not you’ll accomplish your goals and live the life of your dreams. It is so powerful it will even make up for poor or incomplete goal planning. In fact, without this factor, you can have the greatest plan in the world, and you’d still fail. The word is action.

Hugely successful people, the kind that seemingly go from mediocre to millions almost overnight, know that the major key to their success was taking action - massive action. Napoleon Hill told us in Think and Grow Rich that when success comes, it comes so fast and is such abundance that we wonder where it’s been all along, and that secret is simple… It’s been waiting on massive action. 

Recently, I was to meet a friend (Mick) at our favorite coffee bar. Since it was a sunny Saturday and the coffee shop isn’t far from my home, I walked. Besides, I reasoned the calories burned from the round-trip walk would cancel out the fat content of my latte (wink, wink).

Mick shared this insight from his drive across town to meet me:

He had stopped behind a green Ford Explorer waiting at a corner to turn right.  There was traffic coming, but in Mick’s opinion, the distance was more than sufficient for the green Explorer to safely make it into the flow of traffic. However, the driver of the green Ford hesitated, forcing him to come to a dead standstill and wait for another opportunity. The line of traffic was long, and they had to wait quite some time before another opening appeared. If only that driver hadn’t hesitated, he would have easily been in the flow of traffic, driven further farther faster, and likely would have gotten to his destination a lot sooner. 

Sounds a lot like life, eh?  How often have you been given an opportunity to easily enter the flow of life that would have gotten you to your desired outcome sooner?  Instead of ‘going for it’, you hesitated, waiting for a better opportunity, a clearer path, a time when it would just ‘feel better’ and the timing would be ‘just right’, and ended up coming to a complete standstill. 

Not only did you blow a great opportunity for yourself, but you probably ended up holding others back as well, like the driver of the green Ford did to Mick. Starting again from a standstill requires more fuel to accelerate… more effort to start again than if you had kept the momentum and merged into the flow.

The next time you’re tempted to ‘wait for better timing, remember the right time is always right now. Follow Mr. Hill’s advice and take action – immediate and massive action.

Don’t be the green Ford!