Why Won’t You Do It?

Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2024

Unfortunately, understanding what you must do to enhance your capabilities, change your behaviors, or stop a bad habit is not enough. Knowledge by itself is never enough. You must be willing to take action on what you know. Otherwise, your knowledge has no real value.

Reflecting on your life and work, identifying your values and vision, and developing goals and action steps to achieve your goals may seem so simple. So, why don’t people do it? Is it that they don’t want it badly enough?

People who smoke go to the doctors, learn they have lung cancer, stop smoking for a while, and then return to smoking despite being warned that doing so could end their lives. Millions of people, including me, read articles and books on how to lose weight. Why, then, are so many people overweight? Myriad self-help books offer advice on following our dreams, improving our physical and mental well-being, etc. Why are people doing things contrary to their stated goals or best interests?

You cannot get better or achieve your goals just because you read a self-help book, attended a webiniar, listened to a podcast, or engaged a coach or mentor. It’s not difficult to understand what you need or should do. The challenge is that it is difficult to do it. You can’t achieve your desired outcomes until you perform the required work to make it happen.

Many respond only in their head. They do not put what they want to do in writing. By responding only in your head, you create an intention to do something, not to act on it. Like a New Year’s resolution, you proclaim specific goals and actions but never follow through. Your intentions alone will not yield results.

Often, we’ll make excuses such as, “I’m too busy to start today.” Or we’ll blame the circumstances we’re in or blame others for the challenges in our lives. The fact is, these are just excuses. The issue is not insufficient time; instead, it’s the lack of direction, clarity, focus, energy, and drive that allows the reordering of priorities and “frees” the necessary time to be successful. Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” Remember, excuses are a way to stop doing—not a way forward.

Some other factors are not practicing what you learned or were taught or not setting deadlines with intermediate milestones. People who don’t follow through often don’t develop a process that establishes accountability, such as informing trusted colleagues or advisors of their objectives and asking them to help them stay the course. Furthermore, if you have weak goals or the desired outcomes are not greater than your current situation, it is easy to give up at the first obstacle.

Accomplishing what you want out of life and work requires commitment and dedication. While someone close to you may encourage your efforts, the ball is in your court. Without mental toughness and self-discipline, you will constantly fight to stay in your comfort zone or extend beyond it. Therefore, you need to analyze and evaluate your self-discipline prowess.

To get motivated and energized:

1. Visualize the vision and the desired outcomes.
2. Imagine what success looks like with you in the picture being congratulated.
3. Recognize that with clarity of purpose and a plan to support proposed action, you are focused and have the energy to follow through.

You can only accomplish what you want from life and work if you start. So, step up to the plate and get into the action. After all, if you don’t swing at the ball, you’ll never hit a home run. Even if you fail to achieve your goal(s), you’ll be significantly better off than those sitting in the spectator stands.

Write on the calendar specific times dedicated to specific goals and hold these sacrosanct. Place pictures of specific milestones or desired outcomes in prominent places as constant reminders of where you’re going and why it is vital to reach your destination. Dedicate yourself so that you will not quit. You will commit and follow through – no matter the difficulties encountered during the journey.

Will it be worth the time invested? Absolutely!

Tell Me What You Think

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Suppose you desire to be an effective leader, especially if you want to climb your organization’s leadership ladder. Dr. Browning’s recently published book, Embracing Senior Leadership , will help you master three critical factors necessary for success at any organizational level, but especially at the senior level. The Air War College selected his book as its primary leadership book for faculty and students in 2024.