“It’s not what you know; it’s what you act on.” So said the Grasshopper at the crack of dawn.

It sounds a bit like, “actions speak louder than words” to me, but I think it goes deeper.

“Words” reflect what you’ve done or what you’re going to do. “Actions” relate to what you are doing now. There is no action in the past or future. Action only happens now.

Some folks think because they have the knowledge to act on something, that it’s the same thing as acting. “I already know that” is a commonly used phrase of the non-doer.

You may ask, “If you already know that, how come it hasn’t happened?” And then brace yourself for the non-stop litany of excuses for not acting. I keep hearing my 4th grade teacher Miss Wagner’s pronouncement when hearing actionless justifications: “You can either have what you want or your reasons why not.”

The “why not’s” are the reasons you don’t take action. Excuses are perpetual diversions from doing.

If you know what you need to do, start subtracting your excuses one-by-one until you’re down to the bare metal of action.

We are all well lubricated excuse machines. The action needed is to drain the oil and have the excuses burn up. It’s then and only then that what you know turns into action that gets you past “Ready, Set” and on to “GO.”

All the best,

John