Give me an A… “A”
Give me a C… “C”
Give me a T… “T”
Give me an I… “I”
Give me an O… “O”
Give me an N… “N”

What have you got… “Action”… Whoop-whoop… Yaaay! (Skips around, high fiving everyone, doing the splits and shaking imaginary pom-poms)

Why am I doing the world worst impression of an unlikely cheerleader today? Let me explain…

Here in the UK, we have witnessed some of the most major media debacles in history… The way they have fuelled the recession… The way they covered the swine flu epidemic/pandemic/planetary wipeout thing… And the way they have mercilessly slain the very last amount of teeny tiny credibility politicians have had in this country…

Politicians have been using our hard-earned tax payers money on expenses in such a way that has fuelled public perception of them… in a way that may well never change.

However, lots of this could have been quelled if Gordon Brown had taken some action early. As soon as this happened, the first signs of it… More deliberation, discussion, lame avoidance strategies, arguments in parliament and shenanigans that gave the media more time to expose it and the public more time to get even more enraged… It has been a hallmark of Gordon Browns time in the number one position. He just does not seem to know how to take decisive action in a quick and authoritarian manner, or at least in a manner we’d expect from our Prime Minister, our leader.

Each day in therapy with my clients, I offer up with some vigour and enthusiasm, my belief on making life easier… And that includes me waxing lyrical about taking action… Ok, so maybe I should start whooping and shaking my imaginary pom-poms again every time I say the word.

I often encounter people who say they know all about hypnotherapy, or NLP or other therapeutic modalities… Yet they do not seem to consistently employ what they know… So what is the point of knowing it?

Some would say that action is the one thing that makes all other things happen… Our thoughts and theoretical understandings are great and they are even more wonderful if they are more often positive, progressive and outcome-focused… It is just that as great as they are, thoughts without action are useless, they are impotent…

Someone that has a phobia of heights can take all the time in the world to imagine being on the 50th floor of Canary Wharf… Someone with an old fear of dogs can spend lots of time imagining calmly stroking that Alsatian dog in the park… Someone who is overweight can take all the time to imagine themselves eating healthily and exercising…

At some point, they all need to take some action and actually do that thing they are thinking about… Some may believe that thinking about it more can drive the inclination to take that action….

What about the ability to act in the moment? To take instant action is one of the main attributes of successfully organised people… The kind of people that think of actions, that think of the things they want or need to do, and then act upon them in a dynamic manner.

I read on Tim Brownsons brilliant blog this week, a guest writer talking about us trying to cram too much into our days and weeks… Ticking off items on to-do lists only to be filled up with more items… It made me think… There is value in not attempting to blitz your life into crazy, thoughtless action all the time, isn’t there?

However, taking decisive and thoughtful action is something that all the successful people I know seem tio do very well… The short time delay from their thought to action is what keeps them moving forward, keeps them caught up, prepared and organised. Not necessarily just filling their time with everything and anything…

These people do tend to be action-oriented rather than thought oriented.

They do seize the moment and act, rather than just thinking about the action then thinking that they’ll act upon that thought later on…

it has been my experience and is something I find incredibly valuable in therapy… To start to encourage others to start to notice when they have these kind of action-oriented thoughts and then act on them immediately (when appropriate)… You see, if people leaving a therapy session, feeling like some change is occuring, maybe feeling better about themselves than when they first stepped in that day… Then that needs some evidence, something tangible to prove that it was not just short-term euphoria induced by a good hypnotherapist…

Them taking action shows and proves to the contrary.

Acting in the moment also means things have a hard time pililing up and that’s great news for you. Your mind and the environment of your life are less cluttered on a daily basis, so you are certain to have more time for other things, no?

“Yaaaay… Go action… Whooop!” 🙂