What Will I Regret If I Don’t Take Action Now?

Welcome to Expand Your Life Podcast. This is Jc Jones and you’re listening to episode 14. Today we’re going to discuss question #11 in the Self Awareness Workbook. If you haven’t picked up your free copy yet, you can find that at expandyourlifepodcast.com/resource. Today we’re going to discuss question #11. What things will I regret if I don’t take action?  

This question can be a real motivating question. It’s a question that I ask myself every year when I’m setting goals for the next year. I try to make sure that each year I put in my goals some things that I know If I didn’t accomplish or didn’t attempt to accomplish them, that I would eventually end up regretting not making that attempt. So what are these things for you? What are some things in your life that you know that you would regret if you didn’t make an attempt towards them?  

As we get older, our thoughts are more defeating around the subject. We tend to think we’re too old or it’s too late, especially for those things that might take time to accomplish. I’ve been blessed in my life with having quite a few women who have served as role models for accomplishing great things when circumstances were not ideal. One of these women I met in my twenties, and she was in her fifties, which seemed ancient to me at the time. And she was at a women’s conference and told her story how she ended up becoming a single mother of four children, and she didn’t have any kind of education or a trade to fall back on. She had been a stay at home mom with her kids, and when she was faced with having to be the sole breadwinner for her family and to take care of her children and herself, she really didn’t know what to do. 

She knew that going to school to get a degree where she could earn a decent living would take time, take money, all of which she felt like a that point she did not have. Those were the two commodities she felt like were not on her side. She couldn’t just pause everything, get her degree, then get a good paying job. She started waiting tables, and when she saw how big of a struggle she was having just surviving on her paycheck and the stress that it caused, she was determined to do something different.  

So she looked into going back to school. But she realized between her children and her now two jobs, she didn’t have a lot of time. Nor could she take time away from either one of those things to put into going to school. But she was determined enough to figure out a way. So the first thing she did was to find out everything she didn’t know. How was she going to pay for it? Where was she going to find the time? 

So she went down to the local Community College and she talked to the advisor there, and she found out that she qualified for grants because of her income. The only problem was is she needed to take at least three classes per semester in order to qualify. So then she had to figure out where she would find the time. Baby sitters cost money. Her advisor told her that the college had a daycare that was available during certain hours for college students to take advantage of and so she got into classes that worked around the daycare. She talked to her employers about working around her school schedule, and she made it work.  

She could have given up. She could have spent the next 15 years until her kids were all adults, just working herself to death in a minimum wage job. But she knew that that was not what she wanted for her life. So first she committed to the idea of doing whatever it took to better her life. She found out the things that she didn’t know, so she could make a plan to accomplish your goals.  

As soon as she got her Associates, she was able to get a better paying job. She didn’t have to work two jobs anymore, which, of course, freed up time. There were a couple of semesters in there that she had to take off because of some health issues with one of her children. But she did it. She never gave up, and she eventually got her Bachelor’s Degree. It took her 11 years, but she did it. And she ended up getting a great job, moved up quickly through the company she worked for, ended up becoming the CEO of her company.

She spent a lot of her free time talking to women about her experiences to help motivate them and show them that if you really want something, you can find a way. And one of her favorite sayings that she would end her speeches with that has always stuck with me is, “it’s never too late, unless you’re dead”. Only death has the power to keep you from achieving anything that you want to achieve.  

What are some of the things that keep us from taking action? Some things could be fear, limiting thoughts, too many options, getting overwhelmed about knowing where to start, knowing what to do, it seems too difficult. After you’ve made your list of things that you feel like you would regret if you didn’t take action on them, ask yourself what has kept you from doing those things up until now? Write that beside each one of those things.  

If your answer was fear, you can check out episode #8, where we talked about fear. If it’s limiting thoughts, just realizing that it is a limiting thought will move you past that. If it’s time related, one great thing to remember about that is all this time that you haven’t taken action is time that you could have been achieving your goal. Every minute that you wait is more time wasted. The fastest way to achieve a goal is to start taking action on it. Now, don’t wait. Don’t wait for the perfect time. Don’t wait to have all your ducks in a row. Just take action.  

If one of your reasons for not taking action is because you feel overwhelmed, overwhelm is usually a sign that you don’t have enough information. So figure out what you do know. Figure out what you don’t know and whatever you don’t know Google it. I knew I would eventually say that on this podcast. That used to be my favorite saying. Google it. My answer to everything was Google it, just Google it. But it’s true. We have so much information at our fingertips that there really is no reason not to know anything. When you’ve figured out what you do know, and what you don’t know, that you now do know, because you’ve Googled it, make a plan.  

A plan of action. Make a commitment to doing something every day towards whatever your goal is. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the outcomes of doing this. Even if you don’t achieve whatever it is you’re after, just making the attempt, going through the steps to make a commitment to it and taking action on it. This is going to raise your self esteem. It’s going to show you that you can accomplished something. Just taking action is a great accomplishment.  

If you live a life of taking action instead of sitting on all your ideas or your thoughts or your desires in life, this builds confidence. You know you can do it and you know it’s repeatable. This will encourage you and motivate you to take other actions. Because you start seeing that it’s possible you start seeing that you have the ability to take control of this area of your life. So remember, no regrets. Make that your motto this year. Next week we’ll be going over the question. Where do I feel broken? Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get updates and notifications when new episodes are released. Have a great week. Bye for now.