Taking Courses Can Sometimes Be A Form of Procrastination
What is a sales page or landing page telling you?
Imagine this — you need a new skill. You research, take a few courses, and get started.
Soon, you get frustrated that things are not working as you hoped. You hope there’s an easier way, a magic wand, or a secret to uncover.
Susie offers a course that promises to clear all doubts and take you to the promised land.
But you’ve already taken Mark’s, Shady’s, and others you lost track of. They’re all experts in their field, all living a grand life, and are showing you the path that worked for them. Would one more course help? If not Susie, someone else may have more insight and can show you the magic path ahead. You can fly like a unicorn into the sunset.
Well, my friend, you are falling for sales talk. You hope for an easier, quicker route to learning something new and want to avoid going through the grind. Everyone is making it out to be so easy, so you believe it has to be easy. Everyone is taking pictures of sipping pina coladas on the beach and cannot see the dream on the near horizon. You wonder — Where’s the glory and the glitz? It cannot be so hard. There has to be an easier way- and so you take another course or stop your progress to learn something new.
Learning can sometimes be another form of procrastination.
If Susie told everyone about the hard work, the grind, the time she fell flat on her face, the rejection, the heartbreak, and the disappointment she went through, do you think anyone would buy her course? No, we’d all be running for the hills in the opposite direction. We wouldn’t even think of going near there. Who in their sane mind wants to volunteer for extra pain, heartache, and grind?
We sometimes get delusional and expect things to be hunky-dory without doing the work. Susie hasn’t mentioned in her sales copy or landing page how long it took her to get to where she is or how many hours of grind did she go through. She packages the program well to inspire you to take action. She’s found a way that works, and she’s excited and wants you to find yours, too. Susie is not selling you a lie; she is telling you what you want to hear ( the outcome) so that you can do the things/steps required to follow your dreams.
Susie becomes a signpost for people and our brains that things can happen and are possible. Our brains want evidence that things are possible.
Susie is selling you hope that dreams can happen because it happened to her. She is motivating you to push yourself to do the work. She pushes you to take action- to believe in yourself, that you can and should do it if it is what you want.
So the critical question is :
Do you want to do it? Is it essential to you? How much time, resources, and energy do you have for it? Do you have some training (remember Marks and Shady’s)?
Once you have those answers, the only thing left is to take action and not take another course.
Everything worth it is hard — it needs your time, effort, and energy.
Remember the last time you did something important? How long did it take? How much effort did it entail? Was it easy? Was there a quick fix? No, there wasn’t.
Sometimes, after we’ve listened to people, read people’s stories for inspiration and guidance, or taken courses, all we’ve got to do is take embodied action and do the work. The rubber must meet the road; you must move the needle.
You don’t have to brute force yourself, but you have to do enough that feels right. Do one small action regularly that moves the needle. Success is the cumulative effect of a series of small actions taken over time.
We don’t take action but convince ourselves that by taking courses we are taking action. It is the perfect cover-up because it feels like we are doing something, but what we are doing is staying the same, living in a bubble, staying safe, and feeling good about ourselves as we hear good things and positive things about ourselves. But we need to progress.
Yes, sometimes we need to pause, assess and reflect. Sometimes, we must take courses and learn, but we can only temporarily park in that zone.
We have to take the next step, which is taking action, no matter how small it is. We have to do it today and not procrastinate. Then commit to doing it the next day and the day after and having the discipline to follow through with it daily ( your schedule)whether you like it or not, feel like it or not, or want to not)
Success isn’t glamorous, fancy, fun, or easy. It does not happen by magic as you sit in your yoga pose and magically wait for it to happen. Things happen when you take the initiative. Making it happen takes hard work, dedication, commitment, and discipline.
So yes, you always do not need to take another course; You already know enough; it’s time to take the next step- take action.
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