I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it.

In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo that he is trying to free his mind. He reminds him that he can only show him the door, and that he must choose to walk through it.

Have you ever looked for solutions, studied books, asked for help, and still felt stuck? This is especially common in the self-help industry. We want to improve our lives. We want to change something. Yet, we are stuck. We have all the information, but nothing is changing.

What’s missing?

Taking action. You can read as much as you can. You can buy all the books on self-help. You can watch every YouTube video about self-help. You can read every post on this blog. However, unless and until you take action, nothing is going to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

4 Things to Consider When Taking Action

Take a Break from Learning

After a point, learning new information becomes useless. What use are 10 more revolutionary diet plans, if you haven’t even tried one yet? What good is learning 100 more strategies for growing rich, if you haven’t even tried one? Learning more is often a means to avoid the discomfort of taking action. We feel productive when we learn more information, and that helps us fool our brains in thinking we are doing so much. This helps us feel secure, safe, and comfortable. However, in reality we are just consuming information that’s utterly useless until we apply it. Like Walter said to Jesse in Breaking Bad, “Apply yourself.”

When we stop learning, we have to face the harsh truth: that we aren’t doing anything, and if we want to actually grow or change something, we have to take action.

Motivation Comes from Action

Are you waiting to feel motivated before you take action? Let me tell you a secret: you might as well stop waiting and give up because that motivation will never come. Motivation comes from action. When you take the first step, you get momentum, and that momentum leads to motivation. If you wait until you feel ready, you will never do it.

Think about waking up in the morning. For most of us, we don’t feel like getting out of bed. Why would we? It’s comfy. It’s cozy. It’s easy. But if we take that first step to swing our legs out of bed, the rest gets surprisingly easy.

The same goes for hitting the gym. Have you ever dreaded going to the gym, but once you get there, you get a burst of energy you didn’t know you had?

Motivation comes from action, so take the first step. It can be a small step, but start the momentum in the right direction, and it will carry you.

Ditch the Perfectionism

One of the biggest reasons we like to keep learning and not actually doing is perfectionism. Until we know everything, until we believe we can do it perfectly, until we have the perfect strategy, we don’t take action. But what if we realize that there is no perfect way or perfect strategy? We spend so much time preparing, researching, agonizing over the end result instead of doing something. The more you do, the better you will get.

Consistency

Maybe you have taken some action. Maybe you tried a diet for a day, and it didn’t work.

The key here is to take consistent action. Persevere. This is what separates successful people from others. They don’t give up or stop when things get uncomfortable or difficult. You have to be consistent when you take action.

If you find that your strategies aren’t working, that’s okay, try another one. You are gaining incredible knowledge about what doesn’t work. And that is more information that you have than someone who isn’t taking action at all. 

Remember, people can guide you. Books can teach you. Research can prepare you. And these are all great things. But nothing will happen until you apply what you learn and take action. At the end of the day, the responsibility is yours. Just like Morpheus says to Neo, “I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it.” So are you ready to take the leap and walk through the door?