The Knowing-Doing gap

I registered into Stumble today. And my first reaction to it is “Whoa! so many blogs…so much information!” I clicked “Self Improvement” and began reading voraciously.

Then I stumbled upon a Dale Carnegie excerpt from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and remembered Eddie’s mention about people who read too much about Personal Development. “You meet them 2 years after and nothing’s changed about them. Except that they know 2 more quotes from Dale Carnegie. ”
(by the way Eddie Ezeanu’s perspective on readers and doers on Personal Development is here).

But as Dale Carnegie himself puts it “Common sense is not common practice”. There’s all these blog posts and articles around, all of which tell you “10 ways to improve this” or “5 simple steps to that”…and when you read them, they seem so natural, like “How didn’t I think of that?”, “Oh I will try that as of tomorrow.”

And how often do you, actually?

That’s cause it’s easier to acknowledge an idea, and accept it. From accepting, to  internalizing and changing something, it’s a larger step. If we could all change so easily.

I’m now using more my coaching abilities. I write and read a lot on personal development. Did it ever occur to you, when you buy a new car, that you start noticing that model of car everywhere on the street? That’s what I get now. It seems everyone is now into personal development. Everyone’s training to be a coach.
There’s this abundance of resources around us. All of them are pulling us towards living our potential, being more fulfilled.
And yet, in the same society that offers this abundance of resources to grow personally, there’s so many people trapped, feeling exhausted, feeling robotic. The gap here is between knowing the resources are there, and actually using these resources.

My personal belief is that the ones who’re offering these resources are the same people who’re trying to break free.

Go, Freddie, tell’em!

The Knowing-Doing gap resides between when you say “Oh yeah, this is so interesting. I could do that.” and saying “Let’s do it now.” Freedom lies in actually making the choice. Taking the first step to change.

What can YOU do to break free?