Get Good Stuff Done

The following is an excerpt from the book Get Good Stuff Done by Ralph Marston. Do you benefit from the positive message of The Daily Motivator every day? This new book is one long sustained dose of Ralph’s high-energy positivity.

Voice Within

You can get much good stuff done, but there’s a powerful voice within you that’s always trying to talk you out of it. That voice probably has a whole lot more credibility with you than it deserves. It can be very convincing, extremely compelling.

Time after time, you’ve listened to that voice. You’ve denied yourself the achievements you could have created. You’ve settled for less than you deserve. You’ve chickened out of stepping forward or speaking up. You’ve missed out on great experiences and later suffered stinging regret.

The voice is invisible and yet it has great power. The more ambitious you are, the more you want to get good stuff done, the louder and more insistent the voice becomes.

Stop and remember this. The voice is lying to you. It is deceiving you. It is using its immense power to stop you from living the rich life you wish to live. Remind yourself often. Do not continue giving in to the voice. It has already robbed you of much. Don’t let it rob you any more.

The voice of negativity comes from you, is a part of you. That’s what makes it so powerful. You cannot escape it by driving fifty miles out in the country. It will always come along. The power it has is the power you give it. Fortunately, there is a way to get away from it. Not by fighting it, but by ignoring it. If you fight it you make it stronger. If you ignore it, you make it irrelevant.

How do you ignore it? By getting good stuff done. By taking action. Not spitefully, but joyfully. Not to prove how wrong that voice is, but to fulfill your own positive potential.

Be forewarned, though. The voice will trick you. It knows you as well as you know yourself, maybe even a little better. Because after all, it is a part of you. It knows how to deceive you. When you hear yourself making perfectly reasonable excuses for why you haven’t gotten anything done, that’s the voice at its deceitful best. Learn to recognize it. Learn to ignore it, no matter how convincing it sounds. Turn yourself in the other direction, in the direction of action. Make the commitment to get good stuff done no matter how well crafted are the arguments against it.

Even if you ignore it every day for ten years, the voice of negativity will always be there. You can’t get rid of it. But you can continue ignoring it. Even if you do give in to it every once in a while, you can always start ignoring it again. It will always be there, though, waiting. What you can do is grow stronger. With every action, with every achievement, with every goal reached, you do grow stronger. You grow more able to ignore the voice of negativity. It might live in your house, but that doesn’t mean you have to have breakfast with it, or lunch, or dinner or afternoon tea. Notice it every now and then, be cordial to it, then completely ignore it.

When the voice of negativity grows unusually loud, here’s something to remember. You must do precisely the opposite of what it’s telling you to do. The more powerful the voice becomes, the more important it is for you to step decisively in exactly the direction it is attempting to block. In this way your voice of negativity can serve as a valuable guide. Just remember it’s always guiding you in the wrong direction, and choose to go the other way.

Where does this voice of negativity get its energy? From fear. Replace each fear in your life with love, and the voice becomes malnourished. It’s still there, but if you stop feeding it fear, the voice of negativity will not cause you any problems. That’s easier said than done, but so is everything else.

Procrastination

Few people ever say “I’m never going to achieve my dreams.” Instead, everyone says “I’m going to achieve my dreams someday.”

The problem is, there’s really no difference between never and someday. They are exactly the same point in time. Exactly.

You’re awakened at night by the sound of breaking glass. You hear at least two men, maybe more, downstairs, going through all your things. Then you hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairway. You quickly lock the bedroom door and call 911, asking the dispatcher to send the police. What do you want the answer to be? Do you want them to tell you they’re sending the police someday? No. Of course not. You want the police at your home RIGHT NOW. There’s absolutely no difference between “someday” and “never.” In fact, “never” might even be preferable because at least you would know for certain you’re on your own, and would begin to deal with it. But to hear that the police are coming “someday” is completely worthless.

Don’t smash your dreams to pieces by scheduling them for someday. Don’t trash and dishonor all the good stuff you could be creating in your world by throwing it into the “someday” bin. The time you have is right now. It will always be right now. The time to act is right now. You cannot act in the past and you cannot act in the future. You can only act in the moment you’re in.

When you hear yourself saying “someday” let it be your cue to jump into action. If you catch yourself making excuses, putting work off until later, put an immediate stop to that pattern. Grab the nearest available task and get busy.

Your life is much too valuable to put on hold, especially when you consider that putting it on hold is equivalent to not living it. Every moment you’re procrastinating is a moment of your precious life you’re throwing away. Imagine that you have sixty days to live, and imagine you have a long list of highly meaningful things you want to get done while you still can. Would you put off getting started on that list? Would you wait until next month, or next week, or tomorrow?

The days in the beginning or middle of your life are just as important as the days at the end, actually even more so because of the way they influence the quality of all the days yet to come. So if you would not want to waste the final days of your life you certainly don’t want to waste today, not even a few minutes.

If procrastination is a problem, ask yourself why. Why do you have the urge to put anything off until later? Why? Why? Why? Maybe it’s because whatever you’re putting off is not really important to you. If that’s the case, there’s no need to put it off until later. Just cancel it entirely and direct your efforts toward the things that do matter.

Remember, the essential part of getting good stuff done is knowing what good stuff you really do want to get done. When you’re clear about that, procrastination becomes a non issue.

It does take time to build a quality life. But you never have to put off the experience of that life until “someday.” The essence of the experience is in the journey. You can be on that journey right now. You want to sail around the world on a seventy-foot yacht? The experience begins now with the first effort toward that goal. You want to provide the necessities of life for five million people living in desperate conditions. Now is the moment to begin doing that. No, you won’t reach the goal instantly. It will take time. But if you procrastinate, if you put off doing the effort, you’ll never reach it. You deserve more than that. The world deserves more than that from you.

Do you realize how incredibly fortunate you are to be here now? Make full use of it. Now.

Appearances

Appearing to get good stuff done is not the same as getting good stuff done. Confusing the two will get you in trouble, wasting lots of time and resources. Looking like a writer, or a property developer, or a basketball player, musician or whatever, is not equivalent to being those things. Driving the right car, living in the proper neighborhood, wearing the clothes, speaking the language, those things are no substitute for doing the work.

Here’s a particularly insidious form of this problem—the tools you use. It’s easy to think that if you have all the right tools and you know how to use them, you’re getting good stuff done. Tools are helpful, and so is knowing how to use them effectively. But the tools are not the work. They only facilitate the work.

Sometimes, though, if you’re not careful, tools can get in the way of work. Not so long ago, if you wanted to make a film you needed a camera, film, a separate audio recorder, a way to edit and splice the film together, lighting, tripods, and the knowledge of f-stops and exposure, plus many other things. Now, for a theater-quality film all you need is an iPhone. So, the iPhone is an amazingly powerful tool. But, it’s a tool you can use without understanding the fundamentals of lighting, composition, and other important elements of filmmaking. The old ways, before modern tools, took much more money and time and expertise. However, they also required that you have more understanding in order to use them. With an iPhone you can just shoot indiscriminately and not worry about the cost. If you run out of memory you can simply delete the scenes you won’t be using. With photographic film, there is a cost for every foot you shoot, whether you use it or not. Working under that kind of limitation can actually teach you to be better at what you do.

So, use the tools, take full advantage of the tools, but keep them in perspective. The tools are not the work.

Don’t settle for mere appearances. Insist on the real thing from yourself. Don’t just look like a financial expert. Do the work to be one.

And don’t let yourself become a one-trick pony. A football player with just one way to run the ball can be impressive… until the other team figures out what he’s doing. Then he becomes completely ineffective. A comedian with one clever joke can be hilarious… until you’ve heard the joke. Be good, do good, get good stuff done, and then get more good stuff done. Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t let yourself be sitting around with nothing but fond memories of the good old days when you were on top of the world. That’s pathetic. Keep yourself relevant by continuing the good work, and feeding the momentum with more effort and creativity.

Oh, and by the way, don’t use the lame excuse that you’re too old or too tired or that the world has passed you by. That’s a load of crap and you know it. Step up and give some more. You have plenty more left in you. Take a break every now and then and clear your head, but don’t get the crazy idea that you’re supposed to retire. That’s not allowed. Getting good stuff done means getting good stuff done for your entire life. No excuses. No hiding in the corner if your muscles get a little sore. Fill every moment with greatness. Life has given you so much and you owe it to life to make something out of every bit of it.

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