Putting Your Thoughts Into Action

"Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Why is this so? Action requires a different level of commitment than does thinking. It is easy to think of a good idea, imagine a result, envision a completed project. In our imagination, there is no penalty for failure, no evaluation of outcomes, no report card. When we take decisive action to turn our thoughts and dreams into action, everything changes. We must take risks in the real world, expend more energy, burn more calories, exert more effort, acquire resources, solve problems, enlist the help of others and expose ourselves and our ideas to the evaluation and criticism of others. This takes much more courage than thinking.