Published by Bob on 14 Feb 2008 at 05:00 am
Practicing What You Preach
A funny thing happened to me today that got me thinking.
I went to a web site that featured “experts”. As I clicked on the “goal setting experts” a big list opened up.
Out of the first 10 names on the list, 9 of them had absolutely no content or description of any kind. No way to get in touch, nothing. Just names floating in space…Names of people who consider themselves to be experts on “goal setting”.
Excuse me! How about setting some goals here people!
I thought it was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long time because these people didn’t have a clue as to the message they were really communicating. Which was: “I don’t practice what I preach”…Or they would have set a goal to put their information together.
Isn’t “goal setting” also about not dropping the ball?
Now do you think I would ever take someone like that seriously?
The bottom line is this: Life is too short to waste time on someone who claims to be an authority about something and fails to reflect that knowledge and wisdom in their lives and through their actions.
I’m from the old school: The proof is in the pudding!
The only way you get insight is to go through an experience which causes you to evolve into a new paradigm. You know, an epiphany or “ah ha” moment. “A sudden intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something” (from dictionary.com) I’m talking about that point of enlightenment when everything changes and you achieve yet another degree of clarity.
Someone who professes to be a authority is supposed to be a source of the the practical application of those epiphanies…
Which he or she experienced first hand…
Otherwise all they offer is theory or conjecture.
If they don’t apply what they claim to know to their own lives then maybe they really don’t know so much after all…
Hey, if they haven’t yet had that most basic of all epiphanies: (”Physician heal thyself”) Maybe they need to set some goals!
-Bob Baran
Jim on 16 Feb 2008 at 3:07 am #
Hello Bob,
Yes – you are correct!
I know the ‘expert’ website you were referring to, so after reading your post I took a look and you are 100% right. There are stacks of goal-setting experts who have not been motivated or goal-orientated enough to actually follow through and complete their page.
Of course Bob, this kind of inconsistency is common; because there is a world of difference between ‘knowing’ something and ‘doing’ something. After all, every cigarette smoker knows the health risks, yet they still smoke.
People say that; ‘knowledge is power’, yet knowledge by itself is NOT power – it only acquires power when it is acted upon. If knowledge was power, everyone who has read the great self-improvement books would be ultra-successful. Everyone who has read a great weight-loss book would be slender. Sadly, the massive majority of people who never achieve the success they want in their businesses or lives – fail not through a lack of ‘knowing’ but from a lack of ‘doing.’
The people you referred to in your blog claim to be experts and I believe that if you claim to be an expert in something, you need to understand both the ‘knowing’ AND the ‘doing.’
Thanks Bob for a great blog post!