Converting Idea into Action

 You don’t just luck into things….You build step by step, whether it’s friendship or opportunities.

– Barbara Bush

There is no ‘instant formula’ for success. You succeed over a period of time. Nor is success by chance or decided by luck. You may be lucky to be in a particular environment at a particular point of time. However, that alone cannot assure that you will get what you want.

If you read the biography of any successful person, you will understand how much hard they had to work to get what they got. All that they were aware was that they had something special and unique to offer and that there was an opportunity to exploit their talent. They got an idea and luckily they noticed and exploited that idea. We all get ideas and the only difference is that we don’t act on the same till the idea succeeds.

For example, J. K. Rowling, the author of the famous Harry Potter fantasy series got the idea about the book while she was travelling from Manchester to London in 1990. When she conceived the idea of the book, she was living on welfare, and she became a multi-millionaire within five years. As of March 2010, Rowling’s net worth was estimated to be $1 billion and she is believed to be the twelfth richest woman in Great Britain.

If you just visit the website of Harry Potter, you will be stunned how one person can become so successful by converting just one idea which came to her while travelling, into an action plan and working on the same. Maybe she was lucky that she got the idea. But it is her focused work which brought her to fame. She was able to ‘connect’ her idea and the opportunity to exploit the idea into a topic and market the same.

Over this weekend, do an exercise: list at least three ideas that you got in the last thirty days and ponder over what you did to explore whether there is an opportunity to put your idea into action.