riddle me this …

The difference between wishing, deciding, and taking action

There’s a common riddle, that you might have heard before, about five frogs sitting on a log. Then, one frog decides to jump off.

How many frogs are left on the log?

The “answer” given in the riddle is five. Supposedly, there are still five frogs sitting on the log because one only decided to jump off – but hasn’t yet.

The riddle is generally used as a starting point to launch into an explanation about the importance of taking action.

While I agree that taking consistent action steps towards your goal is important and necessary, this answer to the riddle has never made sense to me.

The truth is that we can’t know how many frogs are left sitting on the log right now.

Maybe the one who decided to jump, already has. Maybe she hasn’t yet.

But I’m confident that if she has already decided to jump – and she hasn’t yet – she will.

It’s inevitable.

To me, making a decision means you’ve already taken action. Yes, you’ll need to take another action (or maybe many actions) to reach the result you decided on. But the action of deciding has energy to it.

Deciding is very different from wanting, or wishing, or hoping, or thinking about what you could or should do.

Deciding demonstrates a commitment.

Deciding shows a willingness to take action.

Deciding means you’ve started the ball rolling.

My top tip is to make use of that momentum that you’ve created and take your next action step straight away, even if it’s a small step.  As long as you’re clear on what your end goal is (so you’ll know when you get there), you don’t have to know the entire pathway to get there just yet. Trust that the path will become clearer as you start moving along it.

If you’ve already decided what you want to achieve next, your success is inevitable.

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