Talk isn’t just cheap, it’s everywhere.
Social media has amplified our human propensity for braggadocio and turned it into a mental illness.
Everyone is a warrior, a lion, or a millionaire.
Rented cars, other people’s houses and Photoshop are the currency of the day and “keeping up with the Joneses” has mutated onto a scale that is unimaginable even a decade ago.
It took me many years to understand that most people are full of hot air simply because I was brought up having it drilled into me that if you’re going to mouth off then you’d better be prepared to back it up.
I’m not talking about anything as dramatic as ensuring that your fists back up your mouth, although that does apply as well. It’s much more of a sweeping lesson that in life most of us mouth off from time to time, but very few people have the tenacity to follow through.
I’ve always used my own big mouth to put pressure on me to deliver. I’d tell a select few people what my ambitions were and that would give me an added incentive to push harder when my head inevitably started to drop after the first rush of excitement wore off and you’re left with the grind.
If you’re one of the very few who can quietly go about achieving your goals, then I doff my hat to you; everyone respects people like that.
If you’re more like me and need to verbalise then go ahead, but for God’s sake make sure you follow through. And if you’re like all the rest – the also-rans, the never-was, and (worst of all) the wasted potential, then grow a pair, decide what you want out of life, and then just bloody do it. This life is not a dress rehearsal. #clichedout
