While reading Mastery by Robert Greene, I came across a story about Buckminster Fuller who was a renowned inventor who believed that most people are full of ideas, but very few actually act on them. He made a conscious decision not to be one of those people. Instead of just thinking, he started building prototypes. If something didn’t work, he moved on. But if it showed potential, he refined it and kept going. His approach was simple but powerful: take action, learn from the results, and evolve.
That story really resonated with me. It’s easy to get caught in the trap of overthinking or waiting for the perfect moment. But as Edison said, “vision without execution is hallucination.” Without action, even the best ideas remain intangible. They are just dreams floating around in our heads.
I’m sharing this because I used to be someone with a million ideas but very little action behind them. It wasn’t until I finally started taking steps, no matter how small, in the direction I wanted to go that things slowly began to unfold. Those small steps became the catalyst for real change. For a long time, I was paralyzed by fear. I was scared of judgment, scared of failure, and scared of being seen. I used to break out in hives just speaking in class.
But over time, I learned that the only real cure for fear is to face it. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” I return to that quote often, especially now as I share more of myself and my journey online. And what I’ve found is that the answers rarely come before the action, they come through the action. So instead of asking, “What if it doesn’t work?” try asking, “What if it does?”
