There’s no need to put things off due to lack of knowledge. Often, as long as you can push a button, you can achieve a lot. But sometimes it can be worthwhile to know a little about how things work, because once you know just a little more you can achieve amazing things…

Instead of trying to understand the intricacies of everything, and to hold off on action until you know everything, it’s better to realize that much of what we deal with is a “black box” and that all we need to do is press a button or two to get results.

For instance, your telephone is a black box. You pick it up, you dial the number, and you talk to the person at the other end—or you talk to their answering machine more often than not. You don’t need to know the details of what goes on inside the phone—all that technical stuff about microchips and electrical circuits—to make a phone call. You don’t need to know the details of what goes on inside your computer in order to send an email. These are both examples of boxes that do a job, and to treat them as such is usually enough to use them. This is covered in the article Finding Knowledge Easily

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We always think we need to know a lot to get things done. Actually the opposite is sometimes true. We need to know very little, because someone else has discovered the knowledge for us.

One of the big barriers to motivation and being inspired to do something, especially to do something new, is the fear that we don’t have the knowledge to pull something off. After all, there’s nothing worse than starting a project and then getting a little way into it and then realizing that we need some technical skill or other facility in order to progress. We’ve all had these feelings of inadequacy at such moments. We’ve all had the feeling of feeling stumped at points in our movement toward some goal. Here’s how things typically go.

We think of an idea. Sometimes this comes as a flash of inspiration… We feel galvanized, motivated to move forward. Almost in an instant we see the benefits of achievement and often the plan seems to have been handed to us by some higher power. We’re full of inspiration.

At this point we might actually begin to do some initial work on the idea, and this motivates us further.

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A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley

It’s a common conception that successful people have had it easy. Successful people, or so we often think, have had opportunity handed to them on a plate, and all they had to do was pick it up and success was theirs. Then when we look around at our own lives and find that the same opportunities are lacking, we begin to believe that success is impossible, or so difficult that it would take years of work to achieve.

It’s only when we look at the facts of the lives of many successful people that we see the opposite is true. Many successful people did not have easy lives, or certainly no easier than many other people. And many times we find that successful people had far from easy lives.

So what made the difference?

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One kind word can warm three winter months
Japanese proverb

It’s a simple thing to do, and it’s a simple thing to forget to do. But the consequences of saying a kind word can be much greater than we ever realize. A simple thing such as complimenting someone on a job well done or giving encouragement when needed can stay with the person for months… and sometimes a lifetime.

That kind word could be just what was needed at that moment to stop a person from giving up their goals. It might be just what was needed to stop a person from becoming despondent. It might be just what was needed to make a person realize that they are noticed, are a human being, and not just a cog in a machine. Small kind words are the things which add light to life.

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Looking for success? You might be looking in the wrong place. The keys to success may well be closer than you think.

The thinking goes something like this: “I am here and I’m not successful. That means I’m not successful because I’m here. And that means if I want to be successful I need to look elsewhere.”

This type of thinking doesn’t only relate to our physical location—the old “there’s just no opportunity here”—but also to what we have in our mental store—the goods stored away in the old grey matter. When we feel that we aren’t successful, we feel that the lack of success is due to something we lack in ourselves.

It’s true that we sometimes have to move to a different physical location in order to find the success we crave, but it’s not always true. If you are in a place where there just really isn’t any opportunity—though most places have more than you think—then you might have no choice but to up sticks and move. But it might be the case that you just aren’t opening your eyes to opportunities that could lead to being successful. And although there are often times when you need to learn a new skill in order to find success in some field or other, you could find that the skills and knowledge you already possess are just what you need to be successful—and the reason success has eluded you is that you just haven’t recognized those skills for what they are and put them to good use.

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