Robin Sieger Blog

In the UK there have been two new television shows, they both give would be inventors and entrepreneurs the opportunity to raise funding for their ideas. The first thing they have to do is convince cynical investors that their idea is original, meets a need and is a proposition which in the financial analysis make both the inventor and investors – rich. These people are following a dream, they usually are in full time employment, and are doing everything they can to raise the money to make their big idea a reality. So why don’t the majority of us do everything we can to realise our ‘big ideas’?

How often have you seen a new product on the market and thought to yourself, “gosh how simple is that” or “I should have thought of that”. When I worked in television at the BBC many years ago the search was always for the next big thing, the next ‘big idea’, ironically many of the ideas that I saw being passed over because they were too different, appeared years later as hits. The reason that they were passed over was I believe, that the powers that be commissioned the new ideas, wanted something they felt the audience would be familiar with. They wanted safe, they wanted no controversy, and most of all they didn’t want a stinker with people pointing the finger in their direction.

I once met an American businessman who had made it, and lost it three times, he said to me “Robin as you go through your business life you will discover that success has many relatives; and that failure is an orphan”. I have witnessed this and found it to be true. I have read interviews with people who have taken credit for things they had the most remote connection (or no connection to at all). I have witnessed people pass the blame onto others with a sincerity of an honest man.

We all have an idea how we would like to live our lives, and pursuing our careers, yet very few of us do anything about taking the actions required to change our circumstances, we shrug our shoulders and busy ourselves with getting through today. I have spoken to many people who told me that their lives began after they stopped working, when they were able to do ‘the thing they always wanted to do’. When I ask them why they didn’t pursue this ambition earlier, they tell me it was not possible, and give me one hundred and one well tried and tested excuses that they have used before. I can think of only two reasons. The first is they are in a comfort zone, and do not want to risk things turning out for the worse, or if the truth be told they did not believe in their big idea enough, and felt that they would fail.

In my work I am often asked, how do you motivate people to succeed? I always answer the same, much to their surprise. “I can’t motivate anyone to do anything they do not have the desire to do”. What I have always done is help people realise that they can change their lives, that failure is never final until we choose to accept that it is, that at the end of our lives it is our regrets that will bother us not our failures, and that time is finite, once gone it never returns. Most of all I want people to understand that they have two choices, always the same two choices that follow them through life. Whenever we come to a decision in life these two choices raise themselves for us to select from.

We can chose to do nothing, and let things continue as they are in the hope they will get better. Or we can take action and take the chance that we can affect the outcomes we seek, and that takes us to believe in our ‘big idea’, whatever that may be. Win, lose or draw, taking action is always the fastest way to effect change, and if it does not work out as we have hoped for, we just have to once again choose to take action.

Share This