Taking The First Step to Achieve Your Goals

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you didn't know what to do? Have you ever been in a situation where you want to do something, you want to get started, you want to go in the right direction, but you just simply don't know what to do? Well, today we're going to be talking about that topic and a little bit more on this week's broadcast.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rome, and on the podcast today, I want to talk to you about getting started. To get started. And that may sound a little bit strange. So let me explain to you what I'm talking about. All of us from time to time get stuck. We want to do something, but. But we don't know what the next thing is that we need to do. Of course we want to do the next right thing. Of course we want to do the next thing that's good, pure and positive, but sometimes we just don't know how that is supposed to unfold. Well, first of all, I want to let you know that I am with 27 people in Cancun, Mexico. We are at a resort and we are having an awesome time. I wish you could be here with me for this event. We're doing just a special training kind of at the end of the year for couples and individuals for marriage, relationships and business. So I have tried my best to find a nice white spot where there's not a lot of noise. So I hope if you hear something in the background, you'll please forgive me. But. And the funny thing about it is what I'm sharing with you is directly in proportion to where I find myself this very minute. I'll explain. I love doing these podcasts, but I constantly stay busy and trying to find a nice, perfect secluded place where there's no interruption and there's no background noise and there's no one bothering me and no one pulling on me. Wanting me to do something or find out something is next to impossible. So what I have learned to do is get started. Getting started. Now this. This is kind of tricky. It's like nailing jello to the wall. So you have to stay with me to understand the concept. If you're going to wait until you know how to do everything and your environment is perfect and all of your ducks are in a row and everything is just like you want it to Be. I promise you, you're not going to have very productive life. What you'll always be doing is being frustrated, waiting for everything to be exactly like you want it to be. And I have news for you, that's not reality. True, sometimes things fall into place, but more times than not, it has been my experience that things don't always work out like you want them to. I think just a few weeks ago, I was trying to do a podcast. I got alone in my vehicle. I got quiet. I was right where I wanted to be, and it started raining. And I mean, it was pouring down, rainy. Sounds about it was beating on the roof of my car. Well, that's okay. I would rather do the podcast and get a good encouraging word out to you the best I can on a weekly basis than rather waiting until I'm in a perfect environment with a perfect script and do it in a perfect manner. I have just found that's not pretty practical and it's not the way life works. Someone shared with me years ago, there's a big difference between excellence and perfection. And if you want to do things in a perfect manner, you got to be pretty frustrated. But if you say, I'm going to do this the best of my ability, if I make a mistake or if I do something wrong, then at least I'm growing and learning in the process of how I can do things better or more excellent in the future. Now let me explain to you how this really started for me. I think you're going to enjoy this. In 1967, many, many years ago, I graduated from high school and I had been.

I guess, a pretty decent person. I'd never gotten arrested or that was back in the days before, you know, drugs and a lot of the substance abuse that goes on today. I think probably when I was growing up, just to be honest with you, every once in a while, somebody would drink a beer or smoke a cigarette, and that was like really bad stuff back in the day. And I'm grateful. I never got involved in that too much. Of course, you know, being the ringleader of all my friends, I can't honestly say I never was involved in doing things I shouldn't have been doing. But thank God, and I mean that reverently, it wasn't any worse than it was. Anyway, so 1967, I went off to college, and I can only tell you my story because my story is exactly that. It's my story. I wanted my life to be better. I wanted my life to be different. I didn't know how to say what I'm saying to you right now. But I did not understand personal growth and development.

I didn't understand how to have a better life. I didn't understand how whoever you hang around is who you're going to become. If you look at your friends and you think, wow, what a bunch of losers. What a bunch of bad people. Then why are you hanging around them? How they get to be your group? How they get to be your friends? Someone once said, if you're the smartest person in your group, you need to find a new group. Well, I didn't know everything then. That was a long time ago that I know now. But I knew I wanted to have a different life. I want to have a better life. I wanted to. I just felt like I was on the wrong track and I was in the wrong lane, that you might say. So when I went off to college, I'll never forget the first week I was there. I decided, buckle up, here it comes. I decided I was going to start a Bible study. Now, I knew zero about a Bible or Bible or a Bible study. I, I call the Book of Job. I call that Job. I couldn't even pronounce Deuteronomy. I call psalms palms. I mean, it was bad. I just didn't know anything. I thought the concordance in the back of the Bible was one of the books of the Bible. So it was just. I was so lost. So I decided, I don't know how to do this. But I know one thing. I don't like the way my life has been in the past. And I want to do things that are good, pure, positive. And what could be more good, pure and positive than a Bible study? So I went up and down the hallway and I told my friends, hey, nine o' clock tonight. I don't have a Bible study for about 15 minutes. You're invited. Oddly enough, a couple of them said, sure, I'll come. Oddly enough, a couple of them laughed at me and said, no, thanks. And actually I was praying nobody would show up because I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea how to have a Bible study. I mean, no idea. Anyway, that night, probably seven or eight people showed up. And I opened my Bible and I read a couple of verses. I hope God videoed this so I can watch it one day in heaven. But I then a few of them had questions. They asked me questions. Oh, no, I had not expected that to happen. They asked me questions. And so I said, well, that's what we're going to be talking about next week. I lied as fast as I could talk. I didn't know what we're going to be talking about next week. All I knew was I didn't know the answer to their questions. So I said, yeah, we're going to be talking about that next week. So I'll make a note of that, and then next week I'll be able to answer your question. Well, I knew that my mother was way down the road ahead of me in this Bible study activity. So I knew I'd have time. I'd have a whole week to call her, take some notes, get some answers. Then the next week, they would come back, they would ask me questions. I would answer the questions based on what my mother had taught me over the phone. And oddly enough, the Bible study started to grow. Instead of 5 and 6 and 7, I'd have 10, 11, 12. And they would ask me questions. And you already know what I would say. That's a great question. We're going to cover that next week. And I'd write it down. And I knew I had to call my mother to find out. I don't know the answer to this question. I don't know the answer to anything. Well, without belaboring the point, it grew and grew and I grew and grew. I started learning. I started learning how to teach. I started learning stories in the Bible. I started learning how to stand up in front of a group of people and talk every. I could feel my life changing. I could feel my life getting better. And I didn't really. It didn't happen overnight. But slowly and slowly and little bit, little bit, things started getting better in my life. I started meeting new people. I started having people say, thank you so much for what you taught me. It really helped me. I. Instead of me being a taker, you know, can I borrow your money? Can I borrow your car? Can I borrow. You know, can you let me use your homework? Instead of being a taker, I. I began. I began to be a giver. I began to pour into other people's lives. Somebody's, somebody's grandmother would die. They would come to my room and say, could you pray for my family? My grandmother died, and I didn't know how to do that. So I just prayed for their family. God, please be with your family. God, their grandmother died. I'm sure you know all about that. Please be with them and help them. And they would cry and they would hug me and thank me for consoling them during their difficult moments. Here's what I want you to hear. Here I said everything so far in this podcast to say this. I learned this many years later from Zig Ziglar. Here's what he said. You don't have to be great in order to start, but you do have to start in order to be great. And I didn't know what I was doing, but I was getting started. I was getting started to get started. I didn't know what I was doing. Listen to what I'm about to tell you. Nobody knows what they're doing to start with. You don't know how to drive. You're not born knowing how to drive a car. You got to learn how to do that. You got to learn how to roller skate. You have to learn how to read. You have to learn how to operate a cell phone. We are born to tabula Rosa. That's a phrase that means blank slate. We. We don't know anything. We. And you don't know what you don't know, but you can learn. So I started learning the greatest truth in life. And here it is. If you don't know what to do, just do the next right thing. And here's something else. If you don't know how to do something, that's okay. You will learn by experience.

Experience is without a doubt the greatest teacher you will ever use. I didn't know how to start a Bible. Listen, I could. They can call me to Washington, D.C. tomorrow to have a Bible study for the White House. I'm ready to go. I know how to do that, but there was a time I didn't. I didn't know how to stand up and speak, but I learned how to do that. I didn't know how to do a podcast, but my friend Daniel showed me how to record this. He showed me how to send it through the phone so he can set it up for me. And here I am in Cancun, Mexico, being able to do this recording for you, because this is important. I have 27 people I'm getting ready to go have dinner with, but I just slipped away to decide. I want to do this right now and make it as good as I possibly can. Even though it may not be perfect and even though I did not have time to write out the entire script. I know what I want to talk about. I know what I want to talk about. And in this podcast, it's how to get started. And whatever it is, here's how you get started. You just get started. I have a 3 by 5 card on my desk. Here's what it says. W I in win and then it goes vertical. W. What's I important.

In now? What's important now? I have another card that says the next thing is dot, dot, dot. So you see, I have these little three by five cards that says what's important now? That helps me to be focused. The next thing is. And that means, what do you have to do to do the next thing to get started? You might say, oh, I don't know anything about real estate. Nobody did the first day. You know how they, they got a book, they read it, they got a job. I played Monopoly. That's how I learned about buying and selling property. But I got news for you. I read books about real estate, I played games about real estate. You want me to tell you how I really learned about real estate? I bought a piece of property. See, that's experience. That's what's important now. That's the next step is that's just do the next right thing. That's get started, getting started. So I hope this has been helpful. I know that people listen to this podcast all over the world. If I were standing next to you and you said, Dr. Rome, I don't know how to. And whatever it is you'd say, I would look at you and smile and I would say, well, that's okay, you can learn it. And you might make some mistakes. You might not know how to do it perfectly the first time. Just get started, getting started. I have many friends who are pilots. One of them told me, he said, you know, the hardest part of the whole trip? And I thought, staying on course, landing safely. He said, no, the hardest part of the whole trip is getting the plane off the ground. I thought, wow, how did I think of that? Well, I'm not a pilot, so I didn't realize it makes all the sense in the world. I have this big plane with tons of weight. I got to get it off the ground, getting it up in the air, cruising along, landing. He said, oh, that's easy. He said, boy, the. All of the pressure, all of the focus, all of the SOP standing operating procedures are getting this thing off the ground. So whatever it is that you're going to be doing next, whatever you want to get off the ground, whatever you want to experience, here's my words of encouragement for you. Just get started. Get started getting started. If you stumble, make a mistake, you'll be the better for it because you'll be down the road a little further and you'll know more than you know now. And all of the experience will help you to succeed. In any and every endeavor that you find yourself. Hope this has been helpful. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I look forward to our next podcast down the road real soon. Thank you for being part of our Personality Insights family. Thank you so much. Have a great week. God bless you. Bye. Bye.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.