At the core of why I’m in the media and also in financial advice is my core competence as an educator. Over the weekend I saw an online headline that read The Six Books Tony Robbins Recommends Everyone Should Read. Given Robbins unparalleled success in inspiring change in others, it got me thinking about how people read great insightful books but often don’t change!

After thinking about the subject and researching the observations of many of the greats of history, it became clear that one big obstacle explains why change ends up being impossibly hard for too many people. What is that obstacle? I put it down to the unwillingness to act once great guidance is given either in a book, from a mentor or a high achiever.

Given this, I thought I’d try to prick your conscience about why you haven’t built enough wealth, created the business or job you really want or lost the weight you know you should lose. Run your eye over some of my favourite quotes/advice from people whose legendary achievements make you think. These nine people I’ve mentioned below walked the talk and should be heeded.

1. John Wooden was the USA’s greatest college basketball coach who mentored some of the most famous stars in the NBL’s history. This is what he said: Don’t let what youcannotdo interfere with what you can do.

2. Michelangelo: There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

3. Pablo Picasso: Action is the foundational key to all success.
4. Basketball legend Michael Jordan: I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.
5. Leonardo da Vinci: Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.
6. US businessman W. Clement Stone: Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will.
7. US author Richard Evans: The undertaking of an action brings new strength.
8. US author Nashid Sharrief: Action eliminates doubt.
9. William Shakespeare: Action is eloquence.

I’ve bolded how many times the word action was at the centre of the advice from those who have put big runs on the board. But if you look at the next list, you can see that these role models are telling you to take action, if only in different words.

1. US president Thomas Jefferson: Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Author George Elliott: “It is never too late to be who you might have been.”
3. Apple’s Steve Jobs: The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
4. Confucius: Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
5. Prolific inventor Thomas Edison: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try one more time.”
6. Ancient Chinese Proverb: Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid of only standing still.
   8. Teddy Roosevelt: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
7. US entrepreneur Juan Casimiro: To get what we’ve never had, we must do what we have never done.
8. Actor James Dean: Dream as if you will live forever. Live as if you will die tomorrow.
9. UK Philosopher George Henry Lewes: The only cure for grief is action.
10. British author C.S. Lewis: Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
11. 7mindsets.com: There are three things that we control that will improve the quality of our lives: the thoughts we have, the words we use, and most importantly, the actions we take.

My important message to you is to keep trying to take action by remembering the words of a man, who despite some mistakes he made as a politician in early days, eventually beat the greatest monster of human history, Adolf Hitler. In fighting to defeat this madman

Winston Churchill lived the words he used to inspire the Brits to ultimately prevail. These words were: Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage to continue that counts.

And then there was the famous advice he gave in a speech to the Harrow School in 1941, in the depths of the aircraft bombings from Germany’s Luftwaffe: I am addressing myself to the School — surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our school history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated…

The doubters and lesser men and women were wrong, and it showed the power of self-belief, the focus on winning and acting.

Finally, if you’ve tried and haven’t got the results you wanted, remember the words of Sylvester Stallone’s alter ego, Rocky Balboa: Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up.

One last piece of advice: Work out what you want. Determine the price you have to pay. Pay the price. Ultimately, this means you’ll have to take the action that has stopped you getting what you want.

And that’s the best advice I can give you.