Taking the first step is always the hardest. Personally being in the motivation and self-help industry, I highly agree with this, and this is where I see a lot of my students etc. actually struggling. They struggle to take the first step. Why is this?

With this in mind, I set about thinking about this problem, the problem of taking action. Taking this matter to heart, I began looking at each phase through history, and realized that in each phase of history, only a certain group of people, or certain people, are in any position to actually take action. And in all these cases, what was this single uniting factor? What was it that all of them had that allowed them to be the ones in action?

Then it struck me. The answer, is Power. This is true until today. Some people have negative connotations of the word power. Some people lust after power, and others can also abuse it. However, this is not the kind of power I am talking about. The word Power is defined as “the ability to act.” Personally, I feel that this definition was quite apt, though I doubt it that this was actually what the makers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary had in mind.

It might not seem evident at first, but this is due to the fact that the manifestation of power itself takes different forms. Think back to the earliest prehistoric days. The days of the stone age, and the cavemen. Who was the one that was able to make the decisions? Who was the one to be able to take action? In this case, the selection process was quite naturally derived upon the basis of physiology. Those who were bigger, and had more physiological strength, were quite simply, the leaders of the pack.

Then we move on forward to the future. To the age of kings and kingdoms. In these ages, what was power? Quite clearly, power manifested itself, in this case, as the kingship. The one with the highest power, clearly, was none other than the king. While people may argue that lords and other royals were clearly also in possession of power, their power was derived from their connection to the king. Had the king been someone who had no link to them, they would not have their power.

As we move along, to the industrial ages, we then see another paradigm shift. Power was no longer derived from kingship, or royalty. Power was now derived from capital. Quite clearly, those who were able to take action and make decisions were those who had capital.

Finally, we reach the world of today. What is it today, that allows people to have this same Power? This posed a tricky question. However, upon further research, it came out as an evident answer. The answer, was information. Those who have the power to take action, and those who make the decisions, are those who are armed with their arsenal, information.

However, upon further thinking of this proposition, I stumbled across a fact. A fact that represented a larger scale paradigm shift than the changes in manifestation of power in all of those stages in history as mentioned above.

In the past, in the caveman age, if one was devoid of physical power, one would have to train very hard in order to gain it. The chances of being able to get to the physical state where the caveman would emerge as the leader were slim at best, given that the incumbent leader would be constantly on the lookout for such challengers. In the medieval age, the chances of one becoming the king, or even acquiring a sudden connection to the king, were highly unlikely, and would probably not even happen once in a millennia, if that age could have even lasted that long. In the industrial age, where power was capital, Power was quite a great deal easier to acquire, however if one didn’t have capital at the start of the industrial revolution, the chances of amassing this capital was slim at best.

In our current age, however, information is power, or as Francis Bacon puts it, “Scientia potentia est,” meaning “knowledge is power.” Many of you will have heard that we are currently living in the information age. Information, in this age, isn’t something that is scarce, nor is rare. The situation, in fact, is quite the opposite. There is an abundance of information floating around. Bookstores are abundant sources. Even the internet, which you undoubtedly have access to, is spilling with abundance of information and knowledge.

So this is the paradigm shift that now effectively allows people to be able to make decisions and take action. Power, in the form of information, is now an abundant resource, and not just confined to a few individuals.

Let us take, for example, Bill Gates. Yes, Bill Gates was certainly an intelligent person, and no one can refute that. However, despite however smart he was, the information and knowledge that he had was publicly available. It was not locked up in some remote vault in his house. It was publicly available to everybody. Smart as Bill Gates was about electronics and software, there were bound to be people who were smarter than he was.

Another classic example I like to use is Ted Turner. With all of cable TV’s advantages, it wasn’t hard for him to figure out that cable TV was a potential hit. Many more people would have been able to know this as well. In fact, I daresay many more people were probably more knowledgeable, and more informed than Ted Turner regarding cable television.

So why is it, that these other people who also have information, do not have these big corporations? Why is it that they are not fabulously rich? The answer, really, is quite simple. While everybody nowadays may have power, having power alone is not enough. Having power, is simply like having a lightbulb and not flicking the switch. The difference that made the difference here, was that people such as Bill Gates and Ted Turner took action. This taking action, in reference to the initial lightbulb analogy, is the flicking of the switch. Having the knowledge alone, is not enough.

Hence, it is not really anything inherent with power in today’s world. Everyone, and indeed, anyone, is able to gain access to an abundance of information. Any kid in blue jeans can start up a corporation that is going to be a sure hit. But the key is, who will? Who is going to? The information is there. The ammunition that is needed to start shooting is there. It is provided readily. But who will be the first to pull the trigger? Who will take action? That is a different matter entirely.

This matter of taking action goes much deeper than that. In fact, with this in mind, it is highly reasonable to conclude that the only thing that keeps someone from actually taking action, is within their very own minds. Any limitation that they say they have, is in fact self-imposed.

Information is power. Knowledge is power. Those who have knowledge can act. They can make a difference. They can make the choice and they can take the first step. Will they take the first step? The people who do, clearly, understand. They understand that they have power. They understand that the barriers between having information, and taking action, are merely in the mind, and should they choose, can eliminate these fences once and for all.