If you want results: don’t just say it, prove it.

The Latins used to say “acta non verba,” meaning “deeds not words.” It applies to anything and everything. For any area of life, personal and professional. Words alone are not enough.

In effective communication what I have learned, and what I teach, is that it is not enough to understand the interlocutor. It is necessary to show him that you are understanding him that he is objectively a little different.
Think about it for a moment: How many times have you felt misunderstood while your interlocutor sincerely believed he or she understood you? Or, conversely, how many times did you think you understood someone and that someone did not feel understood at all?
I often work with health professionals for training on physician/health worker-patient communication: and in many cases the same thing happens.

In emotional/ sentimental relationships, it is one thing to tell someone I love you, quite another thing to demonstrate it to them with actions, behaviors, attention.
Again, think in your life about how many times you have said I love you to someone (whatever the type of relationship, partner, son/daughter, husband/wife, friend…) and then not found the time, the desire, the opportunity to give them a phone call or any gesture that demonstrated that good you were talking about? Or conversely, how many times have you heard, these words from someone being disappointed by the behaviors that followed?

In business, whether you are a freelancer, entrepreneur or employee, it applies equally. It is one thing to talk about your ideas, your dreams, your vision and your plans, quite another thing to take actions to achieve them.
Think for a moment of such important feats as the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison (1879) and, before him, by Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1878) or the construction of the first airplane by the Wrigth brothers (1903), or of perhaps less famous achievements but which you have seen realized in your own life or in the lives of people you know: what would have been possible without someone’s actions?

The word demonstrate comes from the Latin de-monstràre, whose de has intensive office. It means “to make seen, to make manifest, to manifest, to declare, to prove by necessary consequences drawn from self-evident and incontrovertible principles.”

And then you realize that the world divides into two macro categories of people (which in turn certainly divide into other categories): people who say what they will do and people who do what they say. Indeed, in a good number of cases the people who do don’t say until they have done it.

It sounds like a play on words, but it’s not at all. It is what distinguishes people who bring home results, or who really have living relationships, who communicate effectively, who achieve their vision from those who stand still, continuing to waste time and energy with talk without ever building anything.

To which category do you belong or want to belong?

I have nothing against words, much less constructive moments of discussion and sharing. In fact, I would say that I am a real fan of them. And those who know me know that.

But in my personal and professional experience, I have learned that there is a time for everything, a time to dream, to create one’s vision, to analyze, to think, to explore … and a time to plan concrete actions and do them. Taking the risk of making mistakes, certainly, to learn the lesson and correct the course. That’s how it works. Always. For everything and everyone.

“A vision without action is just a dream.”
Robert Dilts

Therefore, whatever you want to accomplish or achieve in your personal and professional life…
If you want to get results, don’t just say it, prove it.

Thank you.

Emanuela