Harold had a great idea for a business. Being meticulous, he sat down and drafted a business plan. Then he wanted to avoid any pitfalls so he continued to think through every eventuality, and addressed it in his plan. After that, he thought there were some areas in the plan that needed tweaking, so he continued to work on his plan, refining it, adding to it, adjusting it, until someone else came up with the same idea and started the very same business before Harold could get his idea out of the planning stages.

Planning is great. It provides focus for your actions, but you don’t get any results until you actually TAKE ACTION. Plan well, then TAKE ACTION.

Martene wanted to buy a home. She shopped around until she found the perfect home. Then she hesitated. It was a down market. She didn’t want to purchase a home if the prices were still going to fall. She might get a better deal on the home if she waited just a bit longer. In the meantime, another buyer came and made an offer at a price the buyer thought the market may go down to.

Rather than wait the other buyer TOOK ACTION. Guess who got the house?

Conditions are rarely perfect. Preparation is vital, but cannot replace TAKING ACTION. You can plan, wait until conditions are optimal, then you have to TAKE ACTION or you’ll never achieve what you want.

Even when you act you’ll still have to make constant adjustments to your plan so you may as well ACT SOONER rather than later so you can get started on the path.

TAKE ACTION. Plan and prepare, yes, by all means. But if you never get around to acting, you’ll loose your opportunity.

I belong to our town band. We’re a collection of odds and ends that each plays a musical instrument of one kind or another. Mostly we all played our instruments when we were in grade school and then put them in storage for many years until retiring to the small mountain valley where we all live. Each instrument is a bit tarnished and certainly the youngest is more than middle aged. For example, my saxophone is older than I am.

We have drums, a baritone, tuba, clarinet, saxophone, two or three trumpets, depending on the day, two flutes (three when a guest from out of town is staying with a relative), a keyboard, and finally, we have two instruments you don’t usually see in a band; an accordion and a home-made instrument that doesn’t have a name. It’s a single heavy-gauge string tied to a wooden shovel handle attached to a plastic bucket for the sounding board, all on a wooden plywood base about 18 inches square. It makes a real thrumming sound that adds to the percussion of the drums.

We don’t march. We sit . . . and play. We play twice a year. On the fourth of July, we get up early and get on the back of a trailer and are pulled around our little mountain valley (full-time population 120, summer holiday population 800 - more or less depending on the weekend and the holiday). We wake everyone up around 7:00am and then we all gather down to the New England style church (built in 1868) and have more music by the band, a little program, and of course breakfast for everyone in the community.

The full-time residents came from all over the United States to live in this small community. The part-time residents mostly come from the surrounding communities and cities from which they escape on hot summer days, or when they want to play in the snow in the winter.

The best thing about it, though, is the feeling that exists in the valley. People often comment on feeling how peaceful, serene and something else . . . they just can’t put their finger on it.

I think it’s because of the people themselves; from those who first settled the valley and all those who’ve come ever since. They’ve come from all over and they’ve gotten along . . . because they want to.

There are different religions, nationalities, political persuasions, and ages. One thing they all have in common is their love for our little valley. We unite in many common causes, such as clean-ups, fundraisers, barn dances, potlucks, sicknesses, surgeries, and celebrations. And yes, we probably know each others’ business too much.

Still, our love for the feeling we’ve all helped create, and the desire we have to maintain it, keeps us together. We have differences, yes, but we don’t worry too much about settling things that can’t be settled. Instead we all just focus on being tolerant, getting along, and enjoying the things we share rather than worry about the things we don’t.

I’m not proud of this, but when I was a young man at the lake on a family vacation, my brother and I decided we’d play a trick on our younger sister. We crouched down in shallow water so the water would look deeper than it was and convinced our sister it would be really fun for her to dive in and join us.

Being the trusting sort, she executed a graceful dive from the elevated bank (she’s a dancer, after all). She parted the shallow water and planted her face in the mud, then crumpled in on herself, coming up sputtering with a mouthful of sand. My brother and I hastily swam away, laughing ourselves silly while the rest of the family rolled with their own hysterical laughter. In retrospect, we were lucky she didn’t break her neck and become paralyzed.

I’ve often felt bad about that incident, but there’s a lesson in it. Too often we’re invited to dive into a business opportunity by those we should be able to trust, but who have an agenda of their own. Before you dive into anything, no matter who is encouraging you, test the waters first.