Doing it, not just saying it.

I'm a pretty direct person, possibly because words are so important to me. As a writer, you want your reader to know and understand quickly what you're talking about. I hate it when people at work write a 2 paragraph email just to confirm they will or will not be attending a meeting.  Get to the bloody point already; just because you can use really big words and like to make everyone hear how important you can make yourself sound doesn't mean the rest of us wants or needs to hear it. Another important factor that goes along with your speech is your actions.

I'm very big on practicing what you preach and actions speaking louder than words. If you're going out nearly every night and still partying it up like you never left college, yet you say, 'I'm ready to settle down, get married and have kids' which one is to be believed? How are friends and family who may potentially have the perfect person for you suppose to know that you're serious about settling down when your house looks like a Sharper Image catalog yet you don't own it, you're renting, and you bought everything on credit. How are they to know that you're ready to settle down but instead of dating women who are as ready as you are you date girls who aren't? You're ready to be married, one of the most expensive events to happen in a persons life nowadays, but you've got no savings and your credit is shot to hell? That you're ready for kids yet you've spent little time with ANYONE'S kids to see if you even like them? And can you even afford them, kids are a couple hundred grand each, and that's BEFORE they even get to college! 

I see this happening to people around me. More importantly, I saw it in myself that I wasn't ready which is another part/reason for this journey; to make myself ready, to BE ready. I'm more ready now than I was 4 or 5 years ago, but I've still got work to do. I can have more money saved. My credit score could be higher, I could drop a credit card or two, not spend so much money. It's not about putting my money where my mouth is, it's about putting myself in the place that I want to be, to stop talking about it and start DOING it, until then, it's just talk.