Congratulations on having got this far.

You probably know quite a lot about me through my book, but I also now know something about you. Don't panic, I am not using Jedi mind tricks but can infer a couple of things about you just because you have got this far (even if you jumped straight here from the start). You are a reader, you are probably already a high achiever (yes, blatant flattery) and you are hungry to know how to make this work, what you can do differently.

How can you translate your knowledge into action to become a power player?

Where do you begin?

The story of the hermit crab

The hermit crab lives in a salvaged empty seashell. As it slowly outgrows its shell the shell starts to pinch. The crab knows if it stays in the same shell it will die: the price of not changing is as high as it could get.

So the crab leaves its shell, and for some time it is naked and vulnerable, an easy target for predators … until it finds a new, bigger shell. What bliss when it does! It will live in its new home and enjoy the change it has made.

The hermit crab is a good analogy when thinking about the difficulties around change — how you yourself can sabotage it, and how you can make it work for you. As a professional influencer, your shell pinches every time you think, ‘What can I do better, and what should I be doing that I am not doing right now?'

So what holds us back?

The many faces of fear

Let's use the dreaded ‘f' word here. Fear is a wily opponent and wears many clever disguises. Do you recognise it?

I often hear leaders complain, ‘This wouldn't work in my organisation / my culture / the work I do'. Fear can make you shut down before you even start. It can make you dismissive before you even try. You blame your context and think, ‘If only I was somewhere else'. But wherever we go, and even if our context changes, fear is our constant companion.

Fear also manifests through procrastination: ‘I'll start that next week / when I'm back from holidays / on my next project.' Here fear wears a deceptive action disguise — it's going to happen, but not now, and not now soon turns into never.

All the research shows that if you don't put a new skill into action in 24 to 48 hours, 70 to 80 per cent of what you have learned vanishes. The longer you leave it, the more your knowledge disappears, until it is gone entirely. What a tragic waste of your time and energy!

Fear also propagates self-doubt: ‘Who am I to think I can become a professional rock star influencer?' It makes us risk averse: ‘I grew up with hard power. It worked for me, so why change now?' And it makes you resistant to change and a victim of self-sabotage: ‘If it ain't broke, why fix it?'

Fear's most dangerous disguise is perfectionism. You'll start when you've mastered the technique, or when all your bills are paid, or when the sun comes out … an ever longer list of excuses. Perfectionism is the enemy of execution, the smiling, cherubic poster child of procrastination.

Every time I write a deeply personal blog, for example, I am racked by self-doubt. On a scale ranging from a smidgen to paralysing, mine leans well towards the latter. If this happens to you, you'll always question whether your efforts will be valuable for your readers. Are you too personal? (It's a blog, not group therapy.) You feel vulnerable, and are afraid of being judged.

This suite of symptoms has a name, and a cure.

I call it ‘My baby is ugly syndrome': the fear that people may find your precious output unsightly. Inhabiting this shadowy world, even briefly, stops you from challenging yourself. It's as though you are battling 50 shades of fear.

What strategies will help you? The first one is simple. American author, educator and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, ‘You don't have to be great to start but you have to start to be great'.

Start small

One success strategy is, ‘Think big, start small, and go fast'. Starting small means defining the immediate, manageable first (and next) step in a change strategy that may otherwise threaten to overwhelm. No matter how large the task at hand, identifying and executing that first small step will break the logjam.

In Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring, a beleaguered Bilbo Baggins says, ‘I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread'. Don't spread yourself too thin. You're sure to know someone who, having decided on a fresh start, joins a gym, cuts out junk food, runs 10 kilometres a day, goes great guns for a month … and then drops off the wagon spectacularly.

To make a start with personal and professional change, spend some time online reviewing change strategies. You'll find many good and smart strategies that professionals all over the world have used successfully. Pick one or two that you think are likely to suit your temperament, context and personality and work best for you, and give some of the ideas in this book a red hot go too.

Do the work

Jerry Seinfeld summed up the secret behind his success in just three words: ‘Do the work'. And he practises this tip daily. He writes every single day and then marks a cross on the date on his calendar. His crosses form a chain, he once advised a young would-be comedian. ‘Your job is not to break the chain.'

What will help you do the work? One strategy I have learned over the years is to tell myself, ‘I'll only do 10 minutes, then I'll stop'. This tricks me into starting, which is often the hardest part, and of course after 10 minutes I've gained momentum and generally keep going.

Another strategy I have learned is to buddy up with someone. Whether going for a run or starting a new work project, collaboration helps keep you accountable. We used this exact strategy to write and complete our first book in record time.

My mentor Peter Cook, a thought leader on implementation of projects that matter, says you should identify where you are weakest — whether it's starting, continuing or completing the work — and find and implement strategies that help you through that weakness.

Woody Allen famously said, ‘Eighty per cent of success is showing up', and nothing is more important than turning up and doing the work. In The War of Art, in which author Steve Pressfield talks about strategies to overcome your resistance to achieving your creative goals, his number one principle is showing up to do the work.

For a writer it means writing every day, even if it's just 100 words. But showing up and doing the work don't in themselves mean we have conquered our fears. Fear is devious and multifaceted; lose one fear and it can quickly be replaced by another. I learned the most liberating strategy from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, in which she advises us to go for quantity and trust the universe to give us quality.

I often ask my friend Kath Walters, a veteran journalist and content guru, for her opinion. Kath always shoots from the hip, which is exactly what I need when plagued by self-doubt.

Life is full of naysayers; for balance you need truth-sayers too — people who have the courage to call it as it is. They'll tell you if your baby is ugly, and let you know when your fear is distorting reality.

Gradually, then suddenly

In Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, two characters who have just met are sizing each other up. One of them cuts to the chase, asking, ‘How did you go bankrupt?' The other responds, ‘Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly'.

So often this change of tempo or the tempo of change — gradually and then suddenly — can frustrate and derail our best efforts. We all love instant results, whether we're aiming for personal or organisational change. So how can you accelerate results in this two-speed change system?

Make momentum your best friend. Throw everything into the change for the first 30, 60 or 90 days. Research on personal change suggests it takes 21 continuous days to create a new habit. Building momentum early allows you to reach that tipping point into speed. Going too slowly, like keeping a car in first gear, can kill momentum; you simply lose interest in the project.

A friend encourages me to write according to the advice of the famous American cartoonist, author and journalist James Thurber: ‘Don't get it right, get it written'. (But be sure to use a good editor afterwards.)

Stay motivated

If you have made the change and become the mega influencer you want to be, how do you now keep yourself motivated, and prevent complacency and hubris from setting in? I'll answer that laterally by asking another question.

Have you ever wondered why you spend so much time going through your email when there are so many more pressing demands on your time? This question intrigued Dr Jason Fox, a leading international motivation strategy and design expert on a quest to liberate the world from poorly designed work.

I never expected his answer would lie in a longitudinal study on motivation conducted by the Harvard Business School. In this study, the researchers asked leaders what they thought motivated people. The response was the usual mix of incentives ranging from money to feedback. But when the researchers asked employees what motivated them, the answers they received were more surprising.

The number one motivator for employees was a sense of progress. This is known as the progress principle, or the power of small wins.

Dr Fox recommends making progress visible, whatever that looks like for you, for example through scoreboards, work-in-progress meetings or status updates.

This research also answers the vexed question of why, when we have an important or pressing deadline, we work through our emails first. Because it gives us a sense of progress. Isn't it so satisfying to knock your emails down from 110 to a more manageable 25 — at least temporarily?

So think about how you are going to make progress visible for yourself. You will be surprised how this will keep you steady and unwavering on your journey. You'll find that by making a start, you become better and better at influence, until you become a mega influencer and a power player.

The die is cast

In the 2004 TV series The Rebel Billionaire: Branson's quest for the best, Virgin Worldwide's billionaire founder, Richard Branson, offered the winner, Shawn Nelson, a cheque for one million dollars. But he also gave Shawn an unexpected choice.

Shawn could take the money and walk away a wealthy man. Or he could toss a coin for an even bigger but undisclosed prize. If he lost the toss he would lose everything.

Branson held out the cheque, then put it away and held out a silver coin. What would it be? The coin toss for the chance of an even bigger prize and the risk of losing it all. Or the million dollars now?

Shawn Nelson was shaken. He pondered momentarily. Tossing the coin was tempting. But his entrepreneurial dream depended on loyal staff, many of whom had not been paid for months.

He opted for the money. Branson smiled, and admitted that had Nelson opted for the toss of the coin he would have lost all respect for the young winner.

In his book Screw It, Let's Do It, Branson writes that Shawn Nelson made the right choice because he didn't gamble on something he couldn't control. As a reward he got the cheque and the mystery prize of the newly created position of President of Virgin Worldwide, a huge learning opportunity.

Shawn Nelson needed courage to stare down a massive temptation. This book asks you to have the courage to say no, or not good enough, to some old habits. Do a Shawn: say no to the past, and yes to a bright new future where you can win the cheque and the toss.

Your two biggest enemies are not your biggest competitors. They're inertia and the status quo.

It would be so easy to close this book and say that's great … and go back to the same life. You could also happily defend the status quo, which, surprisingly, takes more energy but saves you from the pain, risk and uncertainty of attempting change — the ‘If it ain't broke, why fix it?' approach. Or you could tell yourself that next time you have a problem, you'll simply read this book again.

I'm reminded of a line from the movie of the US/Canadian boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane' Carter: ‘Sometimes we don't pick the books we read, they pick us'.

It rings true for me. So why did this book pick you? Is action the next step in your professional and personal success? Fortune favours the brave.

When Julius Caesar and his army crossed the Rubicon river in Rome to seize the city from his enemies, he famously declared ‘alea iacta est' (the die is cast). He knew he had made a fateful, irrevocable decision that would transform both his own fortunes and Rome's. Caesar was a professional soldier who achieved many of his victories by taking bold but informed risks. These moves often exposed him and his troops to great danger, but they also resulted in memorable victories.

I invite you to embrace the spirit of action, knowing that action brings rewards that hubris cannot. And, even in the midst of the most daunting, unimaginable change, remember Plato's timeless words: ‘The beginning is the most important part of the work'.

I would love to partner you on this journey. Please connect with me via:

My website: yamininaidu.com.au

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/yamininaidu

Twitter: @yamininaidu_

I wish you all possible courage and good fortune on your journey to becoming a power player.

Now stop reading and get to it!

Yamini