Actions, and only actions, determine who you are

I read something once that was at once meaningful to me: “Actions, and only actions, determine who you are”. It’s true: There’s no such thing as faith in potential; potential is revealed only by some action at some point, and the magnitude of the action at that time or number of times the action was observed determines potential. However, it’s not possible to invest in just potential. You must ACT every day, because you are only as good as your last day. Past glories are easily forgotten, and past mistakes easily remembered.

This is especially meaningful to people who believe they have potential, but don’t utilize it. This means that they don’t have actions to back up their claims, which in turn means that they don’t have any way of proving (to themselves first, then to others) that they can do what they BELIEVE they can. So if you think you KNOW you can do something, but you don’t, it means that you don’t really know for SURE if you can or not. Not to say that you CANNOT do it, just that you can't say that you CAN. with full certainty. It's the difference between designing a program and actually implementing it -- the devil is in the detail, and you have to face that devil.

I apologize for the abundant cliché usage, but they all seem to apply appropriately :)