Take Action - Now!

Dear loving people,

I had an interesting call yesterday from a Living Lectures subscriber in Belgium and she asked me an important question. “You’ve been talking about taking action for a while now, what is it really all about?” let us now reflect on what taking action entails…

We all desire almost at all times to succeed in whatever we do right? To go from where you currently are in your life, to where you desire to be in the future, requires that you have goals. Depending on how big your goals are, will determine how much you grow to feel motivated to achieve them. Your future thus, is the continuous manifestation of what you are planning to do!

In other words, what you plan today, determines what you are going to do tomorrow! Your goals must be achievable and reachable; and with this in mind, they must be scheduled in a plan to the point where you conjure up enough emotion inside of you that drives you achieving them!

Imagine yourself 5 years from now... What would you like to achieve? What would you like to manifest for yourself? After you create success, how will you help the people around you? This requires you to make a 'present' decision, in this very moment – To Take Action!

Your daily actions are governed by your everyday decisions! Can you remember a time when you got fed up with something and you decided 'enough was enough' and it pushed you to create success? Start thinking about what you want to create, and then think about what will happen if you don't create it; what would be the ultimate price if you don't take action?

 

Dreams, wishes, and hopes, whilst all an important part of success in life they won't do anything for you - except to potentially cause you to become frustrated - unless you take successful action. The most successful people in life are committed to taking action on a regular, consistent basis.

Napoleon Bonaparte (the great warrior of 1769-1821) said “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.”

What I understand in Napoleon’s statement is that it’s often easy to procrastinate and over-think things. Often the most successful people are those that simply tried many different approaches until they found one that worked.  This is equally in line with Mark Twain who said “80% of life is simply showing up.”

People often look at business leaders and successful people and wonder how and why they are so successful – a large part of this is that they simply chose to take action. Instead of talking and thinking about what they could achieve, they more often than not did something about it.

Leadership is essentially nothing more than swift and responsible decision-making that in turn creates consistent action. Ensure that you are taking action but without trying to over-control the outcome. So, what can you do today to take some action towards a goal?

1.    Choose something today and take action immediately!

2.   Don’t get stalled by negative feelings of ‘fear’ or ‘what ifs’

3. Don’t worry if your idea is not 100% perfect – it never will be. You can fine-tune it as you go.

4. Remember to be open to different outcomes and to relax and enjoy the productivity of ‘doing something useful’!

5.  Learn from your choices. Even if you don’t get the result you want, you can learn from your experience

I guarantee you that by taking action and doing something useful (no matter how small) you will come out feeling positive, enthused and energized. It may take a little practice to build up the energy in your body and then release it gradually.  Your ability to use this technique will surely improve over time.

Give this simple technique a try, and allow your own thought waves to drive you into action.

"No One Drifts to Success" - Napoleon Hill

Dear loving people,

One of the toughest persons I have read about in the success industry is Napoleon Hill. He particularized a practical method of incorporating Definiteness of Purpose and Plan into your daily life.  Without it, as he states in the following essay he wrote, you are merely "drifting" - as is 98% of the population - and no one drifts to Success.  Today, you have the opportunity to read Hill's essay in its entirety.

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You don’t have to be a futurist or a fortune-teller to be able to predict someone’s future.  You can do so by asking him or her one simple question: “What is your one definite purpose in life – and what plans have you made to attain it?”

If you ask a hundred people that question, ninety‑eight of them will answer with something like, “I’d like to make a good living and become as successful as I can.”  While the answer sounds good on the surface, if you dig a little deeper, you will find a drifter who will never get anything out of life except the leftovers of truly successful people – those who have a definite purpose and a plan for attaining it. To be successful, you must at this moment decide exactly what your goal is and lay out the steps by which you intend to reach it.

Years ago I worked with a fellow named Stuart Austin Wier of Dallas.  He was a contributor to a magazine I edited and was just getting by financially.  He would probably have remained a starving writer if a story he was writing about an inventor hadn’t suddenly inspired him to change his life.

Much to the surprise of those who knew him, he announced that he was giving up journalism and going back to school to become a patent attorney.  He wasn’t going to be just any patent attorney, he was going to become “the top patent attorney in the United States.”   He put his plan into action with such fervor that he completed law school in record time.

When he began his practice, he deliberately sought out the toughest cases.  Soon his reputation spread throughout the country and his services were in such high demand that even though his fees reached astronomical levels, he was turning away more clients than he accepted.

The person who acts with purpose and a plan attracts opportunities.  How can life give you anything if you don’t know what you want yourself?  How can others help you to succeed if you haven’t decided how to get there yourself?   Only with definiteness of purpose will you be able to overcome the defeats and adversities that will stand in your way.

One of America’s earliest and most successful franchisers was Lee Maranz, a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it.  A mechanical engineer, Maranz invented an automatic ice cream freezer that made soft ice cream.   He envisioned a chain of ice cream stores from coast to coast and worked out a plan to make his dream become a reality.

He, like many others since, built his own success by helping others achieve theirs.  He helped people set up ice cream shops by furnishing construction and design plans, a revolutionary idea at the time.  He sold the ice cream machines at cost and made his profit from the sale of the ice cream mix.  The result?  That chain of stores Maranz was determined to create across the country.

“If you have a strong belief in yourself, in what you are doing, and what you want to do, no adversity is too difficult to overcome,” he said.

If you want to achieve success, make today the day you stop drifting.  Decide upon a definite goal.  Write it down.  Commit it to memory.  Decide exactly how you plan to achieve it.  Then begin by putting the plan into action immediately.

Your future is what you make it.  Decide NOW what it shall be.