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Do you know what keeps people from achieving their goals or living their dreams? It’s not taking action. You can spend all the time in the world envisioning your future, setting goals, creating affirmation statements, meditating, and networking with successful people. However, if you spend all your time preparing and don’t take any action, your goals won’t materialize. Yes, you have to start taking action to make your goals and dreams come true.
Most people come up with brilliant ideas and want to make improvements to their financial well being, health and relationships with family and friends. However, self-doubt can step in when you start thinking, “I can’t” or “It’s impossible to do” before they even start taking action. Too many dreams have been shattered, especially those with lots of potential, because people don’t take action before self-doubt starts to kick in.
If you have set your goals, make sure to begin taking action right away while you have high energy and enthusiasm. Ride the wave of momentum before it dies out. Decide what you are going to do in the next 24-48 hours to put one of your main goals into action. If your goal is to lose 10 pounds by July of this year, then make the decision to spend 30 minutes a day walking, and just do it. Don’t delay and don’t make up excuses that you don’t have any time. Then plan what you are going to do during the next 30 day to put some of your other goals into action. If you want to exceed your sales targets for the quarter, then make a plan of how many prospecting calls you’re going to make every day for the next 30 days. Discipline yourself so that you follow through with your plan.
Have faith and confidence in yourself that you are going to achieve big goals. Don’t worry about what other people will think about you – it’s your life, not theirs. And whatever you do, don’t give up. Too many people give up just right before the floodgates of success start opening.
Now that you have envisioned your future and have laid out concrete plans, just go for it and start taking action. Stop waiting for the perfect time to do it. There is never a perfect time. And stop taking so much time coming up with the perfect plan. Successful people will tell you that things didn’t happen according to how they initially planned it. They kept taking action, and made adjustments along the way. My mentor told me that perfectionism is masked laziness. Some people may tell you that they are working to perfect their plan, when in fact, it’s just another excuse and they’re either afraid or lazy to start. So go ahead with the plunge and start taking action. You’ll be glad you did.
Remember Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and The Hare? Both were in a race, and the hare dashed off to an incredible start. He became complacent, and even arrogant to the point where he took a nap, thinking that he could wake up and still beat the tortoise. When the hare woke up, he dashed as fast as he could to the finish line only to find the tortoise celebrating victory.
As an entrepreneur, you may feel a bit intimated by your competition when they seem to have an explosive start, just like the hare. However, my mentor told me that there is one principle anyone can follow if you want to win anything, including beating your competition who may have more experience and higher skill level than you. That principle is consistency.
There are many entrepreneurs who start off explosively. They seem to taste a lot of success early on and may sometimes brag about their accomplishments, which could frustrate their competitors who may not have had such a strong start. For whatever reason, however, they may lose their intensity and commitment after a while. Meanwhile, the other entrepreneurs, who may not have had a strong start, would start catching up and eventual overtake the guy who had the explosive start, just like how the tortoise overtook the hare. The main discipline they practiced was consistency.
Inconsistency is one major killer of dreams, and it’s perhaps the main reason why many people fail to achieve their goals. They spend a great deal of time planning and executing, but when they lack consistency, things start to fall apart. People show inconsistency when they start slacking off and become complacent when they rest on their laurels. Others perhaps feel burnout or exhaustion because they expended all their energy in the beginning and did not factor in a time period for proper rest.
If you want to succeed and win the game, stay consistent. If you are making 5 prospecting calls a day, don’t stop when one of your calls converts into business. Sure, take a few moments to savor the victory, but don’t celebrate by slacking off and putting off those prospecting calls for a few weeks. It’s hard to get back into your rhythm, and you lose the results those few weeks could have produced. You would have also killed momentum, which would take a lot of time, effort and energy to reproduce.
So don’t worry if your competition starts off ahead, and you start to feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. What matters the most is how you continue. If you stay consistent, just like the tortoise, you will beat out your talented competition (the hare) in the long run.
My mentor taught me that by working in success cycles, you will stay in the game for the long haul. Just like nature works in seasons, there are also success cycles. There is a time to learn, a time to produce, a time to harvest and reap the rewards, and a time to rest. Most people live busy lives and try to squeeze in as many activities in the day as possible. We start the day working on one project, and then we get side tracked to do something else. A few hours later, we jump back into the same project we started with, but somehow lose the momentum and rhythm to do it. We try to multitask as much as possible. I’m not saying that we should stop multi-tasking, but sometimes we need to step back and perhaps focus on one thing at a time. We should learn how to work in success cycles.
You can get better results and quality output if you just focus on one activity and stay with it for a sustained period of time. This is like athletes who reach peak performance and stay “in the zone” for quite a long time. They do so by creating a success cycle. My mentor suggested to structure goals around a 90 day time frame. Within those 90 days, break it down into three 30 day cycles.
Here is one success cycle example – let’s say your main goal is to become more proficient in social media marketing in the next 90 days. Break that success cycle down by focusing on each of three platforms of social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. You could spend the first 30 days mastering the basics of Facebook marketing. Spend the next 30 days learning Twitter and how to properly use that tool for marketing. Finally, spend the last 30 days understanding how to use Linked In. Try not to get distracted by learning all three platforms at the same time. You will lose concentration, feel overwhelmed, and risk burning out. However, by focusing on one platform within a 30 day block, you will feel less overwhelmed and master the concepts more quickly. Mastery of the basics and how to use each medium well will lead to better results in the long run.
Once you achieve your quarterly goal through focused effort, make sure to complete the success cycle by including a rest period before you start with pursuing your next quarterly goal. The human body can only push for so long without breaking down or burning out. While some of us think we can work like a machine, we do not have super hero powers, so we start to wear down and became mentally and emotionally exhausted. You cannot keep such an intense focus for long periods of time without proper recovery.
I have always wondered what was the secret of success, and it all made sense after listening to Earl Nightingale’s recording of the Strangest Secret. I’d like to share the main points of what he discussed, and encourage you to apply the secret of success in your life.
Nightingale discussed that out of 100 people that start off around the age of 25 and retire at 65, only one person will be rich, four will be financially independent, 5 will still continue to work, and 54 will be broke. He raises an interesting point – if all of them started off in similar circumstances, why did only 5% become successful? The reason for this disparity is that only 5% understood and applied the secret of success.
Before revealing the secret of success, Earl Nightingale provided the best definition of success I have heard. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. If a person is working hard towards a predetermined goal, he is a success. If he is not working towards that goal, he is a failure. Nightingale points out that the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity. Most people believe that life is shaped by circumstance, and they end up following everyone else. When someone is asked, “Why do you work?” He or she often replies, “Because I have to” or “Because everyone else is doing it.” Most people simply have no idea of the answer to this question. Those who are successful, however, know that they are progressing towards a worthy ideal. They have a purpose, and know exactly why they work. For example, if a school teacher loves what he is doing and knows he has a purpose to educate people, then he is a success. Success is someone who is doing a predetermined job, because he decided to do it deliberately.
So what is the secret of success? Why do so many people work hard without achieving anything, while others seem to be working with minimal effort, but seem to get everything? Do they have the golden touch? The answer is that they know and apply the secret of success – We become what we think about. Nightingale notes that this is the one thing that scholars throughout the ages agree upon. Let me repeat, we become what we think about. If you think in negative terms all the time, you get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you achieve positive results. If you think about nothing, you become nothing. Napoleon Hill said it best in his book Think and Grow Rich, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
People who apply the secret of success look for the circumstances they want. If they can’t find them, they create them. If you want to achieve great heights of success, make sure to plant a goal in your mind. Plant the seed, and then take action by working towards that goal. What you think now will determine your future. The mind is like a field – whatever you plant in it, it returns anything that you plant. Now that you know the secret of success, make sure to apply it and join the ranks of the top 5%.
I'm an Internet Entrepreneur and Small Business Consultant living in Las Vegas, NV. I'm currently working on projects involving affiliate and network marketing, personal branding, and consulting in the Green / Clean Energy sector. I enjoy mentoring people in Attraction Marketing by helping them develop their leadership skills through personal development.
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