Taking Action For Personal Success - Part I

“Success in life is not a matter of chance; It’s about managed emotions, focused attention and deliberate action.”

Nothing…absolutely nothing happens without action!

If you don‘t take action then there is no satisfaction…and most likely a subtraction. Movement created by taking action creates a momentum and this in turn shifts us out of our current situation. This movement, shifts the energy in our bodies and helps to even change our perspective…motion creates emotion.

This is very apparent when having to make a decision. Remember a time when you had to make an important decision. You probably weighed up all the information, went back and forth, weren‘t sure which way to go forward or which decision to make. While this was going on you may have felt a great level of anxiety, not knowing what the future held for you until you made your decision. Finally the time comes when a decision must be made. You choose and in that moment, you take a big breathe and release all the anxiety and feel relieved. This is the beauty of creating action. It moves you to a new space, time, and journey towards your personal goals.

Creating action is not always easy, it does take mental strength. However it is critical to our feeling of personal success and achievement. Action is doing. It is experiencing something. Action is an opportunity for you to experience something new, to learn. Action is about your development and your personal growth. To take action is like a plant growing. If the plant doesn‘t grow, it dies. How many times have you observed people who are not passionate about life, who are not happy in life? At some point in time these people chose not to grow, to stop developing themselves, to stop taking action. Now you can see the results of this. Taking action can be fearful as there is uncertainty around taking action and you won’t know where you are moving to or what the “other side” of taking the action will bring you. So the choice is to either never know and to stay still or to take the action and to create the life you want, to grow and develop and learn and blossom, like the flowers on a healthy beautiful tree and reach your full potential and peak performance.

To create action requires personal discipline. The result of this personal discipline is personal success and personal achievement by achieving your personal goals. There are times when we may be tired or other events are happening in our life that distracts you. It is at this moment in time that you need to get focused again. Loss of focus means loss of action.

Lets look at Peter’s story  to understand the importance of creating action.

Peter was working in a large furniture store as the manager. He had a background in accounting and managed several staff. He loved managing a business and had many business colleagues that he regularly networked with. He volunteered to be on the board of the local hospital and was very active in this role. He was highly regarded in the community in which he lived. He was married and had two children and had recently purchased a new home, which he was repaying.

One day a colleague of his mentioned a new role for a manager in the hospital. The person they were looking for had to have good accounting skills and managerial skills. Peter‘s experience of being on the board meant that he knew the business well. The hospital administration spoke to Peter and suggested that he apply for the position as he was highly regarded and would most likely be successful in his application given his skills and board responsibilities and involvement. Peter went away and spoke to his wife about the job opportunity. This was exactly the career direction that he wanted to go in. This would really challenge him and stretch him in his development as a manager.

However he also knew that there was not as much job security in this role as the hospital was vulnerable to government funding changes. His wife outlined how they had just purchased a new home and that their children were now going to school and that although the new job would give them extra revenue, the job security was a concern. Peter weighed this all up. He knew his current role really well and was highly respected by his staff. A change this big would have many ramifications on his family and his life. He would have to work longer hours in getting up to speed with the new job, it was a much bigger job in terms of responsibilities and skill.

After much deliberation, Peter decided it was safer and easier to stick to what he knew rather than make such a big change. The job security also concerned him and as he made his final decision not to apply for the new job, he felt a feeling of sadness overwhelm him. Over the next few years, Peter lost motivation and gradually started to loss confidence. His decision to stay in what he knew meant that he also had resigned himself to not having to learn or stretch himself any more. His disappointment at not taking the job and facing his fears around it, had left him in a still place.

As the years passed, so too did the security around the furniture business until finally the store closed. Peter found himself looking for work and resorted to asking a friend to help him. His confidence in finding a new job was very low and he chose to help out his friend in business instead of taking on a new career challenge. The new role with his friend required less skill and slowly overtime Peter became dependent on his friend to provide him with work. Peter didn‘t participate in any courses, didn‘t develop himself in any new way. He stopped his community involvement and his enthusiasm slowly faded. He didn‘t enjoy his job but he didn‘t feel he could find another job or had the confidence to go in search of one.

Peter‘s story is all too uncommon today. The choice he made many years ago was made around creating safety and fear of change. His wife was also fearful of the changes a new career would bring. Peter stopped taking action, Peter stopped learning, Peter stopped developing himself, Peter stopped growing…Peter did not reach personal success.

Personal Success

• Is the achievement of the things in life we are passionate about
• Is not what we have been told or instructed to believe
• Is personal and can only be achieved when measured against the goals we have set for ourselves.
• Is a change in the way we view life.
• Is moving forward
• Is using your mental strength to take action
• Feels great

Application

Creating action can be challenging – what next step to take, how to take it, etc. Let‘s go through a process to get you into action.

You are sitting in a café drinking coffee and it is five years from now. You pick up a newspaper and read a story about yourself.

• What does the story say?
• What have you achieved, what are you known for?
• Draw or write what you see
• List all the things you have achieved by this time?
• How are you feeling now that you have achieved these goals?
• Can you visualize yourself?
• What are you most passionate about?
• Write a list of the top 5 things you have achieved in your success journal
• Priorities this list. What is number one all the way to five?
• Under each item identify 5 steps you could take to begin to achieve this goal?
• If you dare…share this information with someone you trust and who will support you…or perhaps a coach 
• Tell this person how you want them to support you in achieving these 5 steps and 5 goals.
• What is the first step or action you need to take now to achieve these personal goals?

After you have gone through this process observe the increase in energy in your body. It is very exciting to be thinking about moving forward, achieving your Vision you have just created. There will be times along the way on your journey to achieving your vision where you feel as though you have lost sight of it. Anchor these feelings now so that you can think and feel back to this time and the energy levels you had and the feelings you had at the moment in creating your vision and getting clear about it.

Think about the first action steps you took and what you have achieved so far. Acknowledge your achievements. Bring yourself back to the moment of energy positively flowing through you, the excitement rising again. Exercise, meditate, do yoga, or whatever you need to do to bring yourself back to this moment of energy and focus. Think about what you have already achieved and what you are grateful for. Notice how you are now feeling. You will notice that your energy has gone from an inward reflecting, perhaps even negative self talk conversation to an outward focus. This shift in energy will propel you forward and you then need to work out what is your next action step.

Contemplation

• Describe a time when you felt like you were really moving forward. What did you put in place in your life to create this?
• What supports do you have in your life to achieve your goals and to keep you moving forward?
• You have completed the action process above, how are you feeling?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below

If you’d like to find out more about how to take courageous action and step into your personal power so that you can achieve personal success, or you'd really like to make fast progress towards realizing your full personal power and potential as well as develop the mindset of confidence, request your Introductory Consultation today!

I’ll be continuing this topic next week.

Roland Gilbert

Roland N. Gilbert is Vice-President and founder of the Perennial Consulting Group a management consulting, coaching and sales force development firm that focuses on overcoming fear and other limiting beliefs and creating empowering solutions so that individuals can live out their passions!