“Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.” – Bradley Whitford
Read more at: Brainy Quote
One of the simplest things I have discovered is the need to take action. You can plan, dream, and use every trick in the book to motivate yourself, but action is what gets things done. Action eliminates procrastination. Action achieves. Action is what turns dreams into reality.
When I read this quote, it explains the crux of what each of us must do if we want to get where we want to go. Take that next step. Make the move. Decide. Your action will get you moving toward what you want.
Taking action does not eliminate the need to plan or strategize. These steps are also necessary. If you act without deciding where you want to go, you’ll waste time. You have to take the time to list out the actions you want to take before you execute the plan.
If you are taking action on a new goal or trying to learn something new as part of your action plan, there will be mistakes. You will fail. Failure is not a problem, as long as your failures do not cause you to quit trying. Your failures are your guide posts. They are nudges that suggest a different way to your end result. Failing quickly is a great strategy because it causes you to notice what is not working and learn from it. Every plan will have its weak points. Reality will identify those weak points much more quickly than trying to outwit a mistake before you make it. Make the mistakes. This is where the learning is. Winners fail more than losers do. Winners take those failures and turn them into victories. Losers give up. Losers keep making the same mistakes because they don’t take the time to learn from them and adjust their sails.
Think about this for a moment. If you do not quit, you cannot fail. Keep moving forward. It is that simple.
This week will focus on my rituals, which are daily reading, learning, writing, programming, exercising, and meditating. It is surprising how efficient it is to pursue key areas and just work on each of them a piece at a time. Each day I am building new skills, crafting new ideas, and taking action in little chunks that slowly build on the previous day’s work.
I hope each of you has a great week! Attack! Get at it! You can do it. If you’re stuck, take some time to read, take a course, do some research, and you’ll find the solution to your problem. Then you can adjust your plan, get it scheduled out, and then it’s back to execution again.
Until next time…
Dave
