Know Your Goal

Know Your Goal is the second of the Five Golden Rules for Effective Action. Together with the first rule it determines your course of action.

Just equally important as knowing the exact starting conditions is being able to exactly define where you want to go. Like when you are planning to drive to Las Vegas, you can easily calculate the distance and time it would take, but you may end up stranded in Sin City if you don’t know the booked Hotel or the street address of your accommodation. Knowing the rough goal will bring you 99% close, but not more.

Know your goal!

Many of us want to change their life, find a better job, live healthier, earn more money, or be more successful, only to realize months later that seemingly nothing has changed. We can’t come up with a decisive action plan when the goals are only vague like in these examples. (more…)

Live Integrity

To Live Integrity is the third of the Five Golden Rules for Effective Action and describes one of two – what I call – action attitudes.

 

How does Integrity help me achieve my goals ?

When you look up integrity at Merriam-Webster.com you find these meanings:

  1. firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility
  2. : an unimpaired condition : soundness
  3. : the quality or state of being complete or undivided :completeness

 

Balance

I strongly believe that integrity with all of its meanings has immense value for all situations in life. To Live Integrity may easily be the most complex rule of the Five Rules for Effective Action, but also the most powerful. (more…)

April 6th, 2013|Tags: , , |

Be Positive

Be Positive is the fourth of the Five Golden Rules for Effective ActionTogether with Live Integrity it completes the action attitudes. By being positive you set the stage for good things to happen.

What it means to be positive

Being positive includes how you start your day, how you react to changes, and what you draw out of anything that has happened:

  • anticipate greatness. Start the day with the feeling that something good is about to happen.
  • react well-disposed to anything and anyone. Be open to life.
  • conclude your day on a good note. Make the good things stick.

Remove negativity from your thoughts. Don’t beat yourself up for mistakes, learn from them. Never think negative thoughts like (more…)

April 6th, 2013|Tags: , , |

Do it!

Sounds easy. Right?

Heck, yes it is easy. Just Do it!

This is the last of the Five Golden Rules for Effective Action and the most important of them all.

So after you realized what your starting conditions are and you know what it takes you to get where you want, you can draft a road map to this goal. And when you finally start acting – this road map in hand – with integrity and a positive attitude you will get there. But only as long as you really start executing your plans and keep doing it. Oh yes, for all the normal tasks and projects we thoroughly plan, execution is just a matter of following the script. That is what the golden rules for effective action are made for. EFFECTIVE ACTION!

Some plans are just too big?! …I don’t think so!

Everyone has at least one big plan, one big dream or idea that he/she treasures. And we keep dreaming because we tell ourselves we are waiting for a better timing, a sign, better finances, the right connection, someone who helps us, or any other more or less unlikely event. We are too scared to loose these dreams if we fail realizing them.

As babies we fall a hundred times before we learn to run. And still as adults we like to plan, think, and evaluate the heck out of our dreams. Because we are scared.

If you never start you may never fail, but you’ll also never know if you could have achieved what you wished for.

We are scared to fail.
We are scared to find out our plans were not as good as we thought.
We are scared to be judged.
We are scared to step out of the passive mass of planners.

And most of all we are scared  that we might actually succeed.

You will never know if you don’t start. And deep inside you know where to start. Do it! Just one tiny step at a time. When you fall, then get up and make it better!

It seems we are also scared to make it simple. A dream is just a project to be started.

If you spend only one hour every day on doing something meaningful towards your goal, then in one year you will have spent more than 9 regular 40 hour work weeks realizing your dream. Nine weeks! And with doing something meaningful I don’t mean thinking – you can ponder all you want in the shower, in the car, while brushing your teeth, walking the dog. You get the idea. Let it be half an hour, 15 minutes. Just as long as you do something continuously you will get closer to your goal each time doing it.

 

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

Confucius

 

 

Do it! Doing means executing your plans to achieve your goals one step at a time.

 

 

 

April 6th, 2013|Tags: , , , |
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