The Secrets to Becoming More Effective. Part 2 in the Achievement series

What is the Goal?
How effective are you in reaching your goals? If you're not as effective as you'd like to be, these life strategies are for you. Have you decided what your goals and dreams are, how will their achievement look to you?

If you haven't decided on your goal, how can you determine whether or not your actions will get you there? Some but not all actions are effective. Yet all actions have consequences, and some consequences are more desirable than others. The secret of success is clarity on your goal so you can recognize it once you've achieved it.

Is it Right, or Wrong?
You need your actions to be effective, yet your effectiveness entirely depends on what you are trying to achieve - your goal. So you need have your goal forefront in mind, energize it by giving it the energy it needs.

Then the way forward becomes clear. Right and wrong can now simply be understood as measures of effectiveness in reaching your goal. Despite the obviousness of this conclusion, right and wrong are sometimes mistaken as absolutes. Appreciating the difference will massively increase your personal power, you'll change your life by investing the time to understand this crucial yet little known distinction.

Despite what they say, the people insisting right and wrong are moral absolutes just believe rather than know them to be that. Now you know why different people have different takes on exactly the same thing, they have different beliefs about its meaning. Hence religions are fluid, with different splinter sects believing different interpretations. Yet they all insist they have a direct line to God, and their interpretation is the only one that's correct. But this is just impossible, which explains why religious wars are so common. The secret of success is to realize that, unlike men, God has no religion!

Are you right, yet ineffective?
Do you know you can think you're right, yet be totally ineffective! The results you get are not dependent on how right you think you are - because you can be mistaken - but rather on how effective the strategy you employ is. This distinction can change your life. Crucial!

So stop worrying about right and wrong, just explore how effective you are. There's no moral judgement attached to being ineffective, it's just an acknowledgement that things need to change. Then you can go the extra mile.

Yet, from the perspective you had as you made your choice, it did seem right to you. That's why you did it, which says nothing about how effective that perspective was. Most people do what they believe is right in the circumstances. Hence different people make such wildly different choices, they follow their beliefs and ignore effectiveness.

To be more Effective, change your Perspective!
To become more effective, change your perspective. But this needs you to be brave since, until you understand a new perspective, naturally you don't understand it. Therefore it will necessarily seem wrong.

So, to be effective, the secret of success is to be willing to be wrong. This may involve some stress (smile, a serious understatement?) Change can often be stressful, so appreciate the potential for stress here. Then discover how to embrace change, and investigate the new perspective anyway.

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought
"You gotta have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?"

- Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), American librettist, theatrical producer, theatre director, eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song.