At some stage in your life, you still dared to dream and you had those grandiose goals and aspirations, to live a life of meaning and fulfillment. What killed that drive and determination in you? Was it because you really were dreaming the impossible or you just simply did not have what it took or was it something else altogether? Was it because the people around you told you that what you wanted to achieve in your life or business was impossible? Eventually, after hearing that negative talk from everyone around you, you started to believe them and so you simply gave up on your dream for your life or business.
There is only one opinion that matters when it comes to following your heart and living your dreams. The opinions of everyone around you are nothing more than feedback from your environment. As you know feedback can be very useful to ensure that you have considered all the possible challenges, or to help you assess any knowledge or skills, you may require. It is seldom a reason to kill your dreams and to accept an average life, with no meaning or fulfillment.
As you know, if you have ever tried to light a campfire. Nothing will happen until that small spark hits the kindling. Those small flames, which start to flare up, in the kindling, will very quickly die out, if you do not add more of the right type of dry wood to the fire, to help build the fire and add critical mass to it. If you add huge pieces of wet wood with the bark still on it, the small fire you have created with the kindling, will be unable to ignite the big piece of wood and the small fire will quickly die out. The same is true with any new idea or dream you may have, for your life or business. When that idea catches fire in your belly, it is important that you take action immediately, you must then keep adding the right amount daily activity, to this small flame of inspiration, to help keep the idea alive and to eventually to bring your idea to life.
Take the Right Type of action
If you do nothing and you do not take any action at all, those initial flames will obviously just die out. If on the other hand you rush headlong into attempting to turn your idea into reality, as soon as possible. You will also kill those flames of inspiration, as you will feel overwhelmed and quickly move back to your comfort zone. The simplest example I can offer here is one where someone, gets all inspired to get fit. So they sign up for a new gym contract. They rush into the gym and for the first three days, they go every day for an hour of vigorous exercise. As you know we are a pleasure seeking and pain avoiding species, so as the level of discomfort increases as we overload our bodies. We quickly lose interest and return to our comfort zone and almost immediately stop exercising altogether.
If that person had thought the process through and instead of rushing headlong into the gym, every day, they had instead, started slowly. Doing the right type of exercise, which was fun and enjoyable. Not overtaxing themselves, they would have been far more likely to keep going to the gym and their new exercise routine would have eventually become part of the daily routine. If we use this approach, to achieve any goal we want in our life or business, where we quickly take the right action, which helps to keep the flame of inspiration burning, and we keep adding the right activities to our initial action. We will gradually build up the critical mass we need to sustain our efforts and eventually achieve our goal.
Sustaining the Effort
The second challenge we have when we have a new idea, is to sustain the initial effort required, to get the idea going, when we do not see any immediate results. Imagine a hand water pump, with the water level about 3 meters below the ground. When you prime the pump (add a little water to fill the pump) and you begin pressing the handle, up and down. You will see no water come out of the spout, for quite a long time, as the water is slowly pumped from far beneath the ground and it gradually rises to towards the surface. If you stop pumping before the water gets to the surface, it will simply just return to the level it was at, before you started pumping.
This is how most people tackle any new goal, they start out taking action every day and as they do not see any progress for a while. They stop taking action, before the actions they are taking have had time to gather momentum and so they never get to see the results they desire. In the example of the water pump above, if the person pushing the lever on the hand pump, kept pushing the lever long enough, to give the water a chance to start flowing from the spout. It would take very little effort to keep the water flowing. The same is true for achieving your goals or turning ideas into something tangible and real. You need to persevere and keep taking those small actions every day until you see results. Once the results start to appear, it is really easy to sustain the effort required.
Imagine a huge horizontal flywheel, rotating on a vertical shaft. If you grabbed hold of it and applied force to start the flywheel turning. You would only manage to move the wheel a fraction. As you continue to apply force to the flywheel it will slowly, build up momentum, until it is spinning at speed. It is not the first push or any one push, no matter how big that push may have been, which allowed that flywheel to build up the speed and momentum it now has. It was the accumulation of all the small pushes, which added up to make it speed along. Exactly the same is true for the almost insignificant goal specific actions you will take every. No single small action is going to result in the success you want. It is the accumulation of all those almost insignificant actions, over time, when added together will allow you to succeed.
Achieving sustainable success is thus the result of taking action, before the idea has had a chance to fizzle out, to then keep taking small actions daily, to sustain this flame of inspiration and to use your willpower to sustain these efforts long enough to actually start seeing results. The biggest secret of all is to accept that goals are not achieved in a day, but rather daily, with sustained and determined effort.
Andrew is an expert and master teacher that speaks and teaches self-leadership, expanded awareness, effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. He guides individuals and business professionals, to identify, prioritise and carry out the right activities, consistently, so that they can maximise their personal effectiveness and deliver their best; on time, every time. All the tools and techniques Andrew teaches; have been tested in the laboratory of his own life and the many successful businesses he has owned and led, over the past 20 years. These strategies have seen Andrew achieve financial independence and reach a point of harmonious balance in all areas of his life. His purpose is to help as many people as possible, achieve similar or better results and to show them how they can realise their full potential, both personal and professionally and to help them live a meaningful life, where they are fulfilled in all areas. http://www.andrewhorton.co.za