Take Action

Coming from a business background I’ve studied many strategies about what it takes to make a business successful and I’ve always been a firm believer that one of the simplest & most important secrets to success in any discipline is ACTION. Just the simple act of doing. Leadership is essentially nothing more than swift & responsible decision-making that in turn creates consistent action.

What I mean by this is that it’s often easy to procrastinate and over-think things. The research shows that often the most successful people are those that simply tried many different approaches until they found one that worked. As Mark Twain said:

 ‘80% of life is simply showing up’.

People often look at business leaders & successful people and wonder how and why they are so successful – a large part of this is that they simply chose to take action. Instead of talking and thinking about what they could achieve “wouldn’t it be great if…” they more often than not did something about it.

I think the second truth to this is to ensure you are taking action but without trying to over-control the outcome.

I like to call it:

Open minded Action

It’s all very well to take action but if you focus too much on a specific outcome or route to a goal then you’re likely to compromise your personal happiness. If you’re so focused on achieving a certain outcome then you will often miss out on other opportunities, that in the long run could have provided you with more success…they simply pass you by because you are so fixated on one specific outcome or way of doing things.

This approach does involve a certain amount of ‘letting go’. As human beings we naturally want to feel like we are in control at all times and ‘open minded action’ essentially means taking control initially by initiating action, but letting go of only one specific result and remaining open to alternative outcomes.

Interestingly, many innovation breakthroughs occurred when the innovator stopped thinking about the end result and randomly ‘stumbled upon’ a better solution (for example Einstein & relativity).

Simple Life Strategy: How taking action creates success

So – what can you do today to take some action towards a goal?

  1. choose something today and take action immediately!
  2. don’t get stalled by negative feelings of ‘fear’ or ‘what ifs’
  3. don’t worry if your idea is not 100% perfect – it never will be. Plus you can finesse it as you go.
  4. remember to be open to different outcomes & to relax and enjoy the productivity of ‘DOING SOMETHING’!
  5. learn from your choices. Even if you don’t get the result you want, you can learn from your experience

I guarantee you that by taking action and DOING SOMETHING (no matter how small) you will come out feeling positive, enthused and energized – so do it now!

I’d love to hear how you’ve taken action today – why not share your experience by commenting on this post.

To learn in-depth about how you can take action to create your own success, contact me to find out more about my success coaching programs.

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