How To Aim High And Take Deliberate Action
Post written by Daniel Richard. Follow me on Twitter.
“Shallow men believe in luck, Strong men believe in cause and effect.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
A quick survey with a handful of friends about their goals resulted in the following responses:
“I want to be successful!”
“I want to make $100,000 a month!”
“Great! What are the 3 steps you are going to take in reaching your goals?” I asked.
Most gave blank stares, usually accompanied by a “uhm… err…” responses.
You gotta aim high
All of us here gotta have dreams, goals, wants, needs, and desires. Let’s take it that every breathe we have equips us with the energy (oxygen carried in blood to the tissues in our body) needed to push us forward.
Give your energy a purpose to work towards to.
You gotta have a plan
The first lesson I learned when I started out reading books on business and entrepreneurship is to have a business plan. To some, they will call business plans a “total waste of time” as though it is some sort of “unnecessary formality” that they could ignore.
I agree. That’s if they aren’t going to run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.
Luck is never a strategy.
Aim high, but have a plan ready.
A plan doesn’t need to be specific to the minute details—that will intimidate most people to even start planning. But plans shouldn’t be lackluster; to say that “I plan to make $100,000 this month” while not knowing how to break through the first $1,000 (or not to mention, the first $100) is not a plan.
Instead of teaching how a plan should look like (not everyone can follow a sequential step-by-step guide), I’d share with you some objectives a plan should achieve:
1. Allows you to better present yourself
This is a take on the term “executive summary”. In layman terms, this is the part where you summarize the entire plan into a short paragraph (or even better, a one line sentence), including recommendations (the strategies that you are taking), and that you can personally refer to while making decisions in the overall plan. It’ll help when others ask you in a conversation in regards to your goals or plans—allowing you to better present yourself and not looking as though you have no clue on what you are supposed to be doing to get to your desired destination.
2. Allows you to set a time frame
Or a deadline. This will motivate you to get things done, and move on to the next step. You can give yourself a short grace period (also known as a “buffer” time) in case things don’t go according to plan (not everything does). There are people who I know that doesn’t get anything done either because they have no clue on how to go about doing it, or that they did not set any deadline on when to complete the task at hand.
3. Allows you to make better decisions
Such that when someone asks you on what’s the step you are taking next, you won’t go on saying “err … I don’t know”.
Take deliberate action
Thinking of achieving a huge goal without actually doing anything about it will not get you far. Even doing things or hustling (in the negative sense of making oneself busy) just to fill up the 10,000 hours wouldn’t make one an instant success.
You need to get engaged with deliberate action. That is to move forward to something—have a trajectory.
It makes more sense having to not only be committed to put in the hours of practice and knowing what to improve on. Or else, it’ll only be a waste of time to putting in hours, seeing no positive results, and not having a single hint of idea on the areas to build up on.
Moving on to the new year, you’ll be setting sights on a whole new journey, bringing in a whole new set of goals and resolutions that you are all pumped up in achieving.
Aim high, get a solid battle plan, and take deliberate action.
Have a plan for 2010? Not yet? Let’s not wait any longer.
What would be your next step that you can choose to accomplish this weekend and one approach that you are taking to get you there?
