Week 5: Taking Action
“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”—Joel A. Barker
3, 2, 1…. Action!
For the past four weeks we’ve examined and worked on our confidence from the inside out. We talked about self-discovery, re-framing your mindset for positivity, committing to self-improvement, and using the physical body to exude confidence.
And in our final week of #35DaysofConfidence, we’re talking about taking action.
Why? Because at the end of the day, it’s not enough to know yourself, be positive and grateful, have excellent self-awareness, improve your mindset, and hone your speech and body language maximum impact...
You must also take action!
Even if you were the most confident person in the world, would you spend your days hanging out in your house, wallowing in your own kickassery?
No you wouldn’t!
You’d be out and about sharing your kickass self with the world and doing things that make you feel alive!
In this last section, we’re going to focus on making everything that we’ve talked about for the last four weeks stick.
Heads up: This is going to be a highly interactive section, and I encourage you to use a dedicated notebook or journal if you haven’t been using one up until this point in the book. These exercises are going to change your life.
So, let’s get to work!
29.
Planning
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
* * *
On the first day of the last week of #35DaysofConfidence, we’re talking about planning and preparing for success.
If you want to make things happen, you should *plan* for them to happen. As the quote above says, if you fail to make a plan, you can’t expect for your goals to just magically manifest!
So, with that in mind, I’m going to make a bold statement here. Ready? Stay with me:
Anything you want to achieve is possible.
…You just have to have the right plan.
As we mentioned on Day 4, all success in life can be broken down into setting and achieving goals. And the connection between those two crucial actions of setting and then achieving is planning.
Planning is also essential for flawless (or even just successful) execution.
There’s a famous saying most often attributed to Albert Einstein that goes: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
Suffice it to say that planning is important. Rarely, if ever, can something magnificent be achieved without an incredible amount of planning. Being able to successfully plan out your roadmap to goal achievement increases your chances of achieving that goal 100% (and you can quote me on that!)
And the great thing about planning is that it’s logical process—it’s a science really! The tough part is the creative brainstorming part (which for you, already happened back in Day 4, when you ideated your goals! Phew.) Planning is relatively easy—it just takes time and attention.
The first place to start when creating your Goal Achievement Roadmap is by identifying all the variables:
• What needs to happen for me to achieve this goal?
• What skills do I need to develop?
• Who do I need to work with?
• What can I control versus what can I not control?
• What are my opportunities?
Brainstorm every possible factor and stepping stone that will allow you to accomplish this goal. By getting your arms around all these elements, you’ll be able to create a more accurate roadmap to goal achievement
Once you’ve identified all these elements, one of the best ways to create an action plan for your goals is by starting with a timeline approach: if you want to achieve this goal by the end of the year, what do you need to do each MONTH to achieve it? What about each WEEK?
For example, if your goal is to publish a book by the end of this year, it may seem a bit daunting at first glance. But let’s break it down and quantify that goal. On average a non-fiction book should be about 125 pages in length. If there are 5 months left in the year, that means you need to write 25 pages a month, which comes out to less than 1 page a day. So, if you set a mini goal for yourself of writing just 1 page a day, you’ll easily be able to achieve this macro goal of completing a 125-page book manuscript by the end of the year! It’s all about having a plan.
Now not all goals are as math-friendly as this book writing example, but you can easily apply this strategy to pretty much any goal.
In some cases, you might not need a month or a year. A sprint approach might be better. With a sprint approach to goal achievement, you specify a set amount of time in which you’re going to do EVERYTHING necessary to achieve your goal. Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week preaches about the effectiveness of goal sprints, and about the idea of simplicity.
According to Ferriss, before working towards any goal, ask yourself the simple question: “Am I making this harder than it needs to be?”
Often times the anticipation or overwhelm of how big our goals are cause us to become our own worst enemy in the planning process.
As is always the rule: Keep it simple. And find what works for you. Just make sure you DO the work of planning.
Planning is 90% of the work. You should always be planning your next step. Don’t become complacent—when you stop planning, you stop achieving.
Here is your Day 29 Challenge:
Go back to your goals from Day 4—the 3 goals you set for yourself for the year.
Select one of them—your biggest, scariest, most audacious goal—and create your Goal Achievement Roadmap, by mapping out every stepping stone on the path towards achieving that goal. Break your goals down into as many individual tasks and action items as you can. Pretty soon your scariest goal won’t seem so scary at all!
30.
Achievement
“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
-My Mom
* * *
Making a plan is a great place to start. But change happens—action happens—through a series of small steps towards a larger goal. I call these steps “micro-achievements” where you achieve small wins, one after the other, for a long period of time, and then one day you can step back and say, “Wow, look at what I accomplished!”
My mom had this saying that she would repeat to me all the time growing up:
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
I know, it’s a little weird (and unappetizing?), but don’t read too much into the content. The sentiment is this: every big goal, every big plan, is scary. But there’s always some action you can take to get started, no matter how small that action is.
I call this the “Just Do One Thing” Method.
The way the method words is this: when you’re feeling overwhelmed by a task or a goal, think of one teeny, tiny thing that you can do advance you in the right direction.
More often than not, what you’ll find is: after you “just do one thing”, there’s always a small step you can take after that... And then another step after that... and so on and so forth.
And the funny thing about this process is: the more small steps you take, the more empowered you become to continue along. These small wins or “micro-achievements” serve as confidence builders that inspire you to keep going.
So, taking that seemingly small action of just taking “one bite” at a time, can end up snowballing into an achieved goal way faster than you think!
When it comes to goal achievement, the name of the game is momentum. By doing one thing every day that will advance you in the direction of your goal, you’ll be able to keep and gain momentum. That’s why the “Just Do One Thing” Method is so brilliant. It’s hard to NOT want to keep going after you “just do one thing”.
So, when I’m feeling super overwhe
lmed, or unmotivated, I ask myself, “What can I ‘at least’ do?” What’s one small thing (and it can be incredibly, incredibly small!) that I can tackle just to do something.
Sometimes that small thing is just talking about your goals. The most successful people in the world think and talk about their goals ALL of the time, because they have realized that goals are energizing sources of positivity in our lives. By thinking and talking about your goals, you’ll be able to maintain positivity and momentum on the path towards achieving them. So sometimes, just talking about them is enough to motivate you to do something.
Remember: “Success is a series of small wins.”
So, what can you “at least” do today to help move in the direction of your goals and ambitions? Let’s figure it out.
Here is your Day 30 Challenge:
In the next few chapters we’ll continue to talk about breaking down your action plan even further. Today, I want to challenge you to figure out something you can “at least do” today to advance you down your Goal Achievement Roadmap.
Let’s use our previous example here and say that yesterday, when you laid out your Roadmap for your goal of writing a book, you listed one of your steps to writing that book as “come up with a list of five titles”.
Now, that might seem to be a lot, especially if you don’t have ANY ideas right now as to what you want this book to actually be about. So maybe you can’t come up with five ideas right now. Maybe you’re having an uncreative, uninspired day, and you’re just not in the mood. (My first advice in this instance would be to turn to your Confidence Jumpstart Routine, but we’ll discuss that concept in a few chapters.) If that doesn’t work, then your challenge becomes this: just do one thing.
So, in this example, sure, maybe you can’t come up with five titles right now, but can you come up with one title? Can you come up with one idea that you kind of like that you can build on? I bet you can! Give the “Just Do One Thing” method a try today, and make it a habit to “just do one thing” every day to advance you in the direction of your goals.
So, your challenge today is this—what “one thing” can you do today? Develop a habit of doing “at least” one thing every day, and aim to make it in the morning, so it can set the tone for how you carry out the rest of your day.
31.
Urgency
“Be unwilling to wait for anything, especially your own success.”
* * *
Now that you’ve created your Goal Achievement Roadmap, and have mastered (look at you!) the “Just Do One Thing” Method, the next step is to add some urgency to your process.
Great success is dependent on urgency; specifically, a consistent sense of urgency. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve created a brilliant master plan or new business idea, been super motivated to work on for about two weeks, and then had my excitement and workflow just slowly… taper… off.
Whoops.
But I know I’m not alone in this. New ideas are exciting! New goals are energizing! New goals build our confidence! And motivation runs high in the early stages of inception. The problem becomes keeping that motivation, and the subsequent work and action, consistent.
One of the best ways to improve your chances of remaining on track towards your goals and ambitions is developing a steady sense of urgency in everything that you do.
We know that building and keeping momentum is key to goal achievement, and urgency is the lynchpin to keeping momentum. But how can you develop a sense of urgency in your life? How can you make urgency something that (like confidence), “just happens” for you on a daily basis?
A great place to start is by setting aggressive, yet attainable deadlines for yourself. A deadline is the difference between “I’ll do this someday” and “I’ll do this by Sunday”. Don’t be afraid of deadlines. They are nothing more than a starting point. But the key to using deadlines successfully is… well, using them. Don’t set flippant deadlines. This is a terrible habit to start, because once you start, it becomes very easy to continue delaying, and pushing back, and rescheduling until your deadline becomes irrelevant.
Commit to your deadlines as you would to a new business partnership—you wouldn’t back out of a meeting with a client or prospective employer at the last minute, would you? Then why would you treat yourself and your own ambitions any differently?
If you’re new to setting deadlines for yourself or if you’ve tried to set deadlines in the past unsuccessfully, raise the stakes to ensure success. Consider setting incentives for yourself. For example, if I complete this milestone by my originally set due date, I’ll treat myself to that new sweater I’ve had my eye on. But ONLY if you hit the deadline! Incentive-setting is a great way to help you develop the habit of deadline achievement. It may be a shallow way to go after your goals, but it’s temporary. After a while, you won’t even need the incentives anymore, since your sense of gratification and the growing pile of accomplished work (with less and less to do) will motivate you to keep going!
Urgency can make all the difference in helping you create and live the life of your dreams. H. Jackson Brown, Jr, the author of inspirational book and New York Times Best-Seller, Life’s Little Instruction Book, said it best:
“You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.”
Be unwilling to wait for anything on your path towards goal achievement. Your future, highly successful self will thank you for it!
Here is your Day 31 Challenge:
Pull up your Goal Achievement Roadmap and add a first round of deadlines to ALL action items. Be highly ambitious with these deadlines, but not unrealistic. A rule of thumb I follow: Give yourself at least one day more than you’ll think you’ll need to complete a task.
There’s nothing more demotivating that going into your Goal Achievement Roadmap and seeing an endless list of overdue tasks… Set yourself up for success with ambitious, but realistic deadlines, and start cranking on hitting them. I believe in you!
32.
Control
“Focus on what you can control, and minimize the rest.”
* * *
As we’ve discussed throughout this book, preparation is a key to confidence.
In this chapter, I want to talk about the concept of control, and the role it should play in your preparation process.
I learned a long time ago—in high school, actually—the power of maximizing the impact of the things you can control, and minimizing the effect of the things you can’t.
For example, I couldn’t control what exact grade I was given on my chemistry test... but I could control how much I studied for it.
I couldn’t control whether or not the teacher gave a pop-quiz... but I could control my attendance based-grade, and making sure I was there every day to maximize my chance of success.
I couldn’t control any of the test-based impacts to my grade, but I could control making sure I always did my homework and turned it in on time.
The things I couldn’t control were unknowns since they were ultimately determined by another person (in this case, the teacher). The things I could control were 100% up to me. So, I focused on maximizing the impact of the elements I could control, and minimizing the impact of the elements I couldn’t.
And the more I felt in control, the better I felt. The more positive I felt about my chances of success in the class, the better I actually performed.
This is referred to by experts as “The Law of Control”. The Law of Control is a mental law (referred to by psychologists as the “locus of control” theory) that states that you feel good about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. You are your happiest, most authentic, confident self when you feel that you are the master of your own destiny.
If you want to feel better about yourself—more confident, more motivated, more successful—then focus on the things you can control, and maximizing their role in your life.
Here is
your Day 32 Challenge:
Pull out your Goal Achievement Roadmap again. Go through the map and put a checkmark next to every single action item that’s 100% within your control to execute and achieve. Then, highlight ANY element that might require some external source outside of your control. For example, if your goal is to achieve some sort of certification or degree, then there’s probably some sort of test that you need to pass. If your goal is to run a marathon, then you might not be able to control the weather on the day of your race. Highlight these uncontrollable line items to first become aware of them.
Once you’ve highlighted these items, go through each one and write down specific steps you can take to prepare yourself for them. In the marathon example, although you won’t be able to control the weather on the day of the race, you can control the location of the race (if you haven’t yet signed up for it), your level of conditioning and training, and your attitude (“Even if it rains, I’m still going to have a great race!”) You can also control your training conditions: if there’s a likelihood it will rain the day of your race, then fit in some training run time in the rain!
The things you “can’t” control become a lot more within your control with the right plan of attack.
33.
Failure
“A setback is a setup for a comeback.”
* * *
Right now, you might be thinking, “Um, why the heck is there a chapter on “Failure” in this supposedly uplifting and helpful self-improvement challenge book?”
The thing is, failure is actually a crucial element of success.
There are probably a zillion quotes out there on the role that failure plays on the road to success and achievement, but one of my favorites is one from the boss herself, Oprah Winfrey:
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