The Power of Taking Action

Uvie Ugono
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Effort equals Progress. Progress equals Happiness. Happiness equals Success. I suddenly got it, at 3:45am sitting in my apartment in Houston. I’d been pondering the point, meaning and purpose of life for months, by reading and listening to numerous books, audiobooks, podcasts and seminars, and assessing my own business and family life to date. It suddenly seemed so obvious, hiding in plain sight. The secret to success in life is to put in great effort, into whatever it is that you are doing. That effort inevitably leads to progress, which always makes you happy. The more you progress, the happier you are, and a happy person is the ultimate success, because at the end of the day, that’s the entire point of life. Effort is manifested by taking action.

This led me to the answer to another question, namely, at what point are you successful. The answer became obvious. The point at which you take action is when you become successful, because that’s the point at which you have commenced the journey towards accomplishing something meaningful. Most people have probably heard the saying that it’s not the destination that counts, but the journey. It’s so true.

Say you weigh 200 pounds and want to get down to 150 pounds. You start doing all the right things, eating well and working out regularly, and after a week, you’ve lost 5 pounds. At what point do you feel happiness about losing weight. Is it only when you reach your target weight of 150 pounds that you will feel happy, or will you feel happy each and every time you step on the scales and see that you have lost more weight? The answer should be self evident, it’s the very fact that you feel so happy about seeing your efforts paying off that makes you want to continue doing what you are doing, certain in the belief that it will lead you to your end goal.

Taking action has always been the solution to every major problem I’ve faced in my life. In 1999, the year I graduated from University, I suffered tremendous financial hardship. I’d moved out of the family home in early 1997, at the age of 19, and had lived in house shares since then. By 1999, my financial struggles were real, to the point where I was barely able to afford to eat 2 packs of instant noodles a day. I lost a lot of muscle mass, and my Athletics performance, which was so good at the start of the year, had rapidly fallen off a cliff (I was a member of Team GB’s Junior and under 23 Track and Field teams, running the 100 metres, 200 metres, and the 4 x 100 metres relay). I sank into depression.

I planned to become an Educational Psychologist, and had already been accepted onto the training course at Goldsmiths College, to commence in October 1999). However, my financial woes were so acute that I needed a job, and quickly. Not just any job, but one with genuinely good financial prospects. I’d resolved that I was going to become a highly paid professional, as I didn’t want to struggle financially any more. I grew up in poverty, and was still living in poverty. I was sick of it. My mind was made up. There was just one problem, I had absolutely no idea what career to go into.

So in June 1999, I went to the University’s careers centre for the first time, and found a Careers guide to Accountancy, which I read with increasing excitement. “I can do that” I thought. Even better, the salary prospects were great. That was it. I resolved there and then that I’d become an accountant, and immediately applied to join the Graduate Training Program at the top 5 accountancy firms. I was eventually accepted at BDO Stoy Hayward, and started in September 1999.

The day I received my Offer Letter, on a starting salary of 19,500 pounds per annum, was one of my happiest ever. It may as well have been 1 million pounds a year, because that’s how much it meant to me. It literally saved my life.

Looking back at my life some 18 years later, the importance and significance of that action resonates with me very strongly. My entire life today has been shaped as a direct result of the fact that I became a Chartered Accountant. All professional and business success I’ve had to date is a direct result of this fact. I took action. It paid off. Everything has followed on from there.

Taking action is the only way to solve any problem, to alter any negative circumstance. No amount of planning, thinking, debating, or theorizing will change your circumstances without Taking Action. Actually doing it. It seems a small thing, but it is the entirety of the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful. A small group of people (5%) take action, the rest don’t, for a variety of reason (I’ll explore these reasons in another post).

Most people have dreams, hopes and ambitions, wanting to achieve big things, build a successful business, be financially free, and other lofty aspirations , but there is a massive disconnect between where they are and where they aspire to be. The guaranteed way of staying stuck in a position is NOT to take an action towards achieving those goals.

Closely linked to Taking Action is the Principle of Consistency. I will explore in the next blog the concept of “incremental gains” which are firmly anchored in the principle of consistency. Taking Action only leads to the desired results when applied consistently.

The world is full of very talented people, with great ideas and a potentially great capacity to actualize those ideas and build the life of their dreams. But they never take action, and never reach their full potential as a result. If by reading my series of blogs just one person is moved sufficiently to take action and achieves the success they otherwise would not have, then I’d be delighted. That is my sole aim in starting this series of blogs. I have a goal, and I’m taking action.

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