10 Principles of Taking Action
Every one of us wants to live a good life. Like beauty, the good life lies very much in the eye of the beholder. It looks different for every single one of us.
Regardless of what that looks like in our minds, one thing is for certain. If we do not take certain actions at certain times in our lives, living the life we truly want to live, may be a lot further away that we would like to believe.
We MUST act!
So, you have made the decision to change your life for the better. You have developed a plan, and you believe you are moving along the right track.
But you keep coming up against barriers, against obstacles, against challenges. You may begin to feel stuck, which can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction with your results.
I am going to go over 10 principles you can instil in your life that will begin the shift you need in your life. This shift will create the momentum necessary to succeed in reaching your goals.
Life-long learning and self-education
Why are these principles important? Well, you aren’t dumb, far from it. The skills, knowledge, and abilities that you currently possess are great, I’m sure. But they are clearly not moving you towards your goals.
If you want to win in life, it is imperative that you continually evolve, that you continually grow. Without life-long learning and self-education this just isn’t going to happen.
There’s no chance of you improving your life if you refuse to take the time to learn. You MUST act. Thinking about learning will not change a thing. Even learning itself will not change a thing if you don’t act on what you learn.
To achieve your goals, it is essential that you move yourself to the next level. Once you hit that next level, make sure you have a plan in place to learn what comes next to level up further.
Be prepared to let go
Human beings are creatures of habit. We like things the way we like them. The older we get, the truer this becomes. Kids these days! Am I right?!
The truth of the matter is the world is continuously changing whether we like it or not. The world today is different than it was 10 years ago.
Hell, the world is MASSIVELY different than it was 2 years ago.
If you are holding onto a version of yourself from 10 years ago, then you are falling behind. Scratch that. Not even falling behind, you are driving in reverse.
Ideologies that you have held onto, the way you live your life. You need to be prepared to let these go. You must be purposeful about how you let these go.
This isn’t going to just happen. This isn’t a pipe in your home breaking down over time creating that small leak that becomes a large one.
You MUST act. You need to become the hammer smashing against that pipe to break that water free. Holding on to old emotional modes and damaging mental modes you might have is holding you back.
Partaking in direct experience
I talked about life-long learning and self-education above. This is great. But as mentioned, without action, without true experience, it all means nothing.
Any of you that have degrees out there. Think back to when you were in school. What was more useful to you? What you learned in class? Or what you learned on the job?
As a teacher, the courses I took on campus were useless to me. They were just a hoop for me to jump through. Where I TRULY learned to teach, was when I was put in front of students.
My practicums far outweighed my campus learning in terms of value.
The world today is different. It no longer cares how many degrees you have (ask students graduating currently who don’t have a specialized degree), it does not care how many books you have read.
Oh, you have 7 certificates. You have taken 93 courses? Yeah, we don’t care. We want experience. Again, this is not to say that all the above are useless. Far from it.
They are all helpful of course, but results derived from direct experiences are largely the only form of currency the world cares about. You MUST act.
If you can implement what you have learned and implement it effectively. You may just win.
Question everything
It may seem blindingly obvious, but as adults we somehow lose our way when it comes to questioning things.
We become set in our ways. We feel we have an idea of how the world works, or at least our version of the world, and we accept it.
I find this strange to be perfectly honest. I teach my students every day to question everything (including me), and I shall teach my boys the same thing when they are old enough to understand.
When we learn to question things, including who we are, we start to see a clearer picture of who we are.
When analyzing the world more deeply, we may just see that what society is defining for us as normal, is anything but.
Why tie yourself to what society demands from you? You MUST act. You are your own person; you are the only person living your life. Never allow society to dictate the choices you make in life.
Think about the world in your own way, think about who YOU are. Then act accordingly. You’ll break free of the broken rules of society and learn to be happy with how you operate somewhat quickly.
Move away from external influences
We live in a world that is full of distraction. Personally (and yes this dates me), I miss the simpler times where distractions were at a minimum.
Whether it be Netflix, Prime video (or any other streaming platform going).
Whether it’s Twitter, Instagram (or any other social media app going).
Whether it’s video games, or games on your phone.
It doesn’t really matter; you get the idea. We have an incredible number of external distractions that influence who we are, who we are becoming, and what we do, or almost more importantly, what we don’t do.
You MUST act! These distractions are not going to cut themselves out of your life. It all comes down to priorities. Are you prioritizing changing your life for the better? Or are you prioritizing Will Smith slapping Chris Rock?
Make the choice. Prioritize YOU. Act, and act now. If you want that better life, choosing to prioritize your goals over those instant gratification distractions in your life is non-negotiable.
Intrinsic mental development
Okay, so you have made the call to learn, you have started to develop a plan, and you have even gone as far as beginning to act on your plan. You are moving in the right direction.
But what is going to take you from moving in the right direction to big results?
It’s YOU, the answer always is, and always has been, overwhelmingly YOU.
All the tips and all the tricks in the world are not going to deliver the big results you seek. That comes through action. You MUST act.
You need to learn to overcome the difficult moments where your mind will want to slide back into what it knows, what it feels is comfortable…the dreaded comfort zone.
You must develop the sort of mentality that no longer allows emotions to get in the way of your progress. Only YOU can do this. That intrinsic desire to develop a growth mindset is all on you.
Personal accountability
This is my opinion and by no means fact. But I feel there is an ever increasing amount of people in our world today that fail to take ownership of their own lives.
Entitlement is a stain on our society. The amount you see everywhere today is quite frankly, staggering.
Just this morning I saw a post from a student who has graduated with a fine arts degree who was complaining about living on food stamps and being $20,000 in debt with no jobs for her.
While I feel sympathy that this young woman finds herself in this situation (as nobody should be going hungry), she needs to own it. There are plenty of jobs out there she could go and get. Are they related to her degree? Perhaps not.
But they will pay her bills and put food on the table. Perhaps she could have taken a different degree? One that she had researched as having more jobs available.
That of course is not for me to judge.
However, it seems that more and more people are going through their entire lives without fully accepting that it is THEM that needs to make things happen for themselves.
If you are not willing to look in the mirror and own your choices, own your mistakes, how will you ever start to grow? How will you ever start to find a level of success in your life?
Blaming others in my opinion, is for the weak. And we are NOT weak around here!
You MUST act! You need to develop a mentality of personal accountability. Nobody is coming to save you.
When you finally come to this realization and act on it, your chances of finding success and living a more fulfilling life increase by a huge amount.
Become a leader
You are already taking ownership of your own life. You are beginning to control and direct your life.
These sound like leadership qualities to me.
The world could do with more leaders. More people like you. The cool thing about this principle is that you have ALREADY acted. (Damn, how do I build in my “you MUST act” line…)
By becoming a leader of you, you will naturally begin to lead others without even having to try. By setting high expectations of yourself in reaching your goals, you are now leading by example.
When those around you see that you are no longer accepting mediocrity in your life, you are no longer allowing yourself to be physically out of shape, you are no longer allowing yourself to lazy, they will pick up on this.
It will rub off on them. You have become the leader you need in your life whilst simultaneously becoming the leader others didn’t even know they needed.
This is incredibly empowering.
Become a creator
Become someone who provides value for others, become helpful to others. If you are able to help others achieve their goals or make their lives better in some way. You’ll move towards success in your own life.
The world needs creators, it supports creators, it rewards creators. Especially the world we live in today.
Once you become a creator, you’ll never have to rely solely on external sources to live the life you want to live.
Become goal oriented
You know what’s awesome about this principle? You have already checked off many of the items on your checklist necessary to become goal oriented.
You have taken ownership of yourself.
You have become a leader.
You are a life-long learner.
You are experienced.
You question everything.
You are curious.
You have developed a growth mindset.
You are ahead of 95% of the population out there, maybe even 99% of them. You know who you are. You know what you want in life. You have direction.
You already know all the things that need to be in place to live an amazing and fulfilling life. You are a step ahead. Just remember, this does not mean you have made it.
Keep reaching your goals, then develop new ones. Continuous growth and improvement are what you are after.
Project manage your life
Project management is not an easy career (I studied it for a while when thinking of leaving my teaching career). There are so many moving parts to it.
These people know and understand that chunking their projects is ultimately going to help them deliver a successful project for their clients.
For you personally, start to think of your life as if you were a project manager of a large project.
Chunk your goals. Turn large and overwhelming goals into a series of smaller more attainable goals. You hit each one, you will hit your large one.
Chunk your time. Based on your overall goal, what do you need to achieve in the next month, next 6 months, next year, next five years, next 10 years…so on and so forth.
Take control of your goals, take control of your time. When you hit smaller goals, when you reach smaller time periods, you start to build confidence in yourself, knowing you can achieve bigger and better things.
Having confidence in yourself is key to success, key to living that wonderful life you are chasing.
That’s it everyone. That’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you find this article helpful in reaching your goals and living that life you want.
I look forward to connecting and chatting soon.
Dad Bod
