Action Achieves Success

Achieving success requires action. While apparently self-evident, many never achieve success because they never act.

Small, consistent action yields best results. For example, making 10 phone calls a day to current, future, and past clients can generate far more sales than 2,000 mailers. Yet, the phone call seems too mundane. The mailers require pondering the promotion, writing the copy, designing the mailer, overseeing its printing, and ensuring it gets mailed. After all that work, you just sit and wait for the sales to pour in. We become enamored with the glamorous project.

The small, successful actions get ignored. For example, I have to sit down and write this blog. I spend a lot of time pondering the message I wish to share with you. Sometimes, the message expands to a long blog. Short blogs carry more clout. Yet, whether the message is expansive or simple, nothing happens until I sit down and type it.

Consider your goals. Examine what you have done to achieve them. Are your planned actions overwhelming your actual actions. Try simplifying them. Small consistent actions achieve success.

The Windmill of Focusing on Failure

A friend reminded me this week that "GoalsWork for Success." Is it that simple?

Studies show that setting goals improve work, productivity, families, and lives. Setting goals increases success. No hype, just fact. We accomplish more when we set--and write down--our goals. We feel better when we act on our goals. Others help us identify useful action when our reservoir of ideas goes dry. Our success accelerates when we our report our actions to others. We achieve more when we set and work on goals.

We may not achieve all our goals. That is acceptable. Several people focus on the goals they did not achieve. They let the failures pull them down. They feel like failures. They allow despair to shadow their lives. Some vent anger at themselves and those around them. Many become fatalistic and surrender to their feelings.

I call false limitations appearing real windmills. My reference comes from Don Quixote who thought he fought giants, when in reality he fought windmills. All of us face windmills in life. All of us see limitations that don't exist.

Focusing on our failures is one of the windmills that limit our success. I've met people who achieved several goals. They lived better lives. They moved their careers upward and more satisfactory. They took their family to amazing places for vacations. They eliminated debt, increased savings, and grew investments. Yet, for all their successes, they could only see their failures. Their windmill, focusing on their failures, overwhelmed any joy of success.

One method for defeating this windmill is to print each success on strips of bright red paper. Print failures on pale yellow. Put them both on the wall, refrigerator, or tack board. Your eyes will be drawn to the red papers first. You will naturally start seeing your successes. It sounds irrational, but since windmills are irrational, we must defeat them irrationally.

Give of Yourself

Our model teaches that "Others will help you achieve your goals." Recent events emphasize that point. When we give of ourselves, even a little bit, we can make the world a better place to live.

I witness the power that others bring to making GOALSWORK. I would like to share a few for your benefit:

• A mother who sacrificed her own money to pay for her children and their spouses to go to Israel for a week. The preparation and anticipation for the trip bring all of them to Christ and together.
• A woman who invites friends, family, and others to enjoy a retreat at her weekend home. These annual events bless those who attend with peace, happiness, and respite.
• A business owner asks three members of a professional association to help him resolve a conflict with a long-time employee. Their advice helps him find a solution that resolves the problems and strengthens the employees resolve.
• A cousin with skills in business development sits down with another cousin to develop a plan to grow the business to $10 million in four years.
• A professional association sponsors board members from around the world to attend a conference where they learn how to grow their chapters lifting tens of thousands of professionals around the world.
• A neighbor brings enough meals to feed a family for 3-4 evenings when the wife has surgery.
• Colleagues rally together to share ideas, successes, and resolve problems. As a result an additional 3,000 people find jobs, enroll in school, start or improve their business.
• A friend provides a wonderful experience to a man and his son, by taking him sailing at a time that the man needs a lift and to forget unemployment and school challenges.
• Church leaders share their insights, counsel, and witnesses to millions across the globe. Their messages increase giving to others, strong families, personal growth, and service. They inspire, lift, and strengthen their fellow beings.

I could list a score more examples. Yes, others will help you achieve your goals. Remember, however, that you may be the "other" that will help someone else achieve their goals. It doesn't have to be a big task. Just look around you and you will see what you can do.