Taking Action to Achieve Success

Copyright (c) 2009 Willie Horton

Would you like to see more success in your life? Or do you view yourself as a success already but that success is being achieved at a price? Would you like your life to be more effortless, more carefree, more free-flowing? If you've answered "yes" to any of these questions, then it is clear that you need to take some action to change your life, to become more successful, with less (or no) effort. Because your life won't change of its own accord - you're going to have to be the change.

The first thing that you must understand is that your life is not the product or even by-product of outside events. World economic conditions, local market forces, tax rates, the boss who bullies you, the work you don't like - all these external events have nothing to do with your success or failure - they only play the role of catalyst in the life that you, yourself, have fashioned for yourself. All these externalities are only minor ingredients in the "cake of life" - you're the one who bakes it - it can either flop in the middle or you can be a master chef.

The choice is yours as to how you work with the conditions in which you find yourself - whether that's a horrible job, poor economic conditions, a failing personal relationship or a really good job but one that takes up all of your time and energy to the detriment of your personal life. First of all, if you don't like your work, it has nothing to do with the work, it has everything to do with your mindset - plenty of people doing the most menial, boring and repetitive of tasks have been found, through university research, to be the happiest and most successful - it's how they apply their minds to the task in hand that matters.

If you find yourself in troubled economic or competitive conditions, then let those conditions be the stimulus for you to take real action. Don't follow the herd. It amazes me the number of times that I have recently been told by business people facing falling sales that they were cutting their marketing efforts - presumably with the objective of making their sales fall further!! Be different - take action. Don't react the way normal people do - anytime we react, we make matters worse.

And therein lies the key to being the change that you want to see in your life. The normal person constantly and automatically reacts to what is going on around them, believing themselves to be the victim of circumstance. No - they are the victim of their own feeble minds, minds that research has proven to be out of control, running under the command of an autopilot that is looking out the back window and never actually sees what's really happening as it happens!! (The normal mind is subconsciously focused on our formative years and, as a result, creates reactive behaviour that has no place in the current moment).

If you answered "yes" to the questions at the start of this article, you need to take real action - and stop the automatic reaction. The first thing you need to do is decide what you want out of life. Wow - that's a big question - "what do I want out of life?" - but, until you have some idea of what you want and why you're doing what you're doing then it's little wonder that you still haven't found what you're looking for!! You need to define what success and happiness means for you - what it would look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, taste like - that's right use the five senses that your subconscious mind uses to create your normal life at present.

You then need to start acting rather than reacting. Our normal behaviour is reactionary - we are, in effect, creatures of habit, performing all our routine tasks using that backward-looking autopilot. And, if you reflect on it for a moment, pretty much everything we do in life becomes routine, sooner or later. You've got to switch the autopilot off. This is done very simply - by doing some of your routine tasks in a non-routine way. Start with something simple - like brushing your teeth with the hand with which you normally don't brush your teeth. Something as simple as this breaks the chain of chain reactions and, if you stick with doing little things differently, soon you will get into a new "habit" of actually doing what you're doing mindfully, rather than mindlessly as one normally does.

This sets you up for a different life - it enables you become attentive to your state of mind, attentive to whether you're acting or reacting. This attentiveness is all you need to begin to do more important things differently - it enables you act, rather than react. As sure as night follows day, your automatic behaviours will give way to real action - and you'll experience the difference in your life, when it matters. Believe me, some people, who have only seen me speak for ten minutes but who have then put this into practice email me, telling me that it has changed their lives.

You see, to change your life you simply need to change your mind - because, as things stand, your mind creates your life automatically. Take charge of your control systems, chart your course for the kind of success and happiness that turns you on and, then, little by little, step by step, action by action, that life you really want will simply emerge.