Take Action To Achieve Your Dreams

You have a dream. Maybe you want to climb Mt Everest, move to another country to earn money for your future, start your own business or even go back into the working world after spending a few years taking care of the kids.

Why aren’t you doing it? What’s holding you back?

Listen, a dream is a vision in our mind. Creative dreaming without action is a far-fetched realization to goal attainment.

Typical examples are the great wonders of the world, those landmarks that typify or define the greatness of nations. Landmarks like the Statue of Liberty of the United States of America, the Big Ben of England, the Taj Mahal of India, the Great Wall of China, and numerous more. Imagine if these great ideas, these dreams were not acted upon, will we ever have them to be enjoyed by people from every nation on earth? What kind of achievement will each nation have if great thinkers just sit on their ideas and never acted on it. Absolutely nothing. We would probably be facing each other blankly wondering why and what went wrong?

Probably you’d say: “Oh? well? we still have the natural wonders like Niagara Falls, Mt. Fuji, beautiful coral reefs everywhere on earth.” Yes? but these are God’s creations. God did not create man in His own image if He thinks we won’t be using our creativity and put it into action. He might as well take it away from us. He expects us to act on it.

So what’s keeping us from acting on our ideas? We can name a few. Fear of failure is our biggest deterrent. Fear of being ridiculed, fear of sinking further to a depressed state than we presently are, fear of totally losing all we’ve got if we don’t achieve our personal goals, fear of taking risks.

We all have to take risk at one time or another. Risk may come to us in a variety of reasons, big or small. There are risks we can do without, but there are risks that leave us no option but to take and act on it.

As you can see, risks come in many forms. For comparison purposes, let us consider two: risk similar to winning or losing when we gamble and risk in pursuit of a goal.

The risk involved in gambling is for non-thinkers. This is tantamount to luck risk, not good judgment risk. Risk of this kind has no room in goal realization. It is like ignoring safety on the road, just for kicks, come what may, short-lived, to satisfy a craving.

However, risks taken to achieve goal has a definite lasting purpose, a purpose that will bring untold benefits once you achieve your goals. It is a risk worth taking for thinkers, not for happy-go-lucky non-thinkers. Risk in pursuit of a goal will bring stability and security in life, ultimately leading to happiness.
Whenever fear grips us, think positively. Look at it this way. Will we ever get anywhere if we don’t take the risk to act on our dreams? Will we be satisfied with our inaction, five, ten, or twenty years from now?

If you notice, there is one common denominator that is holding us back from acting on our dreams, that thing called fear. Fear is the biggest stumbling block to acting on a creative dream that it practically holds everything still. So it is imperative that we eliminate fear in our feelings to clear the way to our goal.

To overcome this fear, we have to face fear on the face, eye to eye, mano y mano. Let us take a typical example, say you have a fear of speaking in public. I guess a majority of us do. Worst scenario that could happen is you will get tongue-tied and spoil your entire speech in spite of having committed the entire speech into memory. You become the laughing stock of the audience. Don’t let it prevent you from speaking in public the next time around because if you do, fear has won over you and you will be cowering in this kind of fear for the rest of your life. To win over fear, draw lessons from your failure and capitalize on it the next time around. Don’t stop till you have successfully made a good speech. Once you do, you have actually turned the table around. This time, it is fear that fears you.

Another example with a somewhat different twist, say you are a lifeguard and you failed to save a drowning person who apparently should have been saved. Now this is a big failure because a life was at stake here. In spite of this, don’t give up being a lifeguard just because of one mistake. Think about the other lives you have saved before and will be saving if you continue to do so. Say you were able to save a person in an otherwise hopeless situation, doesn’t this offset or overcome the previous failure that happened?

The idea here is to give your best. Once you give your best, it just doesn’t get any better because it is already the best.

When you act on your dreams, think of your actions in a positive way. What you think is what will happen. What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. Believe that the likely outcome of a thing that we do depends mostly on how we set our mind on it. Our actions originate from our thoughts and the ultimate result is dictated by our mind as well. If we think it will fail, it will. If we think it will succeed, it will. Mental thinking or attitude is the master of the actions we undertake.

Where your mental attitude is directed for a longer period of time, the more difficult it is to change to the opposite direction. If your mind is set on negative thoughts, the more difficult it will be to change to positive thoughts if you do not act on it immediately. However, if your mind is already set on positive thoughts for a long time, it will remain firm on this attitude as time goes by.

Defeat is imminent if your thoughts are in this direction. You may say: “I told you so” that an action has failed because you think it will, just to satisfy yourself when in fact, you are just looking for an excuse or easy way out. The end result is still a failure and what does that make you, a failure. You are just fooling yourself.

On the other hand, success is imminent when your thoughts say it will. Even if it fails the first time, you will learn from your failure and when you try again, you will ultimately succeed as you gain more experience. Keep on trying and persevering. There should be no let up and when success is at hand, you would have defeated defeat.

Here’s another nugget of thought. If you go all out and risk everything, there is nothing left to risk. When that happens, the only possible outcome is success.

Don’t give up your dreams without even fighting for them just because the risks are too great.

The greater the risk, the bigger the reward and success is sweeter. Either way, whether you achieve your dream or not, you will come out of it a better person.

Every Month A Million and the Daily Dose Of Good

Determination and Success

How important is determination and drive for success? Drive is a common characteristic among successful people. The good news is that just like luck and success, drive is a continuum. There’s examples where people with minimal drive, but they enjoy what they do, experience great success. On the other end of the spectrum, you find ruthless obsession.

What if you aren’t naturally driven? Here again, there’s good news. You can adopt successful strategies. What you lack in personality, you can make up for in approach.

In this post I write about the role of drive and determination in success.

• Drive is the one common characteristic among successful people. The one thing all successful people share is drive and determination.
  
• Drive ranges from enjoyment to ruthless obsession. Drive can range from simply enjoying the path to what folks would consider “a little mad,” meaning a ruthless obsession for results.
  
• A desire for personal power. One cause of drive is a pursuit of personal power, or an extension of their personality.
  
• Enslaved by an idea. Some people become consumed by an idea. Their drive is fueled by the passion of bringing an idea to life.
  
• Determination to finish the job. Some people are fueled by a passion for finishing what they started. They can’t stand the idea of a leaving something half-finished.
  
• You don’t have to change your personality. If you’re not naturally driven, you don’t have to try to change your personality. Instead, adopt proven success strategies that characterize successful people.
  
• Adopt success strategies of successful people. You can adopt proven strategies such as becoming more single minded and focused, a strong sense of direction, don’t take no for an answer, and become better at saying what you don’t like.
  

What I’ve learned through experience is that while drive is important, you need to know what you’re trading. For example, try to find balance between your conviction and your connection, so you don’t burn bridges or leave a trail of dead bodies in your pursuit of results. Try to invest in your body, your relationships, and fun during the pursuit of your goals, so that you enjoy the process. Goals are a vehicle. They are a means to an end, but not the end themselves. Be careful not to compromise your values along your journey.

Drive and Determination is The One Common Characteristic of Successful People

Successful people are often very single-minded and determined. Indeed, it would be possible to pick this out as the one characteristic common to almost all successful people. It can take the form of drive: if you want something hard enough, you will get it. it can take the form of ruthlessness: let nothing stand between you and your goal. It can take the form of a strong sense of purpose. It can take the form of determination and persistence: accept failure only as a step on the path to success.

One Single Goal

Some people make big trade-offs in the pursuit of a single goal:

This type of determination comes close to fanaticism and what might be called ‘a little madness’. It implies a rather unnatural view of life, because one single goal becomes more important than any others. A person may be willing to sacrifice his wife, his children, his friends, his health, and even his life for this goal. At times the goal may seem very much like an obsession. At its extreme, obsession is a form of madness.

A Sense of Direction Urges Action

Having a direction helps somebody take action and gauge whether they are on track:

There are many advantages to powerful determination and a strong sense of direction. The sense of direction urges action. The sense of direction shapes the action. The sense of direction allows the value of the action to be assessed: has it got me nearer to my goal? The sense of direction allows all judgments and decisions to be made more easily: does this help me toward my goal or does this hinder me? Most people in their ordinary lives lack such a strong sense of value when taking a decision. Most people may have to take into account a soup of different factors such as family, health, enjoyment, career, etc., when making a decision. The strongly-success oriented person only takes into account one thing: the path to success.

Determination Ranges from Enjoyment to Obsession

Drive is a continuum:

As with luck there is, of course, a spectrum. At one end is the ruthless obsessed tyrant who could properly be called mad. At the other end of the spectrum is the person who enjoys what he or she is doing, enjoys his life and friends, and just seems to stumble into success (as with Nolan Bushnell, Norman Lear, or Sir Clive Sinclair). Readers may be surprised to find that most of the people in this book seem to fall into this second grouping.

Determination for Personal Power or Enslaved By an Idea

Some people are fueled by making an idea happen:

Determination and ruthlessness always seem to suggest a person who wants success and power for their own sake and as an extension of his or her personality. There is, however, another sort of obsession. This is when a person is enslaved by an idea. The person wants to see the idea work, wants to make it happen. Power, riches, and fame have virtually nothing to do with it. Determination can spring from this sort of obsession.

Determination to Finish the Job

Some people are compelled to finish what they started:

There is even a further sort of determination. This is where someone sets out to do something and takes the first few steps. There is then a determination to see things through, to finish that job. Once one block has been place on top of another, there is a compulsion to finish the building. This characteristic also becomes clear in some of the people mentioned in this book.

You Don’t Have to be Driven

Some people that aren’t naturally driven take a passive view on determination:

From a practical point of view it does matter whether we attribute success to a particular type of personality. Some people may feel that since their own personality is not ‘driven’ in this way, then there is little they can learn by reading about people who are so driven. Like the ‘luck’ explanation of success, this is defeatist and passive.

You Don’t Have to Change Your Personality

You don’t have to worry about changing your personality:

I would not want to get into an argument as to whether people can or cannot change their personalities (through awareness training, counseling, or environmental change). It is not easy for someone to become ruthless by just willing himself or herself to be ruthless … A reader can, however, try to become more single minded and more focused. Once a reader perceives that a strong sense of direction may be an ingredient for success, it is possible to do something about it (for instance, by dropping other projects).

Adopt Strategies to Improve Effectiveness

You can adopt strategies of people with determination and drive to improve your success:

A person who will not take ‘no’ for an answer and writes ten letters runs the danger of being a nuisance and a pest but may be more successful than the person who is turned off by first refusal. Such things may arise naturally from a personality or they may be adopted as strategy. You cannot will yourself to have a foul temper (even if this often seems to be most useful for success), but you can become much better at saying what you do not like. It may well be that having success-oriented characteristics by virtue of your personality is much more effective — nevertheless adopting some of them as deliberate strategies can also be valuable.

Every Month a Million and the Daily Dose Of Good