Mind Energy

Now that you have chosen a purpose and developed an exciting life plan with a set of compelling and powerful goals using all of the techniques discussed in the previous chapters, it’s time to create momentum by taking consistent action in the direction of those goals and the direction of the life you’ve dreamed of.

Your goals are just a lot of words written on paper and images in your mind unless you discipline yourself to take action that results in regular progress toward their achievement. That means keeping your goals in the forefront of your mind and taking some form of action every day that moves you closer and closer to accomplishing your goals. There are lots of ways you can do this.

For starters, it is important to review your goals regularly. That will keep them fresh in your mind and constantly reinforce the message to your RAS that they are important. Remember this, the difference between daydreaming and achieving your dreams is action. Daydreamers are great at developing mental images of how they want their life to be, just not so great about taking action. So, if you are good at daydreaming, that’s great! What I want you to do is push through the daydreaming stage into the action stage. That’s where all great achievers are. They are achievers precisely because they take action on their thoughts, the images they create in their minds.

Developing a plan of action and following through on it is the only way to achieve success. You should develop goals that support your life plan and develop intermediate steps, or milestones, that support achieving your goals.

Think about the goals you decided to pursue in Chapter 2.2. For each of those goals you need to develop an actionable plan for how you are going to achieve each one. Begin by mentally accomplishing the goal in a step-by-step fashion from start to finish. Write down or type out the sequential process that you need to complete to achieve your goal. A computer works best for this since you can easily add, delete, and insert text as necessary. Start out with broad-brush strokes by outlining the major steps you need to accomplish. Then, drill down into each step, identifying the sub-steps and sub-sub-steps.

In the exercise at the end of this chapter I include my action plan for earning my Master’s degree to give you an example of the level of detail that I use in creating an action plan for all of my goals. My action plan is one of my control measures because I can use it to track my progress against the milestones that I have put in place to accomplish that goal. It also provides me with motivation each time I complete one of the steps because I know I’m getting closer and closer to achieving my goal and that motivation creates momentum.

In business there is a concept called Kaizen, a Japanese term for “improvement” or “change for the better.” In business, this refers to a system of continuous improvement or change for the better. The changes can be big, but often they are small incremental changes that alone would be insignificant. However, when the effects of these seemingly insignificant changes are stacked upon one another, the end results can be staggering.

I want you to apply the concept of kaizen to your own life by taking consistent action toward the achievement of your goals. Every day do something that moves you closer to achieving one of your goals. It could be something as simple as making a phone call or doing some quick research on the Internet. You don’t have to do something big, just do something!

Keep in mind the parameters you learned in chapter 2.2 and incorporate them into your plan wherever appropriate. Ensure that you set POWERFUL goals:

• Purposefully and Autonomously Set
• Objectively Assessed for Attainability and Risk
• Well-Defined and Measurable
• Emotionally Anchored
• Realistically Time-Bound
• Flexibility in Your Approach
• Unshakeable Belief in Your Ability to Achieve
• Lust for Life or Burning Desire to Achieve

Maintaining awareness of your progress allows you to assess where you are in relation to achieving your individual goals and your overall vision of your life’s purpose. To stay on task, you have to keep your eye on the prize and continually assess your progress. To do this, I recommend reviewing your top goals daily. By reviewing your top goals daily, each day you are renewing your commitment to achieving them and you are telling yourself what is most important to you. As you go about your daily business you will consciously look for ways to move closer to your goals. And your mind, through your reticular activating system (RAS), will subconsciously look for ways to move you closer to the achievement of your goals.

If you review your goals and realize that you haven’t taken action toward the achievement of a specific goal in several days, you can renew your commitment to take action. Reading your goals daily allows you to assess which steps you have achieved and whether or not you are hitting your timelines. If you find you are consistently not hitting your timelines, you should consider whether they are realistic. Just because you are not consistently hitting your timelines and making progress like you planned doesn’t mean that your goal is not achievable. You may have been overly aggressive in your initial time estimates, and it may only require that you adjust your timelines. Some of my goals have taken me many years to fully realize.

As you can see, reviewing your goals regularly produces positive benefits at multiple levels. Something as simple as checking off the intermediate steps completed to date is a visual indicator of progress. It is an indicator of progress and success, and it will motivate you to take even more action in the future. There is nothing quite as satisfying nor as motivating as making a simple check mark next to the goals or intermediate steps you have completed. It is a physical acknowledgement that you are doing what you said you would do, and you are making progress in the direction of your dreams.

Sometimes while reviewing a goal you may find that an intermediate step, or maybe the entire goal, is no longer appropriate. That’s okay. We set the goals, and we can alter or delete them if they no longer support our overall plan. Changing a goal that is no longer appropriate is not the same as giving up on a goal. Don’t feel bad if you come to a place in your life where one of your goals is no longer valid because it no longer supports your life plan. We are constantly growing and changing, and our life plan must be updated to support this. So maybe, based on where you are in life now, climbing Mount Everest is no longer that important. Maybe just going to base camp will be accomplishment enough.

In this book I have only briefly touched on the enormous amount of information now available on goal setting and peak performance techniques. It is my hope that the information presented has provoked profound and sustained thought in each of you with regard to what you are capable of accomplishing simply by harnessing and focusing your mind’s energy. My purpose was to educate you to the awesome possibilities of life that are available to each and every one of us and a practical method for accessing those possibilities. We each have a mind and the potential of our minds is much more powerful than most people have ever imagined.