YOU MUST HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION: DREAM IT & JUST DO IT.
YOU MUST HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION: DREAM IT & JUST DO IT. In this article you can read about -FOR SUCCESS IN LIFE TAKE A DECISION: DREAM IT & JUST DO IT. 1. DECISION: Personal Power. 2. DIRECTION: The Two Most Important Ingredients. 3. DREAMS: Red Buick Convertible. 4. EFFECTIVENESS: The Producers and the Almost. 5. EFFORT: Worth It
YOU MUST HAVE TO TAKE A DECISION: DREAM IT & JUST DO IT.
1. DECISION: Personal Power
I once heard it said that the world will forgive you if you make mistakes, but that life will not forgive you if you fail to make decisions.
With all the material that has been written on the subject of personal power, I seldom hear that decision-making is the first principle in the development of your personal power. The fear of making a decision is the result of fearing to make a mistake and, as Aldo’s Huxley once wrote, the fear of mistakes has a greater impact on you than making the mistakes.
Now would be a good time for you to get a notepad and write down three areas that affect you daily:
- 1. Where you are
- 2. And Where you want to be
- 3. The steps needed to bridge the gap
This process will put you face-to-face with decisions you must make.
As with every decision, there is the worst that could happen to you and the best that could happen to you. Write each side down and ask yourself what you would do if the worst happened, and then think of how much more beautiful life will be when the best happens.
This method by no means eliminates the risk you must take.
But it does generate a more prepared mind and a more productive attitude for action. It also helps you become aware of some of the obstacles you must eliminate. A study made of the lives of thousands of highly successful people showed that they all made decisions quickly and changed them very slowly, if and when they changed them at all.
Your personal power is moved into action by decision.
The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant. —EPICTETUS
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Tough Decisions
The day before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration,
President Eisenhower told him that he would find no easy problems ever came to the President of the United States. He said if the problems were easy to solve, somebody else would have solved them. Kennedy said he found that hard to believe but came to realize it was true.
Abraham Lincoln had learned that lesson one hundred years earlier.
Lincoln was no ordinary person. He had moved from a very ordinary station in life to a position where big decisions are made.
President Lincoln also learned that a position of responsibility not only brought with it big decisions, it also attracted numerous critics who would attack at every opportunity.
Those opportunities arose whenever he made a decision with which his critics did not agree.
It is recorded that a close friend of President Lincoln’s once asked him if all of these attacks bothered him. Lincoln’s answer was a classic, one you should keep in mind the next time you make a tough decision and you are openly criticized. He said: “If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any further business. “I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.
If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
What a great attitude.
It is also great advice to follow the next time you make a tough decision and are attacked by your critics.
Never bring the problem-solving stage into the decision-making stage.
Otherwise, you surrender yourself to the problem rather than the solution. In the final analysis, there is no other solution to man’s progress but the day’s honest work, the day’s honest decision, the day’s generous utterances, and the day’s good deed.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
2. DIRECTION: The Two Most Important Ingredients
It has been believed, for too long a time and by too many people, that it takes above-average intelligence to succeed in business.
Although I don’t imagine anyone considers intellectual competence a hazard, we should remember it is certainly no guarantee that success will accrue to all who possess it. If intelligence is such an important ingredient in success, why do so many brilliant people fail?
Why do so many fast starters lapse into mediocrity?
While these two instances are not typical of brilliant people in general, they often do happen.
There are also many instances in which the level of success has little relationship to the level of intelligence. It has been observed, more frequently than chance would permit, that men and women of modest ability have reached the top of their organization or profession.
No one has ever been able to determine exactly what it takes to succeed in business,
but there are certain characteristics that we know for certain contribute to success, regardless of a person’s level of intelligence. Successful people “learn from experience” and have “drive from within.” They “believe in themselves.” have “power with people.” “character.” And also Successful people have a sense of direction; they know where they are going and they know they will get there.
They have developed inner confidence that is expressed openly in their behavior and they have a genuine concern for the well-being of others.
Intelligence alone is not enough; it has never been enough on its own. You may be an ordinary student, but you can be an extraordinary success at whatever you choose to do when you enter the business world.
The two most important ingredients for a successful life are a goal and persistence.
If you’re bored with life—you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things—you don’t have enough goals. Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives. Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
3. DREAMS: Red Buick Convertible
I am forever talking about goals and the role they play in our lives. It’s so important to understand the importance of a goal. It’s not so much the goal that’s important, it’s the growth you experience en route to achieving your goal that’s the big deal.
Without a goal, it becomes easy in fact, quite logical to quit trying every time the going gets a little tough.
It is the image in your mind of the goal reached that keeps you going regardless.
I came across an excellent story that illustrates this basic truth. It involved a young lady named Gertrude Ederle. Up until the year 1926, no woman had ever swum the English Channel. Then an automobile company offered a red Buick convertible automobile and $2,000 in cash to the first woman who could accomplish this feat.
A nineteen-year-old American girl named Gertrude Ederle wanted the automobile.
She could see herself with it. This image caused her to decide to swim the English Channel to get it. Partway across the Channel, her body strength began to give out and she felt she couldn’t swim one more stroke.
You may have some idea of how Gertrude must have felt.
But as she lay there waiting to be taken out of the water, she closed her eyes and before her imagination passed an image of herself sitting in this red Buick convertible. Seeing herself in possession of her goal gave her a new surge of strength, and she didn’t stop again until she felt the sand of the opposite shore under her feet.
Swimming the Channel was not Gertrude Ederle’s goal.
The red Buick convertible was her goal. Swimming the Channel is what she had to do to reach her goal. The image of the goal gave her the necessary strength to keep going. It worked for her, and it will work for you if you have a goal. To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream; not only plan but also believe. What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
4. EFFECTIVENESS: The Producers and the Almost
The world has always cried for men and women who can get things done, for people who are self-starters, who see a task through to its finish.
It isn’t how much you know but what you get done that the world rewards and remembers. Millions of people are held back from success because they don’t know how to get things done, more than any other single reason. It’s the single biggest handicap to success not a lack of brains, not a lack of character or willingness.
These millions of people who fail to do something great with their lives know what to do and almost do it on time.
They almost win promotions; almost become leaders. They may miss by only a minute or by an inch, but they do miss because they have never developed the ability to get things done.
The “Almosts” are not lazy. Often they are busier than the very effective few.
They putter around all day long and half the night, though they fail to accomplish anything of any real importance; And they are held back by indecision, by a lack of organization in their work, and by an over-attention to minor details. They have swirled around in circles, and they get nowhere because they don’t chart a straight course and then stick to it.
You don’t have to work harder; must work more effectively.
Learn to make your work count. It is the Producers who raise the world’s standard of living. It is the Producers who win the big share of the world’s rewards. The Producers are those people who have developed the ability to get things done, and will not permit the Almost to distract them.
All men dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
Seest thou a person diligent in their business? They shall stand before kings. —PROVERBS 22:29
5. EFFORT: Worth It
Whatever you want to accomplish in this coming year has a price tag on it. You must give up something to get something. The greater the value, the greater the sacrifice required.
There is a high price to be paid for success,
but you must realize that the rewards of true success are well worth the effort. The highway to success is a toll road. In Richard Bach’s most provocative book, simply titled One, he raises many interesting questions in the reader’s mind. He also gives beautiful, hopeful answers. On the first page, the author makes a powerful statement: “I gave my life to become the person I am right now.” Then he poses an interesting question: “Was it worth it?”
Over the next twelve months, things in your life will change.
You will find yourself in a different place, in a new condition, or your life may be much the same as it is today. Regardless, you will have paid another year of your life.
Amelia Barr hit the nail on the head when she said, “This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them.
In some form or other, we pay for her favors.”
Many people who are not pleased with their lot in life blame luck when they made the wrong choices, mixed with the wrong people, went down the wrong road. Orison Marden said, “What keeps so many people back is simply an unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort.”
Make the coming year worthwhile. No one has a corner on success. It is yours for a price!
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice and is never the result of selfishness.
He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; who would achieve much must sacrifice much; would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.
Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work. —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON