Move yourself to action, every single day

Recession or not! One of the worst things you can do is be paralysed by fear, or trepidation in business or in life. Half the job is showing up and making a start- the rest falls into place as long as you are able to put to work a few simple principles. Don't be fooled by media reports that nothing is happening that is good in New Zealand business. This is the time when real success stories emerge from people and companies who are action oriented.

Many inspired people know how to tap into these principles. In the fourth part of our nine part series: "What's Your Secret to Success?" we unpack the "fourth power" that our inspired people seem to have..."creating action - each and every day towards their important goals."

Creative and Strategic Time - Get the Strategy Correct

Bill Gates an inspired person by many accounts has just stepped down from many years of being at the helm of one of the most successful companies in the world to further his charitable work. For many years he has been known to book himself out for a full week away from his routine (spending quality time in another country!). He uses this time as personal creative and strategic time to develop his plan. No doubt Larry Page and Serge Brin -founders of Google have been getting just that little bit more creative and strategic time based on the rise and rise of their empire- but that's another story for another day.

The founder of Cookie Time in New Zealand (Mike Mayell) books himself out for 2 days after New Year's day every year for the same reason. Many of our inspired people do the same thing.

What do you do to make sure you have a strategic and creative plan for your life? Do you know that successfully using this time has been linked to being able to implement more effectively and with more success than people who don't do this? Ok , if you can't afford to do this in another country, there are other ways of achieving the same goal.

Much like a corporation, you have assets (your skills, your time, your attitudes, your possessions) and you have liabilities. You may even have a personal mission or purpose or "wish" for something in your business or personal life.

People who live to their full potential and achieve more out of 24hours generally have know-how on how to run their brain, have self knowledge and know-how to visualise successfully. They know how to endure.

More importantly - they also know how to move themselves to action every single day.Often against the odds. This comes from linking into their "higher" purpose and creating actions every single day towards their major goals and plan.

What is the formula of Inspired People?

How do they do this? Well, they are motivated and have a plan of course! But most importantly - they implement well- in all conditions- adapting their strategy along the way to success.

Based on my own observations of these people, I believe there is a simple formula for living your potential and creating action which is really a recipe for achieving all your ambitions.

Daily Action

The formula for Personal Power is:

Potential+Purpose+Passion+Preparation+Planning+Persistance
                                        Obstacles

1. Score each of your "P" factors out of 10

(1 is bad, 10 is good- Do you have potential? (skills, aptitude,environment) do you have an overall purpose? Are you passionate about what you do? How much preparation and planning do you do? How persistent are you?

2. Score the number and extent of obstacles that you have had in your business or personal life so far out of 10

3. Daily action multiplies your effectiveness or personal power by a multiple of 10

4. The higher the score, the greater your ability to make stuff happen on a consistent basis. Compare your scores to friends and family.

The higher your score - the closer you are to living your potential. Of course if you have the wrong strategy this will affect your ability to implement so your environment and skills will not be appropriate for success. Make sure you do the hard work up front -in identifying your bigger goals and your purpose and have the potential to implement well.

A Powerful Strategy

Like any company, you need a strategy, but you also need weekly and daily targets for yourself.

Nothing fancy here- just an easily understandable framework for you in which you can see progress and be motivated by it.

Most people overestimate what can be done in a week and underestimate what can be done in a year.

You will also need to be flexible along the way because obstacles do crop up along the path to living your potential. The problem with most people is that they don't set inspiring objectives and goals that work with the visual side of their brain. Or they set goals that are not achievable in a step by step way and get demotivated along the way and give up. To quote one of our inspired interviews this year." It's a matter of "how badly do you want this?"

They also either don't set themselves deadlines, or set unrealistic ones.

Less than 4 per cent of people actually write down any personal goals at all. Writing down some goals and getting them in the open is the first step to creating action. Daily focus on goals is the ultimate recipe for success, again as long as you have the strategy right and apply the formula.

You can do this as simply or with as much complexity as you wish. A one-page document that inspires you with a few one-liners that point you in the correct direction when you feel tempted to stray off course. Or you can go full out and create a detailed plan of where you will be in 3 years time- complete with visuals.

The point is that the plan needs to re-enforce what you are passionate about - get you closer each day to your overriding purpose. You need to persist, overcoming obstacles and most of all you need to turn intention into action every single day.

A Word on Procrastination

Most of us do this at some time. There are common underlying reasons why people suffer from procrastination:

• They don't have the motivation;
• They don't have the time;
• They don't have the energy;
• They have too many other urgent tasks in the way.

It is possible to build a strategy to address each of the above- most answers involve, prioritization, planning, having the right diet that keeps you energized and applying the formula in general.

One of the Answers (A Shortcut)

Identify someone who is already successful in an area you are interested in and ask them how they overcome procrastination and create action towards their goals. Model their behaviour until you start to see results. Who is your role model? Why don't you make contact today.

Dwayne Alexander, our goal guru, is founder of LiveMyGoals, the social network for goalgetters.