Step 3 – Take Action
A plan gives your wish form; action gives it life. Step 1 is to choose a wish, Step 2 is to create a plan for making your wish come true, and Step 3 is to take the action called for in your plan.
When you act, you set causes in motion. When you set causes in motion, you are rewarded with effects. When you take action, you make a giant leap from thinking your wish to living your wish. You change yourself from a dreamer to a doer. To make that leap, you need to overcome one of the greatest forces in nature: inertia.
When Janie was in college, she decided that she wanted to become a writer. When she got out of college, she got a job as a nurse. For years, she raised her family and did everything she was supposed to do, except write. As she got older, she realized that she was going to have to start writing or give up her dream of becoming a writer. She decided to stick with her dream, but that still left her with the same problem: How was she going to get herself to write?
Then she remembered something she learned in high school physics: the law of inertia. A body in motion tends to remain in motion; a body at rest tends to remain at rest. She began to wonder if inertia applied to human behavior the way it applied to the behavior of comets streaking past the sun. What if her problem was simply inertia? What if all she had to do was to turn herself from a body at rest to a body in motion?
She decided to find out. She made a commitment to herself to write something every day. It didn’t matter how little she wrote. It could be a sentence or two if she wanted, or even a single word if that’s all she could muster. But no matter how busy she was, or how distracted, or how tired, she had to write something every day. She promised herself she would try this for thirty days and see what happened.
It worked, and she learned one of the greatest lessons of her life. Inertia is the single greatest barrier to success. It’s also the easiest to overcome. All you have to do is to act. Any action you take, no matter how trivial, will do the trick.
The easier you make it on yourself to act, the easier it is to overcome inertia. Janie made it so easy on herself to write that she no longer had any reason not to write. Instead of making a big production out of it, she made it as small a production as she could. She gave herself permission to do nothing more than type out a few keystrokes on the computer at a time.
The simple act of typing was all she needed to overcome inertia. With her first keystroke, she turned herself from a body at rest into a body in motion. Once in motion, the most natural thing for her to do was to continue in motion and keep writing. She would sit to write a single sentence and then stand up after having completed an entire page.
You can overcome your inertia the same way. Think small. Instead of trying to complete your wish in a single day, focus on a single step, the smallest step you can think of. The moment you take action—any action—you will conquer inertia. You will become a body in motion and will tend to stay in motion. The most natural thing in the world will be for you to take the next step, and then the next, until you’ve completed your wish.
Taking the First Action
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Your plan, no matter how simple or how complex, begins the same way.
The first action you take is the one that overcomes inertia, the one that transforms you from a body at rest to a body in motion. Take that action and you have the momentum you need to carry you to the next action. That’s all you have to worry about. You don’t need enough momentum to complete your whole plan; all you need is enough to complete your next action. Then that momentum will carry you to the next action, then the next, then the next after than, until you complete your wish.
The secret of that first action is to make it so simple that you give yourself no reason to resist it. For instance, if your wish calls for you to become a professional drummer, tell yourself you’re just going to practice a few notes. If you want to get a new job, tell yourself you’re just going to update the first line of your resume. If you want to become a movie star, tell yourself you’re just going to watch a movie to see how the pros do it.
You can never finish what you never start. The easier you make it on yourself to take the first action, the greater your chances to make it to the last action, the one that completes your plan and makes your wish come true.
Forming New Habits
The easiest actions for us to take are the ones we perform out of habit. The easiest way to grant yourself a wish is to make a habit out of the actions you must take to cause that wish to come true.
You can create new habits the same way you created all of your existing habits—through repetition. Every habit you own you formed by doing something over and over again until it became second nature. To form a new habit, all you have to do is to apply the same principle.
Suppose you wish to take a walk each morning to work yourself into shape, but you’re having trouble giving up your morning routine—your habit—of reading the newspaper. What you need is a new habit to replace the old one. For thirty days, practice walking each morning instead of reading the paper. At first, you may feel uncomfortable because your old habit still has hold of you. But by the second or third week, you’ll begin to find it more natural to walk each morning than to read the paper.
If you try this and find that the new habit isn’t taking hold, it’s probably because you skipped a day. That won’t work. You can’t afford to skip even a single day. If you do, your momentum will drop to zero, and you’ll have to start over again. During that first thirty days, if you miss even one day of practicing your new habit, reset your thirty-day clock to Day One and start from the beginning. The next time around, practice every day. By the thirtieth day, you will have given yourself a new habit.
The Thirty-Day Plan
You can turn almost anything into a habit if you implement the Thirty-Day Plan. All you have to do is to decide what new habit you want to acquire and then agree to practice that habit every day for just thirty days. If in thirty days you don’t like the results, quit.
Make sure you schedule practicing your new habit each day and then honor your schedule. Don’t let yourself skip days because of weekends, holidays, illness, or because you had to go out of town. Don’t accept any excuses for missing even a single day. If you do miss a day, start over.
The beauty of the Thirty-Day Plan is that it minimizes your natural resistance to change. You aren’t asking yourself to give up anything; you’re just asking yourself to try something new for a while. You can stand almost anything for a few days. After thirty days, if you don’t like your new habit, you’re free to go back to the old one. But the chances are that by then your new habit will more comfortable than the one it has replaced.
Affirmations
Although we might hate to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. More important, we all listen. Psychologists call this affirmation. What that means is: If you tell yourself something often enough, you begin to believe it.
Most of us are pretty good at affirming our shortcomings. For instance, we knock over a drink at a party and say, “Sorry…I’m such a klutz!” We forget to bring important papers to a meeting and work and say, “I’d forget my own head if it weren’t screwed on!”
We don’t have to just affirm our faults—we can affirm our strengths as well. We can even affirm strengths we don’t yet have, as a way of developing them into habits.
For example, if you would like to become the kind of person who bounces out of bed every morning at six, you can tell yourself: I love to get up each morning at six, refreshed and invigorated for the entire day. If you’re a salesperson and you want to learn to love prospecting for new clients, you can tell yourself: I love to prospect for new clients.
I’ve used affirmations to create all sorts of useful habits. For example, I used to hate speaking in front of people. I avoided addressing groups of people whenever I could. After several years of hiding my head in the sand, I realized that I would never get what I wanted from life until I learned to enjoy speaking in front of people. It wasn’t enough for me to just speak in front of large groups; I wanted to learn how to enjoy doing it, so I made the following contract with myself:
For thirty days, at least ten times a day, I agree to tell myself: I love speaking in front of people. I agree to say it with kind of heartfelt conviction that will leave no room for doubt. At the end of thirty days, if I still hate speaking in front of people, I will allow myself to cling to that habit for the rest of my life.
The first couple of days I felt resistance. Every time I repeated my affirmation, an angry little voice in my mind would say, “Who are you trying kid with affirmation crap? You hate to speak in front of people!” I couldn’t disagree with that (and I didn’t want to lie to myself) so I pretended I was an actor, playing the part of a character who loved speaking in front of people. Before I knew it, the resistance disappeared.
Within a week, I began to enjoy repeating my affirmation. Within two weeks, I began to look forward to saying it. By the end of thirty days, I found myself looking for opportunities to speak in front of people. Whenever I encountered one, I would hear myself say: I love to speak in front of people! My affirmation had come true, and that allowed me to make a quantum leap forward in my life.
The first step in creating an affirmation is to make certain it supports your values. If you feel it’s unethical or undesirable, then it won’t work. The next step is to follow similar guidelines to those you used when you created a presentable wish. Be specific. Affirm what you want instead of what you don’t want. Use the present tense. Give it intense emotional impact.
The last point is the one that counts the most. The real power of an affirmation comes from how deeply you feel it, not from how many times you say it. You want emotional content, not repetition for the sake of repetition. But how can you feel emotion about something you don’t really believe?
Don’t worry about whether you believe an affirmation, worry about whether you want to believe it. If you want to believe it—if you intensely want to believe it—and you repeat it with that same intensity, then you will soon come to believe it, the same way you’ve come to believe so much negative garbage about yourself. If you’re going to pump yourself full of propaganda anyway, why not choose propaganda that serves a useful purpose?
Taking Time to Succeed
You have your wish, you have your plan, and you’re taking the action necessary to make your wish come true. Now all you have to do is to give it time.
There are two kinds of time. The first kind is measured by the number of hours you are willing to devote to a task during a single day. We’ll refer to this as vertical time. The second kind is measured by the number of days you are willing to devote to a task in order to complete it. We’ll call this horizontal time. The maximum vertical time at our command is 24 hours because that’s all the time there is in a day. The maximum horizontal time at our command is an entire lifetime. Which kind of time do you think is more powerful?
Some tasks require vertical time. Others require horizontal time. Choosing the right kind of time for the job is half the battle. Most people approach their wishes as if they are repairing a dam that is about to break in front of their house. But most wishes are more like tending a garden than they are like fixing a dam. Most of what you want to accomplish in life you can accomplish better, and with greater enjoyment, if you do it over time, instead of trying to do it all at once.
Unfortunately, the frantic pace of life points us in the opposite direction. Haste has become an end in itself. We would rather work feverishly on a project for a few days than work steadily for a few weeks. We would rather get rich quickly than get rich slowly. And that’s where we miss the boat.
It’s a lot harder to get rich quickly than it is to get rich slowly. It’s a lot harder to accomplish anything of value in a few days than it is to accomplish the same thing in a few months. When you try to cram too much into a single day, or a few days, time is working against you. But when you spread your efforts over time, time is on your side.
Devote even a few minutes a day to a project, and with enough days, you can accomplish almost anything. Don’t get hung up on how long it will take; that’s just another way to derail your dreams. If you work on your wish over time, over time your wish will come true.
Finding the time
As stated earlier, success takes time, even if it’s just a few minutes a day. You may feel you don’t have a lot of time. You may feel rushed, perhaps even crushed by the pace of life. You may be asking yourself: How will I ever find the time to work on a wish into a schedule like mine?
That’s the wrong question to ask. Instead of starting with your schedule and trying to work in your wish, start with your wish and try to work in the rest of the things on your schedule. If you are going to shortchange something, shortchange the things that are at the bottom of your list of priorities, not the things at the top. Make this one change in how you spend your day—work on what is most important to you before you take care of everything else—and you’ll find that your schedule begins to take on the shape of a life, instead of your life taking on the shape of a schedule.
Getting Help from Others
You alone are responsible for making your wishes come true. You alone are the one who has to make things happen. You alone make or break your own success. But one of your greatest resources is other people.
Whatever effort you make on your own, you can multiply by enlisting the help of other people. Other people have resources you don’t have; a different point of view, different ideas, different skills, different experiences, and different contacts. When you enlist other people in your cause, their resources become your resources.
The people you already know can help you ask for help from literally anyone in the country. For example, suppose you’re a high school student and you want to ask a favor of the president of the United States. First, you would talk to someone you already know—a teacher, your school principal, a coach, or perhaps the owner of a local business where you work during summer vacation. Let’s assume that you’ve decided to approach the business owner. Chances are that he or she knows many of the leading citizens of your community. One of these leading citizens most likely knows the congressperson from your area. You can be sure that this congressperson has the clout to place a phone call to the president of the United States.
Your plan of action would be to ask the business owner, to ask the community leader, to ask the congressman, to ask the president for a favor on your behalf. Four steps and you’re at the very top. If you can reach the president this easily, you can reach anyone else you care to reach.
Think of someone who might help you make your wish come true. If you’re trying to land your dream job, you might want to reach the person who is hiring. If you’re trying to get your big break as an actor, you might want to reach a Hollywood producer. If you’ve written a book, you might want to contact a publisher. Think of anyone anywhere who could help you, and then think of how you might reach that person through the people you already know.
People can help you in so many ways. They can give you advice, training, money, feedback, contacts, and emotional support. They can make the difference between spectacular success and lonely failure. They can give you everything you need to make your wish come true. There’s just one catch: If you want help you’re going to have to ask for it. When you do, you will want to stack the deck in your favor. Here is a five-step strategy that will help you earn a Yes when you ask for something instead of a No.
1. Ask for something specific.
The best way to help someone help you is to be specific about what you’re asking for. If your helper doesn’t know exactly what you want, how can he or she help you get it? For that matter, if you don’t know exactly what you want, how can you ask for it?
Be specific. If you’re asking for money, ask for exactly the amount you need and when you need it. If you’re asking for an introduction to someone, specify who, and why, and exactly what you want your helper to say on your behalf. If you’re asking for advice, ask your advisor for a specific solution to a specific problem. If you aren’t specific about what you ask for, you won’t get it.
2. Ask someone who can help you get it.
Before you ask for something, first ask yourself this question: Can this person give me what I want? If the answer is No, then find someone who can.
If you want money, ask someone who can give it to you or can help you get it. If you want a promotion or a new job, ask someone who can promote you, or hire you, or put you in touch with someone who can. If you want to sell something, ask someone who has the power to buy it. When you go to the trouble to ask for something, make sure you ask someone who can give it to you.
3. Make it worthwhile for the person you ask.
People may help you out of love; they may help you out of compassion; but they will definitely help you out of self-interest. If you want someone to help you, make it worth their while.
When you ask for something, the question that is most likely to form in the mind of the person you’re asking is: What’s in it for me? How you answer that question will largely determine whether or not that person is willing to help you. If you can find a way to sufficiently enrich the person’s life, they will be eager to enrich yours. If you can find a way to serve him or her, you will be amazed how willingly they serve you. You don’t have to convince them, you don’t have to persuade them, and you don’t have to pressure them. You have only to make it worth their while. The rest will take care of itself.
4. Be sincere.
I don’t mean act sincere; I mean be sincere. It’s not a matter how you come across; it’s a matter of how you feel. Do you really want what you’re asking for? If not, how can you expect someone else to want to give it to you? Are you certain about what you want? If not, the person you’re asking for help will be uncertain about giving it to you.
Whenever you feel a conflict on the inside, it shows on the outside. It makes people more likely to resist you than to help you. If you have doubts about what you want, convince yourself first, before you try to convince anyone else. Then, when you’re sure about what you want, you can ask for it sincerely, with absolute conviction. The more convinced you are about what you want, the more likely you are to convince someone else to help you get it.
5. Keep trying until you get what you want.
Some people hear the word no and give up. Other people hear no and think that all they need is a bigger hammer. When they find one, they keep pounding until they hear a yes. Either approach is not recommended.
No means that what you’re doing isn’t working, so try something else. You don’t need a hammer; you need a key—the key that will unlock the other person’s heart.
Maybe you haven’t asked the right question yet. Maybe you haven’t made it worth that person’s while. Maybe you haven’t been specific enough. Maybe you haven’t been sincere. Somewhere along the line you haven’t done whatever it is you need to do to inspire that person to help you. So try something else. Or try someone else. And keep trying until you get what you want. If you keep trying until you get what you ask for, you will always get what you ask for.
