Consistency is the Key to Accomplishment

I hope you are with us in this amazing journey towards achieving the super you, with Coach Clinton 7-Steps to Accomplishment Methodology.

This series of insightful articles intends to let you in on this proven methodology to realize all your dreams and reach even beyond them.

Let’s have a cursory look at what we have covered so far:

Step 1 – Appraise: Analyzing your actions/habits, eliminating the unproductive ones and picking up the value-adding activities only.

Step 2 – Ascertain: Formulating, categorizing, and prioritizing your success goals.

Step 3 – Approach: Developing a comprehensive, actionable plan to cover all your goals.

Step 4 – Avert: Formulating your unique Motivation Affirmation to set your brain up for success.

The next step that you will be learning here marks the end of the ‘Plan and Execute’ phase, but stay alert because I consider this step to be the actual core of this entire methodology.

Step 5 – Actualize:

Actualize is the step that commands the real action in this process. Here, you will take the important information chalked in the previous steps and use that to start taking action. This guided action will definitely bring you closer to your goals.

Now that you have reached this far, you have reached the point where all the planning has been done and the analysis phase is up ahead. This is the perfect window providing you with the opportunity to take action, execute and start checking items off your list. The simple act of cutting out to-do items has a special energy hidden inside it. So when you start acting on your plans, you get the chance to ‘kill’ tasks that have been bothering you and making you feel guilty for years. Doing this simply means that you are unloading the heaps of burden from your shoulders and congratulating yourself for getting on the track of achievement.

Remember the motivation affirmation? The fulfillment that you will start feeling by getting things done will supplement the positive impact of your affirmation. These two elements, when combined, will improve your confidence and enhance your self-beliefs. Result – added energy and increased rate of goal attainment.

Now, it’s time to share a few essential ingredients that you need to add in during your action phase. This will significantly increase your chances of success throughout this step.

• Perseverance – This single word has a whole world of potential in it. A great mind like Albert Einstein credited his successes to perseverance with these words: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” This clearly means that you need to keep moving forward, even in the face of crippling obstacles and all types of resistance. No matter how hard the task at hand may be, you can overcome it by just maintaining your momentum. So, while executing your plans, stay focused on the deliverables and persist in all situations.
• Self-Leadership and Self-Management – In his world-renowned book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey puts forth these two, golden concepts – ‘Self-Leadership’ and ‘Self-Management.’ Stephen introduces both ideas in his third habit which is “Put First Things First”. Self-leadership involves the strategic prioritizing of your goals and setting your goals and principles. Self-management is the discipline of executing those goals in the order of priority which you have decided earlier. This step, actualize, relates to self-management and involves taking practical steps to realize your goals in the right order. So, during your action phase, being mindful of these two concepts can guarantee greater chances of success.
• Organization – When it comes to meeting your goals and achieving your dreams, we must be mindful of the obvious reality that we only have a very limited time on our hands. If you are genuinely interested in achieving your goals, you just cannot afford to waste this most precious resource. The best piece of advice that I want to give you on saving time is to organize. Organization is the key to realizing your ambitions and making it possible in the smallest amount of time. By organizing, I mean that you break down your large goals into smaller, and more manageable, objectives. This simple act will work wonders for you. First of all, you will stop being overwhelmed by the sheer size of your ambitions. For example, if you have an ambitious monthly income goal, you will keep being intimidated by its magnitude until you set a progressive goal that bumps up a little, every month. This way, you will achieve your dream figure instead of sitting down very day to procrastinate and brood over your unfulfilled goal. Another plus of chunking your goals is that you keep getting motivated with every small achievement. This gratification adds fuel to your commitment to reaching the summit.

It is also very important to assign a measurable result and a definitive deadline to each sub-task to make yourself answerable in an objective manner.

So here you are with the most important information about this process in your hands. I am labeling this as ‘most important’ because this is where most of us stumble and never get up. Taking action comes as the most difficult thing to a vast majority. People who do take the initiative and start taking action, lose momentum along the way, for reason or another.

By knowing the exact problem points – where people usually fail -, you should consider yourself to be lucky. So beware of falling back into the arms of lassitude. Keep yourself motivated by hitting milestones and strive for the next one and the one after. There is no point in wasting time in preparing your plans and chalking out action strategies if you don’t intend to spring into action when it’s needed. I’d recommend to put in your 100% commitment to action from the very start and leave no space for excuses.

I had been thinking of finding the best way to sum up this very important discussion. And thankfully, I was reminded of these priceless words by the one and only, Pablo Picasso:

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

I’ll be with you soon to take you further up the road with the next step