Direct Action

If you want to accomplish your goals you have to eventually start doing things that will get you closer to them. Sometimes we have the tendency to remain spectators for others that are living the full life that we want.

This is normal according to Robert Green in the book "Mastery", in order to become really good at something you generally go through three stages: observe, imitate and innovate. It is important to observe others that are good at what you are trying to master but you eventually have to start practicing. And when you do that you will encounter failure after failure for years, this is why people sometimes never start the live voyeristically through others. This gives them the temporary impression that they are doing something about their goals.

When it comes to taking action there are three types of action you can take:

1. DIRECT ACTION - action that is accomplishing your goals;

This form of action is generally compose out of everything that is leading you directly to your goals, for example if you are thirsty you get some water and drink it.

1. INDIRECT ACTION - action that accomplishes everything else but your goals;

This is a form of procrastination where you trick yourself that you have to do other things instead of what you really need to do, for example when i was in school before i would start to learn instead of learning i would clean my room or agonize my book shelves sometimes things that i put off for months and of course it was all to create a more pleasant environment in which there is less distraction so i could learn more efficiently.

1. SYMBOLIC ACTION - action that creates the illusion that you are accomplishing anything.

Great examples of symbolic actions are any forms of rituals, or sometime even protest that involve a march or blocking a street this rarely accomplish anything because they don't address the problem. This tend to serve more the role of an outlet rather then an efficient way to accomplish anything.

So how do you start ? There are two many principles i found useful in this area. The first principle is Newton first law that states that objects in motions tend to stay in motion and objects at rest tend to stay at rest. If you are not doing anything right now you are less likely to do anything tomorrow. So you have to put yourself in motion, the key is to start small and end up big.

The second useful principle is to embrace failure as the normal part of the process, for as long you avoid failure you avoid progress. Be worn that it is going to take you multiple attempts to accomplish most of everything, the fact that you did something and it "fail" it only means that you are normal and you have to try again.