Unleashing Success Through the Power of Planning

You can choose to 'squeeze' life and create the future you want, or you can allow life to 'squeeze' you and be governed by your past or other people’s ways of thinking.

In his book ‘Outwitting the Devil’, Napoleon Hill discusses the 'definiteness of purpose'. Tony Robbins also discusses having clarity on what you are passionate about, your purpose, and what you want to achieve in life.

To go after what you want requires action. Nothing can happen without it. You can have the best idea, the biggest goal, and significant intent and achieve nothing. Alternatively, you can have all of that, and with a great plan combined with consistently acting on the idea, you can achieve your dreams, create impact, and inspire possibilities for yourself. It all comes down to how committed you are.

“It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.” Napoleon Hill

Ask yourself, are you interested or committed? This is an interesting question, so take time to answer it for yourself! This is important because when you are interested, you most likely do what is comfortable and easy; however, when you are genuinely committed, you will do whatever it takes. As Napoleon Hill reminded us, “It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.”

This is how it is with planning. A plan is powerful when you are committed to developing it, using a framework that gives you the best outcome and then a structure that will bring it to life. It is a do-it-yourself project too! Planning is crucial because if you have yet to plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be, how will you know when you get there? Or, even more integral, how would you know how to get there? All that is required is the discipline to show up daily and act, even when mistakes or perceived failures occur. This is another crucial aspect to consider because there is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback and results. Everything you do will give you a result. It may not be the desired result; however, it is an outcome of some kind. Change your thinking, change your results. When you get a result that is not what you want, change your thinking to change the strategies and actions you are taking as part of your plan to try something different to get a different result. It is that easy…test and measure.

Back to planning. Having discipline around planning is choosing between what you want now and what you want most. How often have you thought about an idea or something you wanted to achieve and not taken action to bring it to life and then experienced that someone else has done or created what you had the idea for? They were not more competent or intelligent; in most instances, the difference will be in how they acted. They were disciplined to focus on what they wanted most and not allow the short-term gratification of the now moment to get in their way.

Discipline is simply choosing between what you want now and what you want most. This is the power of planning, and here are three steps to follow to get started:

Step 1

Identify your big goal. Think big, go big. The bigger the goal, the more action you will take to achieve it. The smaller the goal, the fewer actions you need to take. I am not talking about big in global terms; I am talking about big in your terms. What is big for you?

Step 2

Decide what you need to act on to achieve your goal. What areas of business or life require specific actions to make your goal a reality? This is where you challenge yourself whether you are interested or committed. What am I willing to do to make this goal a reality?

Step 3

Create a documented plan that uses the SMART principles and capture what you need to do. This is where discipline is essential—spending time developing your goal and plan, getting clarity to bring your goal to life, and prioritising what needs to be done.

Follow these three steps and experience the real power of planning to unleash the success you want, whatever it means. Planning helps you live with integrity in your values and your beliefs. You can create the life you want by showing up consistently, with discipline and commitment. Without planning activities and steps to make that happen, you may be allowing life to squeeze you.

If you would like help with getting started on your planning, book a complimentary strategy session and we will look forward to connecting.