During my call on Monday I talked about my CREATE! system for building and growing your creative arts business. The A in the system stands for Action. Action is what drives your results, yet so many of us get stuck here. What should I do first? I need to know all the steps. It has to be perfect before I go on. None of us is immune from getting in our own way.

Yet if you look at successful people, you’ll see they all have one thing in common: They take action. And taking action is really a habit that you can develop. Here are five ideas to help you build your action muscle:

1. Don’t get overwhelmed with the big picture, with having to know all the steps to accomplish your goal. You only need to know the next thing to do and act on it. After that, then pick the next step. Remember Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

2. Write your SMART goals on paper or index cards and keep them in front of you. What you focus on makes a difference.

3. Decide that you will take three action steps towards your goal each day.

4. Plan your day the night before so you are ready to hit the ground running. And, you’ll find that your brain will even work on those plans while you sleep. I know that sounds odd, but I find it really happens.

5. Do it now! As you’ve probably heard, there’s no time like the present, so just start!

Here’s a wonderful quote about taking action from Leonardo da Vinci:

Please share your tips for taking action below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 at 5:55 am and is filed under Business, Goals, Organization, Planning, Productivity, Success, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.