Photo by pdbreen

Follow me on Twitter: (@successprof)

What is it that you want to take action on?  Is there a goal you want to pursue?  Is there a habit you want to create? Sometimes it seems like a mystery as to how people are able to accomplish some things and other things they leave to procrastination or simply don’t ever get started. When I examine my life I know there are things that I should do and just don’t do.  You likely face the same situation at times.  Understanding the “Theory of Planned Behavior” developed by Ajzen and Fishbein can help.  This theory shows what PLANNED behavior is most likely to become ACTUAL behavior.  Understanding it can help you move more of your behavior from planned to actual.

There are three things that determine the likelihood that you will take action.

1.    Attitude Towards the Behavior/ Action

This concept is pretty simple. What is your attitude towards the action or behavior?  If you have a positive attitude, you are more likely to take action. Think of a couple of examples.  If you have a positive attitude towards exercise you are more likely to exercise.  If you have a negative attitude towards exercise, you are less likely to exercise.  If you have a positive attitude towards making that next sales call, you are more likely to make it.  This is true for any action or behavior.

2.    Subjective Norms

The second factor is the subjective norms related to the action.  This relates to the perceived social pressures around the action.  In other words, will others approve of the action or behavior. This is why having someone to exercise with makes such a difference.  It provides a built in positive social reinforcement.  The strength of the social pressure comes in to play here as well.  The more people that will react positive to your behavior and the more important those people are in your life, the more likely you are to take action.

3.    Perceived Behavioral Control

The final factor is the likelihood of being successful.  This really relates to the perceived difficulty or ease of the action. If it is something you think is easy and that you will be successful in it, you will more likely do it.  If you think it will be difficult and that you might fail, you are less likely to do it. If you think it is going to be difficult to lose weight, you won’t try.  On the other hand if you think it will be easy, you will get started right away.

Notice that this is all based on your PERCEPTIONS. Of course you may perceive something very difficult than it actually is.  How often have you resisted doing something because you thought it would be hard and take a lot of time, only to find it was much easier than you thought once you got started?  This is because your perceptions were out of line with reality, however it was your perceptions that controlled your actions.

Bring It Together

Bringing it all together this theory teaches us that if there is something we really want to accomplish, there are three things we can do to make it more likely we will actually do it:

• Have a positive attitude about the action or behavior
• Bring others around to support and challenge us – people that would approve of our success in this behavior
• Believe you will be successful and that the task is not as hard as you think

What is one action you’ve been putting off doing? Or what is one habit you want to create in your life?  Take that action or habit and analyze it under the three factors and use them to help spur yourself into action.

Written by:
Danny Gamache – The Success Professor

If you liked this article, leave a comment below, or subscribe by RSS!
I’m looking for partners, if you are looking for a way to earn extra money, click here!

Follow me on Twitter (@successprof)
One of the things that holds most people back in business and in life is procrastination – putting off things that should be done today and leaving them to do ‘later’. Everybody procrastinates to some extent, so you are not alone.  It is those people who can put aside their procrastination and move towards action more quickly that will be the most successful in life and business.  A favorite quote of mine is that “life rewards action!” Action, at the proper time, is the opposite of procrastination.

Why does procrastination occur?  It occurs when your mind, consciously or sub-consciously, has a view of the ‘pain’ and ‘pleasures’ that can occur from doing, or not doing the task. Each task in life has its own costs (‘pain’) attached completing it, but it has rewards (‘pleasures’) as well.  What people often forget, but in truth drives you just as much, is that for every task there are also ‘pains’ of not completing the task, which drives you towards their completion.  It is the balance of these varied pains and pleasures that result in one of two things – action or procrastination.

For example, if you are procrastinating and not mowing the lawn that needs to be cut, you view the ‘pain’ of mowing the lawn as more important than the results (‘pleasure’) that would come from having it completed.  In other words, the time you give up to do the mowing, the effort you would need to put out and other ‘pains’ that would be involved cover up the satisfaction you would get for completing the task and from having a nicely cut lawn.

But there is another ‘pain’ involved too.  Except this ‘pain’ pushes you towards to completing the task.  In this case, it would be the pain you feel from looking at your uncut lawn. The pain you perceive from the harm to your reputation you might face amongst your neighbors.  The longer your grass gets, the more this ‘pain’ becomes prevalent.  The ‘pain’ that prevents you from doing the task is a NEGATIVE ‘pain’.  The ‘pain’ pushing you towards doing the task is a POSITIVE ‘pain’.

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.” – Tony Robbins

These ‘pains’ and ‘pleasures’ from a given task can change as time goes on, which is why you might suddenly do the task at hand.  I see this all the time with my students.  If you are a student who has a paper due in a month, there is not as much ‘pleasure’ from doing the task, and there is no positive ‘pain’ pushing you towards doing it – you only have the negative ‘pain’ keeping you from doing it.  If however, you now have only one day before the paper is due, there is a new positive ‘pain’ that pushes you towards doing the task.  That positive ‘pain’ is of course the risk of getting a failing grade.

If you are in sales you might procrastinate about making a call to a prospect.  In this case you view the ‘pain’ of getting out of your comfort zone and facing possibly rejection as being stronger than the pleasure from the results you could get from making the call.  The thing about this fact is that usually your mind has it completely wrong.  The tendency is to inflate the costs and to lower the true rewards you will receive.   That is why FEAR stands for False Expectations Appearing Real – most of them will simply never come true.

So based on this view of ‘pain’ and ‘pleasure’ and their effects of procrastination, how can you force yourself to take action more – to get past procrastination and create results?  There are three ways that naturally come out of this understanding:

1. Decrease the perceived negative ‘pain’.

This means using your mind to view the task at hand as having less negative costs.  In other words, take a realistic look at the possible outcomes.  Chances are you are making it much harder than it really is.  You are likely emphasizing negative results that in reality are never going to happen. Take a more realistic look and understand that in most cases what you fear will never happen, that the task is much easier than you are making it out to be, and will take much less time than you are figuring.

2. Increase the ‘pleasure’ from completing the task.

To do this, spend more time focusing on what you will get out of completing the task.  Think through all the benefits of completing the task at hand.  The better feeling you will gain, the removal of stress, the extra income you will earn, the easier it will make your life etc… That is why goal setting is so important.  You need to clearly be able to know why you are pursing the goals you are pursing. What are the results you will get, and why are they important?  If you are building a side business, blog, or website, you need to think through the benefits that success will bring to you and your family. Emphasize these positives in your mind.  Focus on this, rather than on the ‘negative’ pain.

3. Increase the positive ‘pain’.

In other words, emphasize all the negatives that will occur if you DO NOT do the task at hand. Think through all the potential costs with not doing it.  These could include the loss of reputation, the giving up on your goals, and the missing of deadlines.  Make these ‘pains’ as large and as important as possible.  If you are the salesperson needing to make a prospecting call focus on all the things that could happen if you DON’T make the call.  Perhaps the prospect goes with a different product, or goes with the same product but purchases it from someone else. Realize in your mind that your business will not grow if you don’t make the call – you’ll be giving up on your dreams and your goals.  Repeat to yourself the saying,  “If I don’t act, I lose!” This increased positive ‘pain’ can drive you towards completing the task at hand.

Procrastination is all in the mind. It is how you perceive the ‘pains’ and ‘pleasures’ associated with either doing, or not doing the task at hand.  Because the mind is what causes procrastination, you can also use the mind to defeat it.  Use the mind to increase the ‘pain’ of not doing tasks, increase the ‘pleasures’ of completing the tasks, and decrease the ‘pain’ associated with doing the task.  Do these three things strongly enough and you will be able to get yourself to take action on whatever you need to do.

Written by:
Danny Gamache

If you liked this article, leave a comment below, or subscribe by RSS!
I’m looking for partners, if you are looking for a way to earn extra money, click here!

Photo by Iwona_Kellie

Follow me on Twitter (@successprof)

So what’s holding you back from moving forward more quickly towards your goals? Likely you are reading this article because you want to learn something. You want to learn something that you can apply to your life or business, so that you can grow and move forward more quickly. You likely have goals that you have not achieved. One of the keys to moving forward will be to find out what is holding you back.

This is a question I ask myself from time to time. While I am making exciting progress towards many of my goals, there are some that I am not moving forward on as quickly as I would like. Self examination helps me look at these areas and ask: “What’s holding me back?”

While everyone will have unique factors that hold them back, there are a few things that many people have in common. Here are the things that most likely are holding you back.

1. No Clear Picture of the Destination

If you don’t have clarity about what you are trying to accomplish and where you are trying to go, you will not make significant progress. This is more than simply writing down a goal. It is having a crystal clear picture for what achieving this goal will be like. The difference is like the difference between a black and white photograph and a high definition video. Most people have goals that are like the black and white photograph. You know what you want, but you don’t have a vivid picture of it. Dream a little. Use your imagination. Turn that black and white photograph into a color photograph. Then dream some more and turn it into a movie. Then dream some more and turn your movie into vivid high definition. Your dream will have increased clarity and you will have more passion to move towards it.

2. You Don’t Know WHY

Another thing that might be holding you back is that you don’t know your WHY. Your WHY is the motivating reason behind the goals. It is the reason why you will spend extra time and effort working towards the dream. The WHY is not the dream itself, but all the reasons WHY you want to achieve the dream. The WHY is usually outwards focused – on the difference you can make for others, or the difference it will make for your family. Make sure you know your WHY clearly.

3. Self-doubt

This is a big one. It was the big one in the past for me, is still the biggest one today. While with success comes more and more self-confidence the self-doubt is still there, it is just in different forms. Self-doubt is the voice in your mind that limits you – that says you can’t achieve it, that suggests you won’t make it, that you don’t have the skills and that it won’t work. Self-doubt causes you to focus on your weaknesses rather than your strengths. Self-doubt is a deadly poison for people working towards a big goal. If you let this limiting belief take over you will slow down and stop pursuing your dreams. You need to recognize self-doubt as an attitude that you can control. Focus on your strengths, and remind yourself that you can achieve your goals. Have a support system around you and train them to give you positive reinforcement about your abilities and strengths.
Bonus article: Six Steps to Defeating Self-doubt

4. Lack of consistency

Pursuit of a goal requires consistent effort. While there are times when a focused spurt can be valuable, in general it is much more effective to work at something continuously over time.  Consistency helps you to maintain steady growth. The best way to improve your consistency is to have clear goals that you break down and pursue on a weekly basis and that you break down into daily activities. (For one example, see my weekly planning and goal setting system).

5. Procrastination

Everyone struggles with procrastination. Anytime you put off doing what you know you should be doing you are procrastinating. It is something that controls many of us more than we even realize. The more you are able to move past procrastination the more quickly you will reach your goals in every area of your life. Often people procrastinate on what they view as the little things; however these little things soon add up to become very big things. Procrastination occurs when you take your focus off the importance and benefit of doing the task at hand. When you do this, the negative aspects of the task appear larger than the benefits, and then you won’t do it. You need to focus back on the benefits of what you are doing. Often it helps to just get started, even doing a little. Once you are in the state of action, more action will easily follow.

So what’s holding you back? Is it one of these five things? Is it all of them? Is it something else? Take this opportunity to do a proper self-examination. Understand what is holding back, and work towards eliminating these.

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

If you liked this article, leave a comment below, or subscribe by RSS!
I’m looking for partners, if you are looking for a way to earn extra money, click here!

Progress towards a goal is never a straight shot. There will be times when you progress rapidly, and there will be times where things go a lot slower, and forward movement towards your goal is a struggle.  Sometimes, you will completely lose forward momentum towards your goals and your activity level may come to a standstill.

Perhaps this standstill is simply because you needed a break, maybe you went on vacation, or maybe you engaged in a period of focused imbalance where you simply needed to let that goal slide for a short time.  Sometimes people stop progressing towards their goals because other goals get in the way, or simply because bad habits start to creep in and you end up taking the lazy way out.

It is when your progress is completely stopped, that is when you need to dig deep inside yourself. This is when your true character is revealed.  You have two options here: you can let your goals slide – essentially giving up – or you can dig deep and work to get things going again.

Just like a train locomotive, getting started after you have stopped is the hardest part.  You have created a “state” when you have stopped, and you need to move out of the stopped “state” into a “state of motion. The law of inertia says that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body in rest tends to stay in rest.  While inertia is true in physics, it is also true as you work towards meaningful life goals.  Thankfully there are steps you can take to get yourself going again and re-engage your goals.

1. Accept the Situation

The first step in getting yourself going again is to accept the situation.  When you have let your activity towards a goal slide you are likely disappointed with yourself and that can easily weigh you down.  So don’t beat yourself up.  It doesn’t help for you to feel bad about what you haven’t done, or to pile up blame on yourself. Even if you should not have let your activity level slide, and even if it is your fault that you are not progressing towards your goal, it doesn’t say anything about who you really are!

By accepting the situation you can learn from what has happened with a focus on the future.  Learn what caused you to stop moving towards your goal. Was it an unusual life event, or did the normal things of life get in your way?  What do you need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?  Look at your life’s habits.  Did you let some habits slide?  Are there new habits you need to create?  Analyze what has happened, but always with a focus on the future.  Discover how to not let it happen for you again.

2. Revisit your goals

Next, take some time to revisit your goals.  Think back to why you want to achieve the goal.  Deeply ingrain in yourself an understanding of this WHY.  Is the goal really important?  If so, you need to clarify this importance and use it to help you build momentum.

Perhaps the goal is not important for your life and in that case you should let it slide.  Likely, if you have been thinking about it and acknowledging the need to get back to it, the goal is important. Chances are that you forgot about the importance of this goal and that was part of why you got stalled.  If you have ingrained within yourself why a goal is important you will be less likely to quit.  For example, I’ve deeply ingrained in myself the importance of exercise and staying in shape.  Because of how clearly I see the importance of physical fitness, I’m much less likely to stop working out, even when I’m forced to give up other goals. As a result, even when I recently went through a period of focused imbalance, I was able to stick to my fitness commitment.

3. Start Small

When getting going again in movement towards your goal you need to be willing to start small.  You don’t need to, and shouldn’t expect to, jump in at the highest level of activity that you were maintaining before you stopped. You also don’t need to put that level of pressure on yourself.  Starting small is acceptable!

Say, for example, that when you are moving towards a certain goal, you used to make twenty sales calls a day. Don’t put that level of pressure on yourself to begin. Start small by simply making one call.  Often that first activity is the hardest.  Doing anything, even something very small, can help you create momentum and that can build and develop into inertia.

4. Move to Half-Way

After doing something to get started, the next step is to look for an opportunity to get back to your “half-way” activity level. This is where you make a firm commitment that you will do at least half of the activity that would have been considered your full activity level.

This is what I did to get back into the habit of writing.  At my full activity level I would write for one hour on four different days each week.  To get back into the flow after I stopped, I started by moving to the half way mark.  I did this by committing to write for thirty minutes a day for the first week.

Having a shorter time or activity level commitment can help you get started because it is less intimidating, feels easier to do, and gives you a sense of accomplishment. You should notice that I have used the world commitment several times.  When you move to half-way, you need to be committed.  You can’t simply plan on moving to half-way, or hope to get half-way.  If you do, that will never happen.  Instead, you need to commit to it, and follow through on your commitment, no matter what.  It is this kind of determination that is needed as you try to start moving again.

5. Increase to Full Out Effort

Now that you have moved to a half-way level of action, you can work to build momentum by continually adding in more activities and putting in more time.  Set a plan in place on how you will get back to your previous pace. Your plan may be involve a certain date where you move from half activity to full activity, or it may involve a more gradual increase.  The key is that you have a clear plan that fits that allows for an achievable way of reaching your previous effort level.  Of course, that plan can not sit idle.  You must follow the plan and do what it takes to get back to your full activity level.

6. Consider a Period of Massive Action

Often times after a period where you have stopped working or progressing towards your goals, a period of massive action can make a huge difference.  This is especially true in many businesses, and in any sorts of sales or marketing.  In this situation, you can still take a short while to ramp up your activity level, but instead of stopping at your previous activity level, go beyond!  In fact, go significantly beyond and create momentum.

Sometimes a period of massive action will help you make up for lost time and propel you to more rapid success. You may find that this higher level of activity is something you can maintain and that the efforts are really worth it; alternatively, you may find that you need to go back to your previous activity level.  Either way you’ll have created more rapid growth and momentum because of your period of massive action.

Remember, just because you’ve let your activity towards your goal slide doesn’t mean that you have any less chance of achieving your goal. Sure you may need to adjust your deadlines if you’ve sat back for too long, but your goal can stay.  Readjust your deadline, ramp up your activity and see the success you’ve dreamed about.

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
If you liked this article, leave a comment below, or subscribe by RSS!
If you are looking for a way to supplement or replace your current income, click here!

Hello everyone,
It has been a wonderful relaxing week with family, enjoying and celebrating Christmas.  I hope you have all had a great holiday season.  I’ve spent some enjoyable time browsing the net this week so here are a few of my favorite sites.

The blog Anywired shares about Origami Productivity.

Leadership expert John Maxwell writes an excellent article about perseverance.

Wired has a review of three different productivity books with one of my top 10 books coming out on top.

Pick The Brain compares life to a Jigsaw Puzzle.

Finally, Practical Hacks has 6 Simple Steps to Conquer Procrastination.
Have a great week!  Don’t forget to set goals for the week!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache