To realize your dreams and reach your goals, you naturally need to take action. But taking action can sometimes be scary. It means making choices and taking the plunge without knowing what will happen next.

Fear is often the main obstacle to taking action. That’s why I’ve decided today to share with you the unstoppable way to take action simply and effectively. Thanks to these tips, you’ll (finally) see your projects through to the end.

Mistakes not to make

RULE N°1: NEVER ACT ON A GOAL…
And even less so on a long-term goal, because this type of objective is far too abstract and vague, and you risk losing motivation along the way because the work involved is so enormous.

For example, you can’t take action with just one of the following goals in mind: “I want to be rich” or “I want to be freer”.

Rule n°2: don’t jump into action without thinking things through
If you’re an impulsive person, you may tend to prefer action. But beware: action without thought and preparation is likely to come to nothing.

RULE N°3: DON’T TRY TO PLAN EVERYTHING DOWN TO THE LAST DETAIL
Conversely, if you want to take effective action, you don’t need to spend an infinite amount of time fine-tuning every conceivable scenario. Taking action means accepting a minimum of uncertainty, even without having planned everything.

If you tend to be a perfectionist, I invite you to try out my method for determining the first action for any objective.

I’ll now come back to what you absolutely must put in place.

What you need to do to take action

STEP 1: PREPARE FOR ACTION
As I said earlier, you can’t take action without a minimum of preparation. To be effective, you need to plan your first actions to achieve a goal.

To do this, you need to

An action plan that breaks down your main objective into sub-objectives and then into concrete tasks.
A diary to plan the actions you’ve defined and time them. This way, you’ll avoid putting things off time and time again.
Beware of procrastination and perfectionism, which can be major sources of procrastination.

STEP 2: TAKE ACTION
Have confidence in yourself. Once you’ve prepared the groundwork, go for it.

If you’re having trouble getting started, start with very small, simple actions. This is the first step in the process of taking action.

Don’t hesitate to set yourself small personal challenges from time to time to increase your ability to take action. In this way, you’ll gradually push back your limits and comfort zone.

By taking action, you gradually build up your self-confidence. You realize in concrete terms what you’re capable of doing. You identify the difficulties you can overcome. And if things don’t go as planned, don’t worry! You’ll always have the opportunity to come back to certain actions and improve them later.

The most important thing at this stage is to persevere! Despite doubts and difficulties, and stick to your action plan.

STEP 3: EVALUATE YOUR RESULTS AFTER TAKING ACTION
If tasks are taking longer than expected, don’t hesitate to take stock. Reconsider your schedule or task breakdown.

After you’ve completed a few tasks, consider taking stock of the results you’ve achieved:

What worked
What didn’t work so well
And why it did or didn’t work

Perhaps you were too ambitious at the outset? Maybe you didn’t see that this or that action was going to take longer? Again, no problem! Plan your actions again based on the evaluation of your first attempts. And keep up the good work.

This will help you identify your success factors. Next time, you’ll be able to build on them when you take action on the same type of task.

This method is also known as continuous improvement or kaizen.

IT’S UP TO YOU!

Are you ready to take action? Do you feel ready to take on all your projects?