5 a Day: Are you Taking Enough Action on Your Goals?
I meet with my accountability partner every morning for 5-10 minutes to report out on how I am doing taking action on my big goals. This is a relationship and a discipline I have had in place for well over a year. We keep each other accountable on moving toward what we want to create in the world. And as a result, we have honed the list of daily action items we report on.
Our accountability calls only last 5-10 minutes. We report on whether we did our 5 action items the day before. The answer is either yes or no with no excuses. If we did not accomplish an action item, we just put it on the list for today. And then we tell each other what we are going to do today.
Over the year we have worked together, we have refined what the “action 5” looks like:
- We always include affirmations and visualization of goal attainment as one of the action items. This releases any internal blocks we might have to achieving the goal and taking the initiative on other action items.
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We include one item that builds a habit that will support us in goal achievement. An example of such a habit is a specific meditation practice we want to try. When we are working on one such habit, we try to do the same thing for 30 days to give that action a chance to really take hold.
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And we include 3 specific actions directly related to reaching our goal. Such actions might include the following:
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Sharing our vision with others. Just doing that might inspire someone to help you out because they too love the vision. For example, I once shared with a woman in the Middle East that I wanted to reach 250,000 women before I die, sharing the tools and approaches I have learned. She replied, “I will help you do that in Kuwait.” Wow!
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Logical Action. These are the things we know we have to do to either develop or sell our program. The action steps are doable in a day. For example, it might be as simple, as make 3 telephone calls.
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Inspired Action. If we wake up and have this gut level feeling we need to do something—like maybe attend a specific networking even—we always put that on the list.
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Asking for Help. If you don’t need help, your goal is probably not big enough. So we are always thinking about who we need to ask for help. It could be something simple, like can you show me how to do something easy on Pinterest. Or it could be we want to learn from someone who has done something similar to what we are trying to do.
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Asking for Feedback. This is critical. So at least once a week, we check to see if we are testing out our ideas and getting feedback.
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So what are your 5 a day?