One Day at a Time

When it comes to plans and getting things done I believe there are three types of people:

1.  People who make things happen. These are the go-getters; they work to make things happen. In some cases they force things to happen – good or bad. They say, “It’s going to happen” and they do it.

2.  People who watch things happen. These are the people who are waiting for you to do something. When you do it, they will sit back and say how lucky you were, how everything just seems to line up for you, not realizing they’ve been watching a person who is actually making it happen.

3.  Those who are still wandering around saying, “What happened? These are the clueless people who are always off in another world having no idea what you actually have to do, how you have to plan to make life happen the way you want.

While each of these people could be seen in a negative way, they all have a positive quality that they could develop to become a success. If you are like the clueless person who is wondering what is going on, well, they are usually the people you can call on to help you make what you are doing happen; they take direction well and are good helpers.

The second group, those who are watching what’s happening, could really be broken down into two sub-groups. One sub-group is watching you before they start to make a success out of anything in their lives. This group will be the ones who will not make a major change to make things happen. They will be the ones saying you’re “lucky” and telling everyone how you manipulated the system to get your success. They will talk about how you hit the lucky times to make life happen the way you wanted it.

The second sub-group is made up of the ones waiting for the right moment to make things happen. They watch for the perfect sales to buy things; they watch for the right moment to invest in a good deal; they wait to act and spend time learning things before they put their money in the game.

I was a member of the second group of watchers for a long time. I watched many areas before I made choices so I would not make decisions that ended up wrong. I watched for the signs to tell me when to act, tell me when the time was right so I would not make hasty choices I regretted later.

Now, the first group we talked about – those who make things happen – can also be put into two different sub-groups as well. First are those who are active at chasing the dreams they want; they are looking for the right choices, they learn what is needed and make the effort to reach the goals they have set. They learn what is important and what is not. They cover the important things. These are the ones who are building long-term success. The actions they take are with their dreams, their long term goals in mind. They may make mistakes along the way but they don’t let that deter them from continuing to try.

They are actually a lot like the watching sub-group above except that they are actively seeking learning, actively trying new things rather than sitting back and waiting for the knowledge to come to them. If you are a “watcher,” you think they are so lucky when really they learned how to make things happen at the right time and when to make things wait for the right time and act on others in the mean time.

The second sub-group is made up of the people who actually make things happen. You find them jumping from one great business idea to another. They plan to make it happen but never do the research to find out what the real deal is before they act. They make most of the choices in their life based on the notion, “If it feels good, do it.” Life becomes an emotional choice.  Some business deals require looking for some logic behind them first. This second group never looks for logic or good sense rationale, so most successes are short-term. They have something that looked good and it worked for while, then the idea started to die and it becomes a loss to which they try to force things to happen again and end up failing.

I brought all this up today to bring out one small point. No matter where you are in this place of making things happen, you can move from not knowing what’s happing, to watching things happen, to making them happen. To do this, you must learn from the mistakes you make in life. You must first go out and make a few choices that fail, pick up and learn from them and make a success out of them. To get there, you need to do one thing. Are you ready for this?

Take the small steps until you are able to make bigger steps to reaching your goal.

We talked on Monday about how, if you were to prepare for a marathon, you would start by walking, then maybe some jogging, then running. You would not try to run the full race the first day. Life is a marathon; plan your race out and make choices that last for the long run. Take small steps and build your way up.

I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time to live your dream, to love what you do and those you share life with. Take small steps to run the long-term race to be a RockStar in your world.