Actions Speak Louder than Words

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 9:30 am. 2 comments

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” - Mark Twain

Action, action, action! Personal development skills all revolve around that one word - action. Whether it be installing a new habit, starting up a new lifestyle, or even taking the guts to quit your unsatisfactory job, if you don’t take action towards your goals, those goals are worthless. Hopes and dreams take you only so far; you have to add in the last few steps to make them a reality.

Speaking your mind and actions are something that go hand and hand with one another. Often times, people are able to dish out their opinions and advice on a multitude of subjects… sometimes when the person doesn’t even know anything about the subject. Of course, this leads to major incongruence. Apparently we speak our mind, but rarely take our own advice.

In late December / early January, lots of person development bloggers wrote on the subject of “New Years resolutions”. Everything from why your resolutions will not fail to keeping up with your resolutions was covered. Consequently, I wonder how many people’s resolutions failed because they didn’t take action on what they truly desire; I also wonder how many of those same personal development blogger’s New Years resolutions failed themselves because they didn’t take their own advice.

Advice is great. This website has a multitude of advice for you, from motivational pieces to pieces that I hope can change your life in some great way. But this website - and all other websites similiar to it - can only do so much. It can’t push you to take action on your plans. This website can motivate, can inform, can change, and can mold you into a brand new personal, capable of amazing things. But motivation, being informed, and changing and molding yourself is only part of the equation. Action is the missing piece.

You can have the most perfect, detailed plans on how to get exactly what you want, but without action, those plans are better used as birdcage lining. You can be the most motivational speaker out there, but if you refuse to take action to share your talent with the world, what good is your gift? Action is the key to unlocking your destiny.

And it doesn’t even have to be the right action to begin with! Lots of people start out on one path, turn around, then start on a brand new path when it didn’t work out the way they expected. That’s fine! Too often we get in this phase of action paralysis, when we decide we can’t move on because we have to “explore all of our options and decide what to do”. That’s not proactive. That’s not living. That’s excusing yourself from making real progress towards your dreams. I’ll be the first one to say planning is essential in any endeavor. You need to know exactly what you want and a fuzzy idea of how to get there. But to use planning as an excuse to stay stagnant is for losers. (You’re not a loser, are you? I hope not!) Just pick a path and go down it. It doesn’t matter if it’s exactly what you want or not. Your life is going to go by anyway - you better make the most out of every day. Find out later that’s the wrong path for you? Ditch it and start a new one. You have nothing to lose!

Nothing to lose at all. What’s the absolute worst that can happen? You go down the wrong path and end up back where you started? You go down another wrong path and end up worse off than you started? So what! Just pick a different route and go down that! The worst thing of all is no action, because if you don’t take action, you’re no better off than where you are now.

I know a lot of you who read this article are personal development fans too. But be honest with yourself. A year from now - when you’ve all but forgotten your New Years resolutions for 2008 - are you going to be staring at a bunch of empty goals and plans from the past year, neatly typed up and printed out? I hope not.

Take some action today. Decide on a goal, get a basic plan written up on how to achieve it, and move towards it! And whatever you do, don’t give up. Don’t ever stop taking that action to get what you want.

Crafting a Mission Statement

Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:00 am. 1 comment

During this past week, I’ve been working on how I can transform this site into a more informative, creative place where people can come to get unique insights in the personal development / self-help world. Because of the aspiration I have for this blog, I decided creating a mission statement solely for this blog would be a great idea. A mission statement that includes my purpose would give me focus, clarity, and the ability to know exactly why and for whom I’m writing my articles for.

Now, I realize some of you don’t have a mission statement (for whatever purpose - life or business), so I thought writing an article that detailed how I created my purpose statement would be extremely helpful to you. There are a lot of resources out there that can guide you through the creative process, but I found many of the guides to be bulky, annoying, and not very useful. Hopefully, my version is a bit more straightforward and useful than what you might find elsewhere!

(I use purpose and mission statement interchangeably here. Your mission statement is generally a condensed version of your purpose.)

Creating Your Mission Statement

Writing your mission statement not hard. In fact, if you really work at it, it only takes about an hour of your time (maybe less!) and you’ll have it for as long as you want to keep it. The steps I used are as follows:

1. Figure out what you’re writing the mission statement for. Are you writing your mission statement as a personal manifesto of what you want to become? Or is it for an online business, such as a blog? Personal mission statements tend to be broader, more value based; business mission statements often are more sharply worded with a purpose in mind.
2. Figure out what you want to convey in the mission statement. Are you trying to aim for a grand expectation that’s hard to reach? Or do you have a specific goal in mind? Think about what you want to convey in your mission statement.
3. Figure out the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve. Mission statements are all about purpose.  Don’t have a purpose? You probably won’t be needing a mission statement. “Why do I aspire to be this kind of person?” or “What kind of goals does this business have?” are good questions to ask if you are stuck.
4. Brainstorm ideas. Brainstorm out different phases that you would like to include in your mission statement. Things like values (”generosity”) or aspirations (”be the best”) or goals (”reach 1,000 people”) are all things you can include. Take about 15 minutes - I know, that’s a long time, but do it anyway! - and get all of your ideas on paper. The more ideas, the better.
5. Write it out! After brainstorming your ideas out, take the best phrases that relate directly towards your purpose, and write out a mission statement. This may only take you several minutes; it took me about 15 minutes as I kept throwing out different ideas and editing what I wrote.

Ta-da! Mission statement written! If you did it correctly, you’re probably looking at your mission statement and saying to yourself “Wow, that’s exactly what I was going for!”

Examples are always useful, so here’s Path to Your Destiny’s mission statement:

Path to Your Destiny’s purpose is to encourage people to examine their lives through different perspectives and to educate people on methods they can use to create their perfect life journey.

And guiding you through each of the five steps I used:

1. What was I writing the mission statement for? I was writing it to get a clear sense of purpose for this blog. I had a vague, lofty idea of why I was writing this blog, but I wanted to write a purpose that was crystal clear so I knew the exact reasons for writing posts, doing advertising work, and so on.
2. What did I want to convey in the mission statement? Since I knew the mission statement was going to be used as a clarity point, I wanted to convey my aspirations for the blog.
3. What’s the purpose I’m trying to achieve? Obviously, because I was writing the mission statement for my blog, I had to look at the blog’s purpose to know what I wanted to include in the mission statement. I wanted to challenge people’s beliefs in a constructive way, inform them of methods I use to make my life easier, and introduce them to viewpoints they wouldn’t get anywhere else.
4. Brainstorm ideas. After knowing the purpose, I started brainstorming values and phrases that went along with that purpose. I took about 15~20 minutes and just listed everything I could to clear everything out from my mind.
5. Sort through the brainstormed ideas, write out the statement! And after all of the brainstorming was said and done, I sifted through the ideas I came up with, and started to write out basic statements. It took about 25 revisions before I came to my end result.

Am I happy with my mission statement? Absolutely! It’s perfect, it’s concise, and it’s going to be a focal point in my blog. I know all of my activities I do for this blog - writing articles, tweaking the layout, advertising - it’s all going to revolve around my purpose. “Why am I doing X activity?” It’s because I want to encourage people to examine their lives through different perspectives, and educate people on methods they can use to create their perfect life journey.

If you don’t have a mission statement right now, I highly encourage you to set aside a block of time and create one. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’ll provide you with direction when you’re unsure of where you are headed.