What is the essential ingredient in the formula for success? Taking action. All of your goals, desires, and objectives are just worthless wishes unless you take action toward their acheivement.

What a simple concept! It is, though, where most of us fall down on the trail. We’ve done all the right things — set our goals, made our plans, anticipated the outcomes — but then we just sit around and wait for the results. Care to guess what results you’re going to reap from those actions? Exactly.

So, in your march toward your own peak performance, you have to do one very important thing: ACT! Use the power that sets you as a human apart from the animals and do something that you’ve thought about in advance. Conscious thought and the ability to plan your actions in advance is one very important thing that distinguishes us from the animal world.

So you know you need to take some kind of action toward accomplishing your outcome. But why don’t you? The answer’s very simple, and we’ll examine it in our next segment.

You’ll find that much of what I talk about I’ve learned from a few key people. Tony Robbins has had a profound effect in my life and is one of the people I’ve learned the most from. In his materials, he speaks of what he calls “The Ultimate Success Formula”. Many others, though, over the years have laid out the same sequence of events for success. They are, simply:

• Know what you want
• Take action toward it
• Examine the results of your action
• Adjust your approach

Know What You Want

Before you take off on your journey, you have to know where you want to end up. What kind of result do you want? You’ll find that the less wishy-washy you are about your destination, the more chance you have of arriving there. You can’t just say things like, “I want more money”, “I want a nicer car”, “I want to be healthier”, “I want to lose weight”, or “I want to be a more effective communicator”. No, you have to be specific. “I want a Mercedes SE”, or “I want to weigh 170lbs”. If you don’t have a good target, how can you possibly know when you’ve hit it? But in order to hit it, you have to…

Take Action

Having a specific goal is all well and good, but it’s not enough. In order to achieve your goals, or get what you want, you have to take action toward their achievement. Massive action! If you want something, go after it! Don’t piddle around. Go for it with a vengeance! After you’ve gone for it, though, you need to…

Look At What You Did

Or, as Tony Robbins puts it, “notice your result”. If your goal is to get to Los Angeles from Seattle, heading north doesn’t quite cut it, does it? Examine the results of your actions, then…

Adjust Your Approach

Did your actions take you closer or further away from your objective? If you’re closer to your goal, keep going! Refine your process, eliminate unnecessary steps, but keep doing what you’re doing! If the actions you’ve taken have put you further from your desired result, change them!

Welcome to the debut of ‘The Fast Lane’, a celebration of peak performance and human potential. I hope you enjoy your visit, and that you come back often.