timlind's posterous

When we are finding a plan toward a goal that is distant, several steps away, it is easy to loose track of where we are in the plan and get caught up with the current task at hand.

You exist in your environment. It is the surface on which all your actions will be executed and viewed. You learn from what you see or imagine in your environment. Every moment your environment is changing. One day you may wake up and realize that something completely different is expected of you today than previously. Start changing it today toward where you want it to be, everything is going to change in some direction, it might as well be yours. Learn your environment through acting on it and watching the response. Keep track of your beliefs, desires, passions, commitment and skill, staying true to them through each change in your environment. Do it each day, your environment is changing with each day, through your own or others action or lack thereof.

Skill. Everyone is born with a unique set of skills. From your personal characteristics and tendencies, to your core brute force cognitive or physical capacities. We often call this talent, which can be considered a subset of skill. We are continuously learning through observing from others and their environment or through acting on the environment around us. Our beliefs and desires impact our actions, which causes learning and changes our environment, and has a circular impact back on our beliefs and desires. Our skill is affected by our beliefs and desires, our talent, and our commitment to action. Our skill is our beliefs and desires, our talent, and our commitment. The world may have us think that we have skill anchored on popular cognitive capacities (“talent”), but our greatest and most unique skill and talent is our beliefs and passions, don’t let anything hold you back from committing to those passions.

Vision. Allow yourself to envision a different reality. Allow yourself to become passionate about that reality. Always work to retain your ability to dream. Having a vision and trying to work toward it with little success can hinder your ability to dream. It changes your beliefs, which can change your desires, and passions. It’s a serious downgrade to hinder your ability to dream. If you’re on a mission, keep track everyday of how you feel about your power to achieve that mission. Make yourself feel like you are achieving, everyday, every week or mind can easily get mangled in an incomprehensible network of desires, actions and effects. We often tackle things that we don’t have the resources to achieve. It’s difficult to know what steps to take to get to the goal. We act and see no useful response to the action or can’t envision how it helps. Before you get yourself tangled clear your mind by deciding to be more fully everything that you already, and no more. Then you can begin to make concrete actions to move closer to your goal, and you will feel empowered to do so, you will retain your ability to envision, and you will be able to see the path.

Commitment. What’s a passion without the decision to act? Your beliefs, skills and environment will determine your decision to commit to your passion. Both of these can be influenced by further action. Action can change your beliefs, you’ll observe a new response to an action. Action can change your skills, you learn something new from the response. Action can change your environment, the playground that your further actions will be executed on, and hence your belief of what’s possible.

Commitment is where the greatest deterrent of achievement comes in. Fear. Fear is a natural response to risk. Risk of failure is inherent in every action that has a purpose, even in those that don’t. We all have a tendency to plan against risk. We’ll sit in our chairs, thinking, waiting until the risk is reduced, but as we plan against risk we increase our perception of it, easily resulting in a never ending cycle if we aren’t careful. Aim instead to reduce the size and expectation of each action, to convince yourself that there is no need to fear. Aim instead to act to manipulate your environment, create a an environment for yourself in which you don’t feel the fear of risk, and can then execute the action that may take you closer to where you want to be.

It’s tough to know what to commit to. The toughest part is not to say “I’ll commit to the end goal” and sit behind a desk committed, the toughest part is to actually execute (commit to) a small action that might get us closer to where we want to be, or might actually take us further away. We imagine an action, subconsciously evaluate the risk, we feel the fear, and naturally retreat to planning against the risk, the fear. But we’ll rarely know whether any action is really going to get us to the place we want to be.

Commit to the passion above all else, be free to execute any action that may work toward the desire. Corporations commit to things that they choose as a means to their end, and then find themselves unable to commit to an action that can serve their purpose.

I have one golden rule to solve action commitment problems, it’s a hard earned secret so don’t look at it lightly. Be everything you truly are today, and nothing more. You don’t know what action will get to where you want to be tomorrow. But you do know where you are today, and if you don’t be fully what and where you are today, you’re not likely to be able to move to where you want to be, or to even figure out how to move from where you are. Commit to what you are today, be it fully, and keep an eye on where you’d like to be tomorrow.

I think achievement is likely a result of knowing how to actually walk the line between what you are today, and what you want to be tomorrow. Balance your dream of tomorrow and your desire for today.

Grow and track your beliefs, passions and skills, share them with the people around you, be open to being everything that you already can be, and you’ll find the path of actions that will take you to your goal. To commit is to act, to avoid retreat in the face of risk.

Passion. Not all desires are created equal. What desires are you passionate about? Passion is an essential ingredient in achievement, the force that compels you to act, and an ingredient which isn’t often controlled by any conscious action of yours. If you have the passion, then you shouldn’t you act?  Passion doesn’t grow on trees. The world needs a lot more than one person passionate about something.

Passion is what allows aim to turn into achievement, it’s what lets action turn into greater skill. If you aren’t doing what you’re passionate about then you aren’t reaching your potential, in which case society isn’t reaching it’s potential.

Much more important than discovering your desires is discovering those desires that you are passionate about, the uncontrollable urges toward some direction. Your subconscious knows it’s way there and will expect to be going there, if you don’t, let’s hope it doesn’t get in the way of what direction you do choose to travel, if you do know it, then you should be doing it.

Open your horizons, discover and embrace your desires. Keep them separate from subsequent decisions that you think may get you to those core desires. Discovering desire is something that should be continually worked on, what we think we desire is often more than we actually do. Refining and staying true to your desires leads to a purity of purpose and action which can make achievement so much easier and greater.