Creating Success

One of the most important aspects of creating success involves a delicate balance between two somewhat opposing forces – REFLECTION and ACTION.

Most successful leaders in business or elsewhere are seasoned veterans at creating an ongoing balance between the reflection of where they are now and the action of pushing toward where they need to go.

Consider the variety of personalities that exist and how they can be represented by the analogy of Ready, Aim and Fire. There are those can be described as Ready, Ready, Aim. They are always planning and never moving to the action. Then, there is the opposite who could be described as the Fire, Ready, Fire. They are always acting but never reflecting on where they are or where they need to go. This means that they are often spending effort that becomes wasted effort or at least effort that is inefficient.

No matter what our personality style, true success comes when you can initiate a balanced cycle of Ready, Aim, Fire, Ready, Aim, Fire, Ready… You don’t spend too much time in either the state of Reflection or of Action.

It should also be mentioned that in teams, individuals may play different roles in the Ready, Aim & Fire analogy. Some focus on the reflection roles and others on the action roles. This is valid as everyone has different strengths. When it comes to leadership (and we all have leadership roles) and our personal lives, we must take control and be active in both parts.

Stumbling blocks to success and specifically to creating the Success include acting too often without any sense of direction or spending too much time reflecting without creating outcomes. Do either of these descriptions sound like you?

So, what can you do to create more Success in your life. The first thing would be to understand that both components of Success are active verbs. You are either actively reflecting or actively doing something. SUCCESS is NOT about INACTION.

The next thing to consider is whether you can spend time reflecting and acting at the same time? The short answer is… sort of. Your mind can only hold one thought at a time. This is an important point for us to remember when we are considering focus and balance in our lives. It is also important in the Success. You can be going through periods of reflection and action at the same time but the truth is that at any specific moment of time we are only spending energy in one of the two areas.