This Time Will Be Different by Martin Meadows

Author:Martin Meadows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: reach your goals, success, how to achieve your goals, make a permanent change, personal development, build habits, develop a new habit
Publisher: Meadows Publishing
Published: 2017-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

Actions, Not Words Reveal If You Really Care

The second step of the STAR process serves as a filter. If you’re unable to make congruent choices, despite all the tools we’ve discussed so far, you probably don’t care about your objective enough to continue.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s better to have this realization now and save time rather than waste several months of your life on half-assed efforts and realize it was all for naught.

In his article, “Actions, not words, reveal our real values,” successful entrepreneur and blogger Derek Sivers points out that he’s been talking about a particular business idea of his for 9 years, but has never launched it.[10] He tried to prove to his coach that he cared about this particular business idea, but in fact he didn’t — or he would have already launched it. Derek — an experienced, successful entrepreneur — fooled himself for years, by telling himself he wanted to launch a new business, but his actions proved otherwise.

I use the same filter in my life. One of my strongest allies to help me filter out the wrong objectives is procrastination. Whenever I put off something supposedly important for later, it’s usually because I don’t care about it enough. My actions — not my words — prove that I’m fooling myself, either by having the wrong goal or not uncovering the right motivations.

For example, I’ve been thinking about launching a business that would dedicate a portion of its profits to an environmental cause. However, I haven’t done anything substantial to make it happen. I only talk and think about it. My actions show that I don’t really care about this goal. And it’s true — I prefer the free time and flexibility of being a self-published author over new responsibilities as a CEO. I could come up with numerous motivational links and reasons why I want to make it happen, but the second step of the STAR process would show that other values are ultimately more important to me. In the end, I’d rather support existing organizations with money I earn as an author than to launch a new company purely for this purpose.

Please note that while I was able to filter out this specific goal beforehand, many times before, I had thought that I cared about something, but in the end only realized the contrary after I was a few weeks (or even months) into the process. It can happen to you, too, and that’s normal. You won’t always know if you really want something until you actually experience what it entails.

That’s why it’s so important to pause and evaluate your past day or week and ask yourself whether you made congruent choices and whether you’re really taking actions — and not just saying words — that show that you’re committed. If you aren’t, maybe it’s time to give up, because it’s highly probable you aren’t pursuing the right goal.

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