“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
– Albert Einstein
“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”
– Alfred Adler
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
– Annie Dillard
Introspection (identification), Reflection (understanding), Evaluation (measurement). An old friend who was chairman of a bank in Austin, TX would call that “fixin’ to commence to get ready.” Ready for what? Action! (All quoted persons today are “A” names, in keeping with the “A-word!”)
General George Patton believed that a good plan enacted today was exponentially better than a great plan acted upon three days from now. (I keep a tribute to him in my office as a reminder to operate in precisely the same manner.) Another old friend, Ken Clifford, told me one day, “Plan twice per year, act every day.” That was one of those crystallizing moments in my life.
The first action to take on the heels of our fixin’ to commence to get ready is to write down our goals and the steps to those goals. It’s pretty easy to stay on course at that point, since we’ll have a map to follow. Make sure the steps aren’t too big. Plan your stops with the size of your gas tank in mind, in other words. It’s one thing to drive from Austin to Seattle, another thing completely to set out to do it in one day on one tank of gas. Better to get from Austin to Wichita, Wichita to Denver, Denver to…
Little danger comes from acting, especially if we’ve laid out a decent plan. The danger does, indeed, lie in doing nothing or accepting lack of action in those around you. And, while confidence in our plan is important, we can trust only our actions, and we should expect that others will operate the same way. Finally, how we spend today, and tomorrow, is how we’ll spend our life…tie it all together, and we’ll make a difference.
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