There is No Substitute For Working Your Proverbial Butt Off

Those of us who immerse ourselves in the Self Help industry throw around great-sounding buzz words all day: Action, Achievement, Confidence, Determination, Enthusiasm, Perseverance (we love that one), Wisdom, Zeal, etc. Check it out, I'm so in love with these words, I even capitalize them as though they are proper names.

Just cannot keep my Zeal in check.

However, there is one thing - in our Haste - that we often neglect to touch on. One thing that, if overlooked, will render every capitalized buzz word in our vocabulary ineffective. This one thing is HARD WORK. Good, old fashioned, get down and dirty, hard work.

You can have all the intelligence, education, common sense, self confidence, and, yes, Perseverance, in the world. But if you are not willing to roll up your sleeves and work, it will all be for naught. Things that are worth having seldomly just fall into our laps. Promotions at work, increased traffic on websites, larger paychecks - they are all things we want very much to familiarize ourselves with. Waiting for them to magically materialize, however, will just lead to disappointment.

WRITE IT OUT AND WORK IT OUT:

Think of three things you want in life. Whether they are personal or professional in nature does not matter. In fact, if you are like most of us, you will have a mixture of the two. At the top of a piece of paper, write (in all capital letters), DREAMS, then divide your paper, horizontally, into thirds. Give each third a number, 1 through 3.

Beside each number, write one specific thing you want to bring about in your life. The more specific you can be, the better. You would no't tell your daughter, as she heads out for a date, Sweetie, be home sometime this evening. Heck no! You say, Be back before 11:00. Specific. Definite. No wiggle room. Treat yourself the same way. No wiggle room.

If there is one thing you can say about humans it is this: We know our way around wiggle rooms and can take advantage of them every single time.

Below each specific desire, create a numbered work list of things you need to do to work toward success. For example, if Increased traffic for my blog is one of your three desires, your work list may look something like this:

1. Write and submit 1 article each evening to Ezine Articles.
2. Contact 5 similar blogs each week asking for link exchanges.
3. Visit 3 blogs each morning, before work. Leave related, useful comments, along with my link.
4. Visit 3 different blogs each evening, before bed. Leave related, useful comments, along with my link.

Again, as with the desires themselves, when you are creating your numbered work list, be extremely specific. Our mind responds to specifics much better than it does to generalities.

The Very Important Final Step:

Now, go back to the top and scratch out DREAMS. Write GOALS beside it, and never think of these desires as dreams again. They're GOALS, and they're very much within reach. You just have to work for them.

As someone once said, "Self isn't something one finds, it's something one creates." Self Help Daily would love to help YOU create a masterpiece!