Being more than street smart.

(A series of articles dealing with your spiritual side) By Jonathon Ford.

One of the basic fundamentals of life and being successful is the ability to control the things around you and in your environment. There is a formula most people are not aware of or ignore and that is an inherent ability to change anything, to make things go the way they want.

You know there is a beginning and an end to anything you do, you start something and then finish it. What about the middle part, the part where you have to DO something, the doing-ness or action? The most important part of getting something done. If we look at this in its basic part we can see what you would call 'control.' You start a car, it moves (changes) and then you stop it. You are in control. If you did not know how to stop?well?

So it is this ability to 'control' things in your life that is important. Action is motion or movement, the things you do during your day. Notice your work consists of a number of things to be performed and they have to be in some sort of sequence.

Your success would depend on you deciding which specific targets during the day you should accomplish and then getting them done, completed, finished.

Your income generated on a specific action will depend entirely on the way you start, continue the action, and finish. Of course it does not matter if you are the CEO, a

home executive or a firefighter. This applies to all.

Yet some of us have great difficulty in starting things, we'd sooner watch football on TV, it is easier and there is far less stress. Motivation plays a big part in this, but let me ask you, isn't motivation a bit like wearing a coat? You can put it on or take it off anytime you like?

There are many who can start the ball rolling, get all the action going but just can't STOP. It's like my mother-in- law, she just can't stop talking - she can sure start it up though. So the skill, yes skill, to be able to start the action going and stop is important for any successful operation.

It is the action part, the doing part, seems to be the most difficult to handle and control. We all have a weakness at one of these three points or all three. If we can't START the right action we'll never succeed, and when we start, if we do not apply the right action we won't succeed.

There is only a minority of people who can start, get the action right, and conclude it. Very few.

Most problems people have boils down to the basic ability to start the right action, go through the cycle of doing it, and finally finishing it.

When you are about to get production going, be that watching TV or going to work, the first thing is always the thought "I want to watch some TV." Or "I have to get to work by 9.0am." Your thought about the action that you have to do comes first, right? The decision to DO something, it?s the thought that is there first.

Lots of us just do not put any thought there 'this has to be done.' We're on auto. A bit like a robot. So the initial thought is important to get the job done, right? We can do the work on autopilot but we're gonna flunk somewhere along the line. You have to think the right thought then. A pre-determined decision has to be made by you otherwise nothing will get done.

Have a look around your house and find some jobs, maybe a paint job, perhaps something that needs fixing. You never made a pre-determined decision to fix it. It is your very thought that brings about the final action.

Sometimes you think "Yeah, it needs to be done, but it can wait - I'll get around to doing it sometime." Another year goes by and it still isn't done as there is no pre-determined thought to actually complete it. Sometimes it is called 'positive thinking' but it's more like an affirmative thought, a postulate, a consideration that "This job has to be done."

If you can envision in your minds eye the job is completed you will find it will be so. You have to paint the house, just get the picture in your mind the house has just been painted. You have to decide on the completion of painting the house.

Notice nothing really changes in your space unless you decide it has to. It is your pre-determined thought that makes the difference. Your chair is in the same place, those books will not move, not until you have the thought they are to be moved. Nothing moves until somebody decides to move it.

So you decide to paint the house this weekend, you have all the paint ready, the brushes are clean and there is a ring at the doorbell, "Hi Joe, you coming down to do a little fishing, I gotta few beers ready?" You now have a situation with your friend, should you go fishing or should you paint the house? Maybe you should start painting next weekend?

How many times have you been in this type of situation? Plenty. I know I have. So you decide to paint and then you decide not to paint, fishing is more attractive. What do you do? You have this thought to do something and then later comes this counter-thought. It is stuck there, stuck in time. You have hundreds if not thousands of these 'thoughts' just hanging there.

No wonder you can't get anything done. So let's resolve this in the next issue

Jonathon Ford
Globalife@rcn.com.