Building on the Foundation

In this blog I have talked again and again about how confidence is the foundation that we build on when we change our lives. But a foundation is just a beginning; once it is poured and allowed to set we must keep building. The next stage of construction is to frame the building. The material of our frame will be action, and more specifically, well considered action. There is a place for intuitive action and that is not to be discredited, however when we are trying to complete a given blueprint we need to build in line with the design we have laid out.

Taking action can be scary. It means committing, and it means investing yourself in a process and rejecting others. No matter how confident we are, if all we do is stand on our foundation and scream our greatness into the wilderness we will still be wet when the rains come. I for one would rather be scared and committed now then cold and wet on a dark night.

We do need to choose our actions in a reasoned manner. We need to weigh the resources that we have against the gains we stand to make and the untried options that will be lost to us by expending those resources. Whether the action we are considering is a cross country move or asking for a raise, we need to weigh the gains and losses against each other in as broad a fashion as we can. And we need to do this quickly. When we over-consider our options and opportunity costs we can easily miss the moment to act.

When deciding to act it is often useful to also consider the possible follow-up actions. This way we do not become bogged down in a cycle of act-plan-act plan but rather our actions flow one from the next and we have less chance of feeling lost.