11. How important Is Action?

You may ask, “What is more important? Thoughts and feelings? Or action?”

Look at it this way. When you build a house, you create a solid foundation that no one sees, and on that solid foundation you erect what everyone sees – the house.

The same principle works for whatever you want to do. If you want to find a wife, write a best-seller, start a company, have surgery or cycle safely through Europe, you need a solid foundation.

You create that SOLID FOUNDATION IN YOUR IMAGINATION with positive feelings of your goal happily achieved. On that invisible foundation you build what the world sees.

Many people forget the foundations. They are all action and effort. They race around trying to make something happen on no foundation, and the walls keep falling in.

Why an Invisible Foundation?

Without the feeling of your goal already achieved, you are broadcasting all kinds of feelings of doubt and uncertainty – feelings like, “This might be hard! What if I can’t do it?” Then you attract experiences that match your feelings. It’s a recipe for exhaustion. It’s the reason that some talented people – golfers with perfect swings and singers with perfect pitch – settle for flipping hamburgers.

When you have the feeling of your goal ALREADY achieved, you become a magnet for the right people, books, websites and coincidences. Doors open. You don’t have to lay every brick yourself. It is called synchronicity.

EXAMPLE: You plan a vacation. Your foundation is you being excited and uplifted, getting the feeling of meeting fascinating people, tasting exotic food, returning healthy and refreshed. You set it up in your mind. Your thoughts create the feeling. Your feelings – and then the action you take – create the experience.

Without the foundation, you are just a leaf in the wind. Anything might happen.

EXAMPLE: You need to make a difficult phone call. Your foundation is the feeling of the goal achieved, the feeling that you made that call and you were confident and relaxed. You create it in your mind FIRST. The creation is fun. The phone call becomes a breeze.

The imagining is a joy; the doing becomes a joy. That is how life is meant to work.

It All Sounds Too Easy

Let’s say that you have been out of work for a year. You applied for sixty jobs and got sixty rejections. You are paralysed with disappointment.

A friend says, “Read this book, How Life Works.” You read it. You say, “This is nuts! Are you saying that if I just feel good, a job will drop in my lap?”

No. This is how it may happen.

Right now, you have given up. The idea of your getting a job seems IMPOSSIBLE. So you first need to change how you feel.

You begin to picture yourself as being happily employed. You imagine yourself excited to go to work each day. You imagine having a regular wage – and how your life will change. You wrap yourself in these happy feelings, fifty times a day.

You begin to affirm to yourself, “I am so glad that I have a job.”

At first, all this seems a little ridiculous, but as you continue to imagine and affirm, the idea of your being employed starts to feel like a REMOTE POSSIBILITY.

Now that you are feeling more optimistic, it is easier to take action. You go online and study what to say at a job interview. You buy a book, How to Get a Job. You ask a friend to help you rewrite your CV.

You start looking at Positions Vacant online. You send out twenty applications and attend two interviews. You don’t get hired, but you are more confident than before.

A friend of a friend gives you three days of part-time work. You are feeling better about yourself. The idea of your having a job seems POSSIBLE.

You attend another interview. The company calls you to say, “You are one of the final contenders.”

Another guy gets the job, but you say to yourself, “At least I am being taken seriously.”

A job now feels like a PROBABILITY; it’s just a matter of when. You send out another twenty applications. Nineteen companies aren’t interested. One company invites you for an interview. You nail it. The job is yours. (It’s not over!)

You work hard for the next year. You feel more confident. Soon enough, you are ready for new challenges.

You apply for jobs at three different companies. You get hired at the third. (It’s much easier to get a job this time.)

You work two years in the new company, and then one day, out of the blue, you get a phone call. A rival corporation offers you a position. You have been head-hunted! Now the jobs are chasing you!

This is how life gets better, step by step.

You say, “But what if there is a global financial crisis? Or what if I am sixty years old?” Not all companies participate in global financial crises.

Not all bosses want young people. When you have the unshakeable knowing that “I am in demand”, life will connect you with people who want your services, regardless of what you read in the papers. As Buddha might have said, “Your job is not in the world. Your job is in you.”

Whether you are looking for work or a life partner, whether you want to lose 10 kilograms or learn to like yourself, you FIRST begin to change how you feel. Then you take action. You feel better. You take more action. This is how you get from IMPOSSIBLE to POSSIBLE to PROBABLE to ACHIEVED.

What We Really Believe

How do you know what someone really believes? It’s not in what they say. It’s in what they DO.

We all know people who dream but take no action. They don’t DO anything because they expect to fail. So they stay stuck. You can’t fool the Universe.

Action demonstrates belief. For example:

• When you save money every week, you confirm your belief that a debt-free life is possible
• When you make a sales call, you confirm your belief that a sale is possible
• When you lift weights, you confirm your belief that fitness is possible
• When you give to the poor, you confirm your belief that more is coming.

Action is thought in motion.

Action accelerates results.

Excellence

You say, “What about skill? Don’t you have to be good at what you do?” Excellence is critical. The most successful people are very skilled.

And feeling good is part of the process.

When you feel optimistic and enthusiastic, when you continue to picture your goals achieved and when you continue to believe, these things happen:

• You are confident
• You attract the right colleagues, coaches, mentors and partners
• You attract opportunities
• You joyfully refine your skills.

The Law of Least Effort

The Indian Vedic texts from around 1500 BC explain the Law of Cause and Effect (karma), the Law of Detachment and the Law of Least Effort.

The Law of Least Effort is perhaps least understood. As Vedic wisdom explains it, love is the fabric that holds the Universe together. This means:

• When you are motivated by LOVE and when you are serving others, you are in harmony with the Universe and your plans unfold with much less effort. Small miracles occur to help you on your way.
• When you are motivated by EGO, for example, if your aim is to be the most powerful person in town or if your business is selling dodgy used cars to unsuspecting customers or if your aim is to control and impress people, you will encounter endless resistance. “Success” will come at a price.

Self-help books may tell us, “The sky is the limit. Go and do whatever you want!” but you will notice a pattern: when our ambitions are largely selfish, life becomes a struggle.