How to Accomplish Anything

Your parents always told you, “If you just put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”

Eh… kinda.

I’m obviously all about personal success and life improvement. That’s mainly what this blog is all about, but the statement above is a bit fluffy.. What does “putting your mind to it” really mean anyway? Can you really accomplish anything?

Well, from my experience so far in life, I’ve found that if you have a few key ingredients working for you, the answer is always a resounding YES. Otherwise, you may have a bit of a difficult time along the way.

To accomplish anything in life with any amount of success, you need four key ingredients.

First, there’s the Desire.
Next, there’s the Motivation.
Then, there’s the Execution.
Lastly, there’s the Sticking to it.

Desire

The first step to accomplishment and success is the desire to want to do something. And by desire I don’t just mean that “I should really do this, I need to do that, I probably ought to do that” type stuff. I’m talking about genuine love, passion, and excitement, about waking up every morning and making things happen.

I’m talking about that something that you have no doubt in your mind that you want to do – for you.

Find that something that you have a burning desire to accomplish. That’s your first step to success.

For me, it was starting a website that I knew would help people. I’ve always loved offering advice when others are in need, helping people better themselves, and realize successes of their own. This website is a way for me to potentially do that for the entire world. That desire is what helped me get started, but my motivation is what will keep me going.

Motivation

After desire comes motivation.

You can desire something and still lack the the motivation you need to actually do it. It’s often easy to have desire, especially in go-getter type personalities. It’s a bit more difficult to have motivation to keep going. Sometimes you have to search for it. Sometimes you have to dig deep and make sure you’re doing things for the right reasons.

The most powerful kind of motivation is internal, or intrinsic motivation. This kind of motivation comes from your heart and soul. It’s very emotionally driven. But it can also be supplemented by logical reasons for wanting to do that thing it is you want to do, as well as external stimuli or extrinsic motivation, such as a reward of some kind from an external source, or a team counting on your success.

For me, my motivation for this website comes from many things:

A burning internal desire to do something that makes a difference in people’s lives
The challenge that starting a website from scratch presents
To own a web property that can raise funds for others in times of need
To start a scholarship fund for whatever I want to give to
To establish another source of side income
To hone skills such as online marketing, speaking, writing, and website management
To show the world what I’ve been working towards for most of my professional live

Some of those are self-serving, some aren’t, but they’re all very powerful for me, and there are many others I have within me, as well as others looking in. Find all of the motivation you can – internal and external. Write it all down and always remember it.

Your motivation is what will keep you going in times of doubt, when your initial desire sometimes runs thin. Now it’s just up to you to execute.

Execution

This one is pretty plain and simple. Once you’ve got your desire and motivation down, you’ve got an awesome fire lit inside you to really get down to getting things done. Your passion and emotion will drive you towards reaching your goal. But you are who is going to make it happen. It’s up to you to get things done.

This is where planning, streamlining, organization, time management, and productivity methods come in and help you along the way.

Whatever your goal is, you probably already know the basic things you need to do to get it done. At that point it just becomes a balancing act of managing everything else you have going on in your life and making time for your big thing.

The biggest excuse people make is “I don’t have the time.”

At this point you have to recognize that you do have time. Everyone has the same amount of time in their day. You just have to make time. If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way to set up your life in order to make it happen.

Once you’ve done that, plan it all out and start getting some things done.

This step is what this blog is mainly about. If you’re not already a fan, like the Academy Success Facebook Page, grab the RSS feed, or sign up to receive email updates to the right. It will help you a lot on your way to achieving your goals, assuming I can stick to it.

Sticking to it

There will come a point in your journey when you have one of those days or weeks when you just don’t feel like it. It’s not that you want to give up completely, but maybe you’ve got some other things getting in the way. Maybe you’re a little stressed out. Maybe you just want a little bit of a break.

That’s fine. But don’t let it kill what you’ve been working towards.

A day can turn into a week. A week can turn into a month. A month can turn into two months, three months, six months, a year, and eventually the downfall of what you’ve been working so hard to achieve.

I had a very smart professor in college who told me this – The more you put something off and don’t do it, the easier it becomes in your mind to accept not getting that thing done, and the more likely you are not to do it.

He was 100% right, and I’ve always remembered that. In fact, remembering those few sentences has been a huge key to my success to this point in my life.

These times of weakness are what you must guard against. Don’t give in.

Remember your desire
Remember your motivation
Visualize the end result you’re working towards
See yourself achieving
Fight through your weakness
Build your willpower
Stick to it!

It’s up to you to be disciplined enough to get through these times of difficulty. Once you do this the first time, you’ll become stronger and stronger in these times of weakness. You’ll build up your willpower to fight. You’ll know you can battle your lizard brain and you’ll become an unstoppable force of productivity.

Mastering this step is the missing link for most people. This is why most projects that could end up being big things die out. Because people give into the temptation to be lazy.

Don’t give in.

Stick to it.

BONUS: Good Fortune

A little good fortune never hurt anyone along the way either.

I’m honestly a firm believer that luck doesn’t exist, but good fortune does. Fortune is often the product of hard work. The harder you work, the higher your potential for good fortune is going to be. Get yourself to a certain level of success, and opportunities will just fall into your lap.

People will be knocking down your door to do business with you. Deals will happen at the hotel bar.

I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes.

Keep working hard, and you’ll skyrocket your chance for good fortune. Success will become a lot easier.

Accomplishment Is Up To You

Now that you know these keys to accomplishment, go out and do something great. Odds are if you’re reading this post and you made it this far, you’re probably serious about doing something awesome, and you probably already know what that something awesome is. The problem you’re facing is that you haven’t yet figured out one of the keys I’ve mentioned above.

Well, there’s no better time than now – Go figure it out! And go do something great.

To Your Success!

Cody

How to Accomplish Anything – It’s More Than Putting Your Mind to It