Why are some starting? Why do others not follow through? What makes you take action? How can you get better results? I’m stuck in a rut, how do I get out?

What makes you take action? Certainty ! Certainty that you will get what you want. Where does that certainty come form? It comes from your past experience and your beliefs.

 

The cycle

This cycle I call the Action Loop. This is no new concept. I am simply readapting it and explaining it. This four step cycle allows you to understand how action is created, and how it affects the results you get. As with everything, lets begin at the beginning.

For you to take action you must first see some benefit to taking the action. What is it’s potential?

Potential

If you see no potential you’re not going to take action. If you see a delicious looking, saliva inducing meal, you see potential for tasting a very nice meal. It’s going to taste good, you tell yourself. When you see this kind of potential you take action. You eat that meal and savour it.

If on the contrary you see a piece of meat in a plate with flies all over it and white worms and eggs on it, you probably see very little potential for a savoury meal. You might rather see a potential for a disgusting meal full of squishy bugs and bad taste. Therefore that potential you perceive leads you to take action. The action you take is not eating it. You can say it’s inaction, because you aren’t eating it, but that in and of itself is an action.

Potential leads naturally to Action.

Action

What is action?

Action is the act of doing something.

Note that this does not discriminate between good or bad actions. In either case it remains an action. That is why inaction is an action. However when we refer to taking action usually we refer to taking the right action. The right action is the one that gives you the desired outcome and gets you closer to your goals.

This something that you do is going to have consequences. It’s the law of cause and effect. If I do something I am sure to have a result. It may not be the outcome I want but I will assuredly have a result.

Results

Whatever action you take you will have results based on that something you did. I think by now you understand Action and Results. This is something I think we all understand intuitively. Here’s an example for the sake of clarity. If you exercise (action) you will sweat, burn calories, make your muscles fatigue and over the long term grow (results). Exercise leads to physical fitness.

The results you get will influence the way you act in the future, the way you think and thus what you believe.

Belief

Your beliefs are the collections of thoughts that you have integrated and are part of you thinking habits. This constitutes your Belief System. This system uses many patterns of thought we have acquired over time. It also includes a bunch of Limiting Beliefs that limit your ability to take the right action in certain situations.

Very rarely do we question those beliefs. They are our defaults we use them automatically and systematically. Of those beliefs, many have been acquired in childhood experiences. Note when we are born we do not have any beliefs. We are a blank slate. As we grow up and learn to adapt to our environments we integrate new beliefs. Most young children believe there parents know everything, they are their all important reference point. This reference is very important to their development.

Our beliefs can be challenged – by circumstances or surrounding environments that may bring new perspectives or insights. When this occurs one of two things may happen. Either we change our belief by taking on a new one or adapting the one we already hold or we simply maintain our belief and reinforce it.

During adolescence, when you begin to seek independence and discover new things a common change is that teenagers begin to question authority and the beliefs that they were brought up with. This is natural and normal. It is how we grow. It hurts to have you’re beliefs challenged, especially if it’s one you have held for a big portion of your life. Admitting you could be wrong is tough. Imagining that you were wrong for a long time can be even tougher. This explains why some people don’t want to change their beliefs although they can see there is a problem. They simply ignore the problem. This can be very destructive.

Adapting your beliefs can be very rewarding though. It develops the individuals mind, and his ability to think for himself. You gain new perspective and insight and can adapt you current beliefs into more empowering ones.

Here is the complete cycle:

If you believe there is little potential, you will take little action, you will get little results and then you brain will tell you: See! I told you this was going to happen! And this in turn strengthens that belief that there is tiny potential, which will lead to tiny action, tiny results, and your brain telling you: See! I told you this was going to happen! once again strengthening that belief.

It’s a vicious cycle. It explains in part why the poor get poorer.

Hey ! Wait a second. We also say that the rich get richer. In fact, we do. The cycle is a vicious one but it can also be a virtuous one.

Vicious or Virtuous?

The cycle is both at the same time. Yet you can only be in one at a time. In fact this is so important that I’m going to restate that at the risk of sounding redundant. This cycle is both vicious and virtuous but you can only be in one at a time. Once you’re in the cycle it is self-sustaining. If you believe there is a lot of potential, you will take massive action and get massive results at which point your brain will say: See! I told you there was a lot of potential! Thus reinforcing your belief, that will lead you to take even more massive action, and on and on it goes.

The next logical question is how do you choose which cycle you are in?

Or are we doomed to stay in a cycle all our life? Certainly there must be a way to choose the cycle you want, for there are many stories of poor men getting rich and rich men getting poor. Although the latter is often less talked about.

It’s quite simple actually. Not to be confused with being easy. Although it can be easy depending on how you do it. You simply have to change or affect a part in the cycle.

So how do you get in the cycle and influence it?

Influencing the Cycle

You have four entry points into the cycle. You can either use Potential, Action, Result or Belief.

One thing to note is that all entries are not created equal.

Potential depends a lot on exterior factors and your Belief System, your view of the world. It depends on circumstances.

Results change if the action is changed. The definition of insanity is people doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Therefore we can’t affect the results without changing the action. An important thing here is that Results are what we perceive them to be.

Action depends a lot on the potential you see, which is in turn influenced by your beliefs.

What about Beliefs? Beliefs are influenced by results. But they are in our control. Beliefs are collections of thoughts and patterns you use habitually. See the above section on belief for further info.

Beliefs are the cornerstone to your actions that will give you the desired results. Thus you must nourish and be selective of the beliefs you hold. You must test them to see if they withhold to storms.

How do you change a belief? You change the results. As said previously results are what we perceive them to be. You’re mind has a very hard time distinguishing real events from events you vividly imagine in you head. To strengthen a belief you must feed it the right results. If you want to be successful you have to instil the belief that you are successful. That means you’re results must be successful. You must perceive them as successful. If something happens, view it as a success. Put a positive twist on it. If you fail, see it as an opportunity. Make a habit out of it. Develop rituals to feed the right results to your beliefs.

 

Just getting into the cycle is not enough to develop success through right actions. You have to strengthen the belief that drives the cycle. That means you have to go through the cycle enough times to strength your belief until it reaches a self-sustaining size. Self-conditioning and repetition are very powerful tools if you want to instil a new belief that you think might be helpful.

For some insight as to how the new is affecting your beliefs, check out my article on why I don’t watch the news.