Feel Good by Jumping In The Deep End.

Do this when you kind of know how to swim and you’ll be surprised that you will swim and hence Feel Good.

The above was a metaphor for the way people can tackle tasks at hand. Too often we spend too much time in preparation and thus end up missing out on opportunities. Often this is caused by that killer of Feeling Good and achievement: perfectionism. By wanting to get everything just right we end up being paralyzed and miss our deadlines or start late and even if we hit our deadlines we end up delivering a shoddy job.

I am not suggesting that you should not spend any time on the preparation at all. What I am suggesting is to err on the side of starting the task early rather than later. There is great inertia in starting. There is also great momentum once one has started. Thus know your final goal, prepare a little and then take that very important first step.

Once you start the task then use feedback to make sure you are going in the right direction and have the flexibility to change your plans to move toward your goal. At the same time you need to be flexible about your goals. I have earlier mentioned that successful people choose their goals so that they are challenging and stretch their capabilities but they are not so difficult that they give up. Less successful people either choose very easy goals that they can reach without exertion or choose impossible goals so they give up.

What I’m suggesting here is that after a minimum amount of preparation start the task at hand understanding that it is a work in progress and you may have to backtrack and redo some things. However, having started you have the momentum of movement and can move full speed toward your ultimate goal.

So in order to achieve more, take that first step as soon as possible, take risks and be ready to fail at times so that your overall success rate goes up … and, Feel Good!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Feel Good. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.