On Taking Action to Get What You Want

James Ray, who was a featured teacher in "the Secret", stated that he felt that the movie did not stress enough the importance of taking action to get what you want. He was right.
It is not enough to know what you want, and to visualize yourself having it, even though these things may seem very difficult in themselves. You can not achieve your goals; you can not get what you want, without doing something about them.

It is also true that most people run around doing plenty of things, but their actions are not directed towards a meaningful goal. We are just dealing with whatever life throws at us,without having any idea how to make all our actions fit together into a general purpose.

We are not taking the right kinds of action to move us towards getting the things we want. Often we do not even really know what we want. Often we are just doing things that will please other people, or at least we hope they will; and not even thinking about whether they please us. Many of us are overwhelmed by all the things we think we need to do. Yet we do not really know why we are taking them, or why we would want to take them.

How do we know what we need to be doing? Assuming that we very clearly know what we want, the next step is to listen to the guidance of our intuition. In order to do that, we need to stop running around, and just sit and relax for a while. Meditation has many benefits, and being more intuitive is not the least of them. Intuition is best heard in the stillness. Different people have their intuition speak to them in different ways, so you need to get to know how yours operates.

Sometimes our loud and pushy "inner gremlin" (which is our ego) drowns out the small voice of our intuition. It is always coming up with all the reasons why we can not do something. It tells us that we are not smart enough, that other people will laugh at us, that the last time we tried to do something was a failure, that we do not have the resources we need. It points out all the obstacles to us. It does whatever it can to discourage us from taking action. It wants us to stay in our comfort zone.

Jack Canfield suggests three ways you can silence your "inner gremlin". One is to surround yourself with positive, happy people. Another is to recall times when you successfully overcame the negativity to succeed at something and use them to encourage and inspire yourself to do it again. The third is to wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it against yourself whenever you catch your "inner gremlin" talking.

Sometimes you will not be able to find an idea of what you should be doing next. Ask your inner guidance what to do, and listen for its answer. The answer may not come right away but it will come when the time is right. You may not be inspired to take some action that deals directly with the problem at hand, but inspired to do something indirect instead. You may be inspired to take a walk to calm yourself down. That is okay; at least you are doing something. While you are taking a walk, you may get more inspired ideas about how do deal directly with the problem.

Perhaps the best thing about taking action is that it dissolves fear. It is, in fact, the only way to get rid of fear. It is only when you do something, that you can know for sure that there was nothing to be afraid of. Once you have done something and conquered fear of that thing, it gives you confidence to do something else that you were afraid of, so your comfort zone expands, and there are fewer and fewer things to be afraid of.

You can not get what you want without taking inspired action. When you take inspired action, it shows the Universe that you are serious about getting what you want, and that you are ready to take responsibility for getting it. It diminishes your fear and increases your confidence. When you take action, and can see yourself moving towards your goal, it creates excitement and passion, which makes you get what you want faster and easier.