5. Take Right Action
"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain."
- John Stuart Mill
Are you stuck in a rut? Stop ruminating and start making good decisions with right action. It’s where your actions, personal values, goals and who you are meet.
If you read this Modern Flanerie philosophy series in order, you've heard the following:
- Wandering helps you get out of your comfort zone to discover new opportunities.
- Your intuition will help guide you toward opportunities that interest you.
- You will find your true north, the direction towards fulfillment, when you know who you are and what you want.
- Loving yourself and owning your strengths allows you to refine opportunities to those that bring you joy.
By now it should be clear that you can't reason your way to a life you love.
Progress requires action. Taking action is always better than sitting around ruminating.
However, once you start down this path of action you will begin to realize that infinite possibility and opportunity can be overwhelming.
How do you continue to know which actions to take?
If you're not mindful, you'll overthink your decisions. For many people, this can cause overwhelm and lead to inaction due to analysis paralysis.
How can you prevent yourself from getting stuck? Choose right actions.
Action alone is not nearly as powerful as right action.
What is right action? Simply put, right actions align with who you are, your personal values, and your goals.
That sounds easy enough to nail down. Do things according to who you are and your values to get you toward the goals you want to achieve. Unfortunately, we're carrying a lot of baggage on this journey.
Our conscious mind distorts right action. It loves to make us second guess ourselves. We continually discount our personal strengths. That crafty little bugger also loves busyness, distracted-ness, tasks and checking things off the to-do list. Therefore, we consistently do things outside of our best interest.
To keep from derailing, we need a good dose of intuition from our unconscious mind. That's where the good stuff lives. Underneath it all, we know what we should be doing. We know what's good for us and what's not. We know who we are, what we're good at, and what we suck at.
A bit of confirmation can help get the conscious mind on board. Take a few right actions and you'll start to assure yourself that you're on the right track, because right actions generally feel pretty good. You'll get little hits of dopamine rewards that say, "yes, more of that please," because your actions are in alignment with who you are.
Here's what right actions look like in relation to where you're headed.
The green arrows are any actions you take that get you closer to your big picture goal, which is being your authentic self, represented by the large oval.
Any goals you choose for yourself should be contained within that circle, your er, um, YOU-niverse, if you will. That's where you'll find fulfillment.
Now let's say that you have one best thing you could possibly do with your life. One best goal to achieve. That's the target in the middle.
See the bold arrow that's a direct hit? That represents the best decision or series of actions and decisions you can possibly make.
Awesome! How do you discover that direct hit?
Sorry, you can't.
But I can share a tip that will change your life.
life changer:
you'll never know which action is the best action to take. So stop overthinking it. instead, take any series of right actions and rest assured you're on your way to living your best life.
While not all right actions are a direct hit, they're still pointed at your YOU-niverse. They will all get you closer to where you want to be and unlock opportunities you didn't know existed and couldn't possibly have anticipated.
I spent years torturing myself about what I should be doing with my life. Trying to figure out which series of actions would result in THE direct hit.
Not only can you never know, it doesn't matter anyways because any series of right actions will get the job done.
Once I internalized that, I let myself off the hook. I could relax knowing that I was making good decisions for myself.
So do yourself a favor, stop ruminating about whether you'll make the best choice and just make one. Right actions will reveal the path ahead.
It can change your life if you let it.
Now take a gander at those red arrows... the ones pointing away from your target. While we all have to do some of those things in life, the key is to limit them as much as possible.
Chase enough red arrows and you'll get somewhere alright, it might even look like success. But it will be someone else's version of success because it doesn't align with who you are. You will have achieved some things by taking actions, but you won't approach your full potential. You won't feel fulfilled.
I chased a lot of red arrows throughout my life. I was busy achieving lots of different things. I even learned quite a bit about myself in the process. But it certainly wasn't the most efficient route to get to where I am now.
How to tap into the power of right action
If you haven't done so already, now is a good time to gather all of your personality, strength and character assessments. Get good and clear on who you are, what you're good at and what your values are. Make a list of everything you can think of.
Then narrow it down into summary form. Now you're ready to draw yourself a YOU-niverse.
This may seem kind of silly, or a step that takes too much time. But it's an easy way to reinforce where you're headed to your conscious mind. It can be a great resource to help you stay on track, and make good decisions in times of uncertainty.
Just remember that along the way, you'll inevitably hit some red arrow territory. But as you continue on you'll sort the results of your actions, discarding the things you don't like and expanding upon the ones you do.
Over time you'll begin to see a pattern. In personal development, patterns lead to clarity. It's up to you to arrange those patterns and piece them together into something beautiful. Something you'd be proud to display.
Now that you've harnessed the power of right action, it's time to live bravely.