3 Tips On How To Take Initiative In Your Life

We all dream big. It’s those big dreams, which on the surface, look amazing; but when we sit down to make them happen, can feel overwhelming and daunting to achieve.

When this happens, we begin to doubt ourselves, hold back for fear of making a misstep, or don’t try at all because we might fail. Our problem isn’t that we don’t know how to take initiative. Our problem is that we see initiative as a gargantuan step that can only be taken all at once.

Here’s how to make the process easier.

 

 

How To Take Initiative In Your Life

1.) Start small and start where you are

Initiative is not bread from huge accomplishments. Nothing happens overnight. Forget technology and instead, look to a skill as old as time itself – farming. Small steps taken day in and day out for months at a time until finally, a crop is ready for sale.  

The initiative that was taken was not the crop itself, but the early morning wake-up calls to till the soil, to water the fields, and protect it from the elements.

All small actions result in a great crop. Too often with our own projects, we start large, when we should instead focus on the small. The daily improvements, which over time, turn into something better.

 

2.) Don’t focus on the immediate results, focus on building a routine

In concert with small changes, routines are the foundation of any consistent action. There is NO value in trying to start something when you are going to stop in two weeks because you only did it once.

Schedule 20 minutes a day, commit to those 20 minutes and do that for a month. Once you’ve seen the results, expand on it, slowly, in small portions, and keep it going. The goal is NOT to overdo when you do take initiative. The goal is to consistently engage in it, to never giving up.

 

3.) Accept that you will stumble often

We are all afraid of failure. We all want the quick path to success. But it does NOT exist. Whatever project you are looking to undertake, I guarantee you will stumble, you will fall, and there will be failures. You aren’t always going to succeed.

In the early days, what you produce might not be fantastic. It might be downright garbage. But it only goes from garbage to flowers if you can accept that you will stumble. Instead of looking at it as a failure, look at is an investment that you put into each day to get better for the next.

 

Take initiative. Start today – NOT tomorrow, NOT next week.

Define a routine and the small pieces that will form a bigger whole in a month or two months that you can work towards each and every day. Don’t sway from your course, don’t give in to other indulgences or easy outs.

Commit, every day, to contributing to some part of your goal. It might take a while for you to get there, it might not go as fast as you would like. But by consistently chipping at it – you’ll get there, you’ll make it happen, and it will be worth it.
And when you’ve reached your goal, get ready to smile when someone asks you – “How come you have so much initiative?”, “How do you do it?” – and then tell them.

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