How Do We Get To Where We Want to Go?

John Cousins
February 7, 2023
2 Minutes

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Take a quick inventory of yourself and your actions and habits. What are you doing that you are less than pleased with? What should you be doing that you currently aren’t?

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

We first have to promise to be honest with ourselves. Rationalizing and making excuses to continue behavior we know deep down is wrong will not move us forward. Instead, we need to be open to change.

What got us here won’t get us where we want to go.

Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results is not the strategy we will rely on. Instead, we will use the scientific method to determine what works for us.

Be open to testing different approaches, measuring the results, and course-correcting as needed.

Everything starts as an idea. First, we must cultivate a mindset that can generate positive, productive ideas. Then we put those ideas to work consistently through habits and practices.

Each small change consistently executed changes the direction of the ship. Over time this is how we reap a destiny.

“Sow a thought, and you reap an action; sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s all about eliminating poor habits and replacing them with good ones. Habits are consistent actions. Long-term consistency beats short-term intensity every time.

The operating principle of your new mindset is about taking charge of your life. That is the criteria for any decision we make: does it help us take control of our life, or does it hinder or offload that responsibility?

The direction of our life results from a continuous series of micro decisions. We make them all the time, all day, every day.

The cumulative effect of each little action needs to be in the direction of our goals. We need to set goals to know where we want to go.

“You have to know where you are going; otherwise, you may not get there. “
- Yogi Berra

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John Cousins
Author, Entrepreneur, & Teacher

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