Action Without Thought

"Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought."
Bernard M. Baruch

If you stop to think about it, you will probably see that all of your errors and failures occured because you acted without thinking. This, of course, means you acted from habit. Habits are essential for certain things. If we had to stop and think about every single thing we did before we did it, we'd probably go crazy.

We need to acquire habits to efficiently do the things that we need to do every day, such as the habit of brushing our teeth every day, for example. But most of us spend our entire lives on autopilot. We only think about what we are doing when we are presented with a completely new situation and don't know what to do about it. We treat certain people the same way all the time, for example, without stopping to think about whether it's appropriate for the occasion.

In order to really know what is the most appropriate action for the current circumstances, you need to know what the current circumstances really are. Your mind needs to be in the present; and for most of us virtually all of the time our mind is either brooding about the past or worrying about the future. How often have you missed what someone was saying because your mind was off somewhere else? How may people can truthfully say that they are a good listener? The same principle occurs with everything else going on around you. Always pay attention to what's going on right now before you do anything other than basic habits.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com