Your Plan for Success in Life by Instructor Ma

Your Plan for Success in Life by Instructor Ma

In the martial arts we learn that thinking and acting in a positive manner is part of training yourself to feel and believe you are positive in your approach to things, and that you are going to be successful. However it only works if you make it work!

First of all, in War and in Life, you do need to plan things. First, you need to plan out your long term goals. Decide where you want to be, and then you need to decide on your strategy and have an action plan with target achievements and target dates.  Your life is made up of battles for success.

Every warrior knows that this plan needs to be a visible part of your life every day. Every morning you need to review your goals, and review how you are going to achieve them. Every day you need to have at least one thing to achieve that takes you nearer your long term goal. If you fail to keep sight of your goals, you won’t get to achieve them.

A way of helping you believe in yourself as a warrior, and in reaching your goals, is to visualize yourself in the position you hope to achieve. 

For example, you can, in your mind, see yourself in the boardroom, or receiving that longed for award, or sailing that fabulous boat in wonderful warm blue seas. You can see yourself living in that wonderful penthouse, with a huge terrace, wonderful views and a hot tub. Or maybe you see yourself as an acclaimed musician, golfer, or artist. It doesn’t matter what your dream is, what matters is that you work at achieving it.

Martial artists learn that warriors make the absolute most of their time. If you let your emotional fear hold you up, you will put off starting the things you need to do. And if you start, you will prevaricate and find distractions – anything to avoid actually doing what you need to do. This is something you have to overcome to be successful.  

Acknowledge the fear, and work out short periods of time to do at least a part of a task. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted. Ensure you have peace and quiet, and make sure you take your water or coffee with you.  

This way you won’t be tempted to just ‘put the kettle on while thinking of task A’, and wont just wander off to the fridge when you should be concentrating on task B’

Students particularly suffer from the procrastination syndrome. It’s easy to say ‘oh well, I work much better under pressure’, but, in fact, it’s rarely true, and most people just make life harder by putting off the moment.

So learn to work to the plan, live with the plan, and see the plan as your route to success. Don’t treat it as an enemy, actually it is your best friend.

Make sure your plan allows time for you to think about where you want to go, and why. Thinking about your future is a good way to keep your goals in sight, and to adapt them if need be. It is worth dreaming a little about how it will feel when you achieve your goals.

Make sure your goals are not too easy, or way too difficult. The long term goals may be a real stretch, and you know you have to work on progress in a realistic manner.  

So set your interim goals, but review them on a regular basis. Your ‘next’ goal should always be just a little bit harder than you think you can manage. Always ensure you have to aim a tad higher than you think you can reasonably get to at each stage.

Review your progress and goals at appropriate times. Build in your reviews to your critical path.

Yes, you should have a critical path plan. That way, you can save time instead of constantly thinking about what you should do next.  The plan should show each task in a format that tracks the sequence of your goals and tasks. 

A critical path also enables you to build in flexibility and potential for change. It doesn’t mean you are absolutely tied to each goal, each date and each vision. It should enable you to see how well you are doing at meeting your targets, though.

You can build almost anything into your critical path. If you need to get your diet right, then you can build in targets for reducing your dependence on sugary foods.  

You can have a target date for stopping smoking and weaning yourself off that bad old nicotine. You can build in the need on a regular basis to examine your attitudes, feelings and self esteem.   This is how you release your inner warrior.

I hope that you find these tips useful. Thank you for reading my articles.

About the author: Instructor Ma is a 3rd Degree Black Belt in the Korean self-defense art of Hapkido and a 2nd Dan in Traditional Taekwondo. She is a professional sports and fitness model and full-time Nursing student. She is the language, culture, and leadership development teacher for the World Martial Arts Congress. www.worldmartialartscongress.com

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