Make Action Your Asset

Principle #3: Self-leadership means doing what’s important to you.

Make action your asset.

Don’t be the type of person who goes through life living for someone else. When you perform just to please others you can get caught in a trap that steals away your identity. If I went through life always allowing my priorities and passions to be defined by others, I would cease to be the person I was meant to be. I pursue the things most important to me because I believe they were placed inside of me at birth. Throughout my life they have been refined and honed to be what they are today. I do what is important to me because those things define my purpose.

But you cannot keep your eye on the important things in life without a heavy dose of discipline and positive self-speak. You have to live on purpose, striving after your purpose, believing that your purpose matters and will ultimately give you deep self-worth. The teacher in the book of Proverbs said, “He who neglects discipline despises himself” (15:32 NASB).

The wisdom here is simple: if you are not intentional about pursuing what is important to you, then you lack discipline, which makes you a self-despiser instead of a self-leader. This passage by my friend Og Mandino says it all:

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, every day, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing; and the action, which follows, becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now.

I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have.

Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.