Action Trumps Everything! by Steve Mattis

     The problem with dreamers and visionaries is that we often are not very practical.  Sometimes we spend lots of time thinking through problems, looking at possibilities and running solutions over and over again in our mind, sometimes with little or no results.  That is why leaders, dreamers and visionaries can sometimes drive managerial types banana's.  Thoughts are only as good as the actions and movements that grow out of them.
     Now that may seem pretty obvious to many of you, but I suggest that most of us have been carefully trained in a method of thinking and analyzing that has led us to become great thinkers but not always as productive as we might have been, given the development of an alternative method.  The method that is familiar to most of us is the scientific method.  You know, you analyze and evaluate past realities and attempt to predict the future based upon your observations and assumptions about the past.  This method of prediction is important, however, when you find yourself in an unstable environment, with an uncertain future the past is rendered quite unless and its time to consider another method.
     You might be saying to yourself, "oh, great! It took me all my life to learn to think clearly and analytically, now I have to learn another method!"  Well, its not really all that foreign.  In fact, its the method that we first learned as toddlers.  Thats pretty cool.  How do toddlers learn?  Well they ACT, then they LEARN, then they REPEAT with better information.  For example, a toddler puts his hand on a hot stove, LEARNS that the stove is hot and says, "well that didn't work, see if I do that again."  This is an incredibly high level of learning.  But, we have been taught not to think this way because it wasn't advanced enough; wasn't scientific enough.
     This is the type of learning referred to as "Creation Thinking."  Actions lead to better evaluations and to better actions in the future.  So we don't have to "predict" the future scientifically, we just need to create it by acting.  All this grows out of the most advanced research from the Harvard business school and other high level academic institutions.  It turns out that "Creation Reasoning" is what sets entrepreneurial thought apart from Corporate maintenance thought.  Entrepreneurial people create new things, new organizations and new businesses.  And it turns out that they do so because them think and therefore act differently then most of us.  It seems that these unique people actually use both "Predictive Thinking" and "Creation Thinking" to propel them forward in their thinking and their acting.
     Instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting, which is at the heart of using Prediction, you need to act your way into a new way of thinking.  That is what entrepreneurs do when faced with the unknowable - and it is an approach that will work for you as well.
     Now if all of this has pricked your interest...I suggest a wonderful book that will help you get ahold of this amazing new method of reasoning.  I have been using this method and have seen amazing results in a very short time.  I have accomplished more in a week than I have in a month of Sundays by using the Predictive method along.  The book: Action Trumps Everything: Creating what you want in an uncertain world.  By Charles F. Kiefer and Leonard A. Schlesinger.
     After all isn't God a creative God not just a maintenance God!  Remember, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  This wasn't just thought; it was action!

     Let our Dreams and Visions become reality as we act, learn and repeat our way into the future!

Steve Mattis