The Secret To Getting Ahead

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A heartfelt message in your handwriting is one of the best gifts you can give her. There’s just something about the power of words that goes straight to a mother’s heart. And an inspiring Mother’s Day quote can be a great way to honor not only your own mom, but all the important moms in your life.

Here is the complete quote by Mark Twain:

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking all of your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting with the first one.

Why The Secret Of Getting Ahead Is Getting Started

1. Big Dreams Might Seem Unreachable

When you start wondering what you want out of life, there are no limits, you can dream about anything. You get this great feeling of satisfaction just by imagining what you can achieve, the possibilities are endless and it’s so encouraging for a while…

But then, reality sets in, you know that those dreams are far away from seeing daylight. You start to feel like they’re impossible to achieve and unreachable. That’s why they say “Dream big, but work small”, that’s exactly one point Mark Twain is trying to make.

You should actually dream big, but realize that the way to make those dreams happen is: to break them down in achievable small tasks that put together, will make you achieve that dream trough time. Dream all you want, but if you don’t start to do something to achieve those dreams, they will remain dreams forever.

2. Ideas Are Easy, Turning Them Into Reality Is Harder

The hard part of achieving great things is not to come up with ideas, but rather put those ideas to work and start executing them. Anyone has an idea, there are millions of great ideas out there, many can really change people’s lives for the better. The sad part is that most of those ideas are just thoughts that people conserve in their minds forever, other ideas people turn them into words but never turn them into actions.

Only a small number of people really executes those ideas, that’s why we have such a small percentage of successful people. Mark Twain knew this, and that’s one of the things he’s adverting us about in his quote. He was hugely successful because he didn’t just stick to having ideas, he made sure a great amount of those ideas were executed.

3. Turn Complexity Into Simplicity

Can you change the world? Probably not, and it seems such a huge task that you might feel overwhelmed by this outrageous question. But can you start to give some money to homeless people you see on the street? Yes you can! It’s a simple task, anyone can give something, it’s that easy.

Changing the world it’s such a complex topic that you can be lost in all the resources and tasks that it demands you to do (!). But if you start to actually do something about it, engaging in a small task that it’s simple, suddenly things change. You start to see that you can actually can contribute to make a change in this world.

So, life might seem complex if you look at the big picture, but if you start to do something about it, by taking the first step, all that complexity changes, you begin to see a simple way to start doing. All you need to do is getting started.

4. Strategies Are Pointless Without Productivity

You came up with dreams, you turned them into plans, now you have specific goals and a deadline to achieve them. You’re halfway to success, that’s great! But, like ideas, many people comes up with awesome strategies to achieve their goals, but in reality few of them actually is successful. Again, many of those strategies never leave the notebook, other strategies do leave it but people give up on them at some point. Only a short number of strategies really comes to live and makes people successful.

Because strategies can do you no good if you are not productive and diligent about them. Work ethic beats great strategists, if their strategies are not put to work. In contrast, some people never plan anything, but they are extremely productive and they get what they want. Getting started is all about productivity, what have you achieved yesterday? And today? This week? The week after? This month? Get some numbers in, if you don’t like what you see, get those numbers up by producing.

5. Only By Taking Action You Know You’re Right

Related to ideas and strategies (that you can come up with but never do anything about them), you can only know what works and what doesn’t work if you are in the process. Sometimes, people have great plans but stay on the thinking bubble for ages. They never take the first step, but they sure say they got a great plan to do it (how can they know!?).

The problem with this is that planning is only a conceptual stage of a project, only when you start to put that plan to work (the execution stage) you can know what works. This is essential to success, because only by execution or trying, you get results (analyzing stage). Those results will let you know if your plan is good or not. If the plan doesn’t work you can readjust it, correct the mistakes and give it another try. By repeating this process, as many times as it takes, you can reach success. Planning will do you nothing if you don’t execute. Some plans might need little adjustments, you can make those corrections right away. Some need bigger changes, you can make them with time.

But you can only know what to correct by getting started.

6. If You Start Executing You’re Ahead Of Most Competition

This is the kicker and how you can get ahead. As I mentioned, dreams, ideas, plans are like yesterday’s, everybody has one. The big difference between a dreamer and an achiever, is that a dreamer never wakes up and turns his dreams into reality, an achiever takes his dreams and makes them happen. Most people are dreamers, few are achievers. Your competition sure is full of dreamers, but not many are achievers.

If you take the first step and start to make things happen, you’re getting ahead of them instantly. Work ethic, discipline, simple habits repeated day after day, those are indispensable things that make people achieve and become successful. They don’t require much from you, they are actually simple to execute. But most people just underrates them or takes them for granted, they don’t take the time to actually do them.

What Mark Twain is advising us, is to do those simple things by starting to take the first step. Do the simple things, start executing, because most will talk and dream about it, while you will be working and getting ahead. That’s Mark Twain’s secret.

Get Inspired…

As with any space make it your own. We love finding great ideas and sharing them with you. Decorating for a season and or a holiday doesn’t have to be expensive. Hit your local flea markets, thrift shops and yard sales. you will be surprised at the awesome decor items people are practically throwing away. Below are a few of the items we found on Amazon you might like. Amazon is a great place to start. Thousands of sellers selling just about anything you can imagine. We hope this has inspired you to bring Fall home…