Start with your values and end with achievement! Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder among others maintain that passion is a crucial ingredient to entrepreneurial success. So what role does passion play? Most achievement requires focus and energy but it is difficult to sustain them without passion. Passion is however not enough when it is at odds with other matters that are really important to you. For instance, you are passionate about robotics and want to spend all your waking hours working on inventions but your family is also very important to you …
So it is crucial to set up your goals, projects, job properly to ensure you have the fuel to stay the course. The greatest effort goes in at the start. After a good set-up, it take much less effort to maintain, just a quiet moment or two before you start off.
Knowing what is important to you as a person, what must be present for you to feel fulfilled, is important to effective performance. These are often not the values we would describe to ourselves and others, but those that are consistently evident in our day-to-day actions. For example, if fairness is really important to me, there will be evidence of fairness in my daily actions. When I have been fair, I will feel fulfilled, even if I have suffered an inconvenience or loss in the process.
A vivid vision of what achievement will look, feel, smell is also crucial to achievement. Such a description of the end goal proposes that one clearly focuses on the future and enables all parts of the person to move in synch towards one destination.
When the person anticipates that this vision will be achieved by behaving in line with values, a considerable amount of energy is released from within, energy which can sustain the journey towards the goal, project or task. I, personally have found that with alignment of vision and values, this journey usually feels easier than without such alignment. Success is more certain.