By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you take more decisive action. Reading time: 1:46.

“Yucky,” the little girl said, after taking a sip of her iced tea at a restaurant. Her mother intervened: “You have to put sugar in that.”

The little girl tore two packets of sugar and poured them into the iced tea while her mother was busy taking care of her two other children. The little girl tasted the iced tea again. “Yucky!” The girl’s mother looked up and said matter-of-factly. “You have to stir it.”

How many leaders have the right ingredients but forget to stir it? Taking action is critical. As the wit said,”Indeed, God may have given us the ingredients for Our Daily Bread but He still expects us to do the baking.”

Just Do It

Turn up the temperature on your oven. And get started baking. Don’t worry about next steps. Focus on THE NEXT step.

Don’t worry about heading in the wrong direction. Just start out. You can made adjustments in your plan. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The voyage of the best ship is a zig-zag line of a hundred tacks.”

Adapt and adjust but keep going. Like the Nike iconic ad said: Just do it. “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” said German philosopher and author Johann Wolfgang Goethe. “Only engage and the mind grows heated.”

How do you stay engaged. Take action every day. Consider the advice that a famous author gave to an author who would one day also become famous as an author. Alex Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Queen’s Necklace, advised:

Keep Stirring The Ingredients of Your Leadership

“You must write, write and write some more. Every day. At a set time. It doesn’t matter at all whether you produce anything good or not. But if you keep on writing, ideas will come to you.”

Jules Verne ultimately wrote 63 novels, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Stay productive. Stay active. Keep stirring the ingredients of your leadership. And sweeten the iced tea of your success.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Take action to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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