Personal Initiative

Personal initiative is Napoleon Hill’s 6th of his 17 Principles of Success. Personal initiative is what produces the “physical action” that will lead to success in one’s life.

According to Dr Hill, there are 2 types of people who never amount to anything; one is the person who never does what he is told to do. The other is the person who only does what he is told to do. Dr Hill see’s personal initiative as the twin brother of the 4th principle, “Going the Extra Mile.”

When we see of a person with personal initiative, we see of a person who is either a leader, or developing into a leader in this business and in life. Personal initiative sparks the imagination in a person to develop a burning desire to change their life into a successful life (hunger), as well as creates a voracious appetite to learn the skills necessary and grow into the person they need become in order to have that life (honable). Having personal initiative also helps us maintain strong morals and values in our lives (honourable), as it goes hand in hand with 100% responsibility in our lives.

All leaders have developed this success principle, as they rarely have to be told to do something to succeed, nor do they have to be told to go the extra mile in doing it. In order to build a very large organisation, we will want to build a business that has a culture of developing leaders, and whose leaders develop other leaders. This will definitely require us to develop strong personal initiative in ourselves first, but then also require us to help our people develop a strong personal initiative in themselves. If we don’t do this, we will end up creating a business of “followers,” one that becomes a full-time job for ourselves, without the incredible rewards that comes from this business. In many, this can lead to burnout and quitting. This is the opposite of what we want to create. We want to create a business that provides a space to develop a life of freedom. We want to create a business that allows us to personally develop into, and live the life of our full potential and dreams.

The culture you instil in your business will determine whether your people have the space to fully develop their personal initiative to its maximum. This is not to say that their personal initiative is your responsibility. It is 100% each and every person’s own responsibility to develop this success principle, but the culture you develop into your teams will either stifle or encourage personal initiative. 

Personal initiative will almost always follow personal inspiration. Having your own big dreams and helping your leaders find and develop their dreams is so important. Support your leaders to “want” to build their business through their dreams, instead of “having” to or “needing” to do it.

Inspire your teams to plug into the 3 Point Plan system. The more they are plugged in, the more inspired they will be to take the necessary actions to build their dreams. By plugging into the system, your leaders will be continuously reprogramming their minds to move away from failure activities and towards success activities.

Personal initiative is often stifled through fear. Although we can’t always know the fears our teams have when joining our business, the self-development built into the 3 Point Plan system will help greatly in overcoming man of these fears. Much of the education and employment systems damage personal initiative, by creating an environment whereby making mistakes are to be feared. If we create a culture in our business where our teams are scared to take action for fear of making a “mistake,” “doing it wrong,” or being “put in the naughty corner,” then we will destroy their personal initiative. There should never only be seen to be one way.

Many will come into our businesses and want to reinvent the wheel. NWM has been around for many, many years, and almost everything has been tried before. I’m equally as sceptical when someone wants to reinvent the wheel in this business as when a person has discovered a way to “manufacture antiques”, but as leaders we should always show humility that we don’t know everything yet and that we always keep an open mind. Maintaining a joyful, loving and accepting space for our teams will allow them to always feel safe and feel inspired to take action. For many, having a creative space is so important in order to feel inspired and excited about their lives and reaching their dreams. Suppressing this will end up pouring cold water on their fires.

It is always said in this business that it is easier to steer a moving vehicle than a stuck one, and that is why personal initiative into action is so important to develop and instil. The bigger ones dreams, and the more inspired one is to achieve them, the more coachable and honable one becomes and therefore the easier to steer.

Leaders understand that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. We have the system and those more successful than us (our uplines) to coach and mentors us to the successes that they have achieved. It is much easier to learn off their failures, although we often and unfortunately learn better from our own. Regardless of this, always create an open platform to come up to you to learn the ways that work better and that have worked for others. This will provide a space that inspires personal initiative and action, which is one of the hallmarks of a leader...and we always welcome more leaders in our businesses.

Let’s develop personal initiative in ourselves and go free.

Love Lior and Jodi