D = Dominant

(Our premise, if Plan A fails you still have 25 other options.)

Want to make progress?  One of the key ingredients is to establish your definite chief aim, to borrow from Napoleon Hill and others.

What is your focus?  What is your goal and dream?  Where do you want to go and be in the next five, ten, and twenty years?

Another way to ask this question is this:  What is your mission?

A personal story:  For over thirty years I have dreamed and talked of being a writer.  Along the way I did write a few pieces, had seven magazine articles published, wrote half-a-dozen video scripts, and even hung out my shingle as a free-lance writer for a brief time.  

It was not until October 2009 that I began in earnest to be a serious writer.  And now in 2013 I’m releasing three books, almost at once.  What has made the difference?

I now have a dominant thought fixed in my mind.  I have a sense of direction and sufficient motivation to actually pursue my dream. 

Okay, enough of the personal stuff.

It is helpful to properly define the word 'dominant', so here are some synonyms:

     Leading

       Main

         Central

           Overriding

             Prevailing

               Major

                 Chief

I've told this story before and it bears repeating.

One of my favorite books is The Winds of War by Herman Wouk.  In this book, Mr. Wouk recounts a scene in which General E. J. Tillet, military author and one of the Commanding Generals for England during WWII, is speaking to the main character named Pug Henry.  Tillet is making an observation about Hermann Goering that is applicable to our topic. 

Here’s what he said:  “He’s wasted a whole bloody month bombing harbors and pottering about after convoys.  He’s only got till September the fifteenth.  His mission is mastery of the air, not blockade.  Define your mission.  Define your mission and stick to it."

What better way to state our objective than this?

This one concept is what goal-setting and goal accomplishment is all about.  

Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is credited with this quote.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

~Stephen Covey

Only you can identify your dominant thoughts and ideas, dreams and mission in life.  And when you do, I predict that the ideas and people, resources and revenue will soon follow.  The first step is having a dominant thought or idea to jump-start everything else.

P Michael Biggs

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