For those who haven’t heard of Grant Cardone, he’s a businessman, a salesman and the author of multiple business books and one of those being The 10X Rule. 

Whether you love him or hate him one can’t deny that he’s built a reputation for his non stop actionable approach to life. 

And his The10x rule shows us how to define our correct goals, accurately estimate the effort needed, discern how to approach our projects with the right frame of mind and then determine exactly how much action to take. 

The 10x rule is really a discipline not an education, gift, talent or good fortune. It doesn’t require some special personality trait. 

It works in every area of life whether its spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, familial and financial.

Most CEO’s will tell us that sufficient levels of motivation, work ethic and follow up are clearly in short supply these days. 

And if we look back on our lives we’ll see that we have wildly underestimated both the actions and reasoning necessary to accomplish any endeavour to the point where it could be labelled successful. 

The one thing that Grant believes has made the biggest difference in his life was that he always put forth 10 times the amount of activity that others did. 

For every sales presentation, phone call, or appointment others made, he was making 10 times more. He has approached all his business enterprises with massive action which has been the single biggest determining factor in any success he has created. 

For Grant the notion of creating extraordinary levels of success, by definition, means anything outside the realm of what most normal people can and do achieve. 

One cannot get to the next phase of a project without a grander mind set, more acceleration, and extra horsepower. 

Only we can decide what is our true potential and whether we’re living up to it; no one else can judge our success. 

And what is success? It is the degree or measure of attaining some desire object or end. 

And once we attain this desired end, the issue then becomes whether we can maintain, multiply and repeat our actions in order to sustain that result. 

People who are highly successful continue to work and produce and create even after they’ve flourished. They know that their efforts must continue in order for them to realise new achievements. Once the hunt for a desired object or goal is abandoned, the cycle of success comes to an end. 

Almost every problem people face in their careers and other aspects of their lives – such as failed diets, marriages, and financial problems are all the result of not taking enough action. 

So the focus of the 10x rule is we must set targets that are 10 times what we think we want and then do 10 times what we think it will take to accomplish those targets. 

There is nothing ordinary about the 10x rule. It is simply what it says on the tin: 10 times the thoughts and 10 times the actions of other people. The 10x rule is about pure domination mentality. 

 The following are a handful of mistakes people make when setting out to achieve goals:

1. Miss-targeting by setting objectives that are too low and don’t allow for enough correct motivation. 
2. Severely underestimating what it will take in terms of actions, resources, money and energy to accomplish the target. 
3. Spending too much time competing and not enough time dominating their sector. 
4. Underestimating the amount of adversity they will need to overcome in order to actually attain their desire goal. 

Humankind, by and large, tends to set targets at subpar levels. Many people, in fact, have been programmed to set targets that are not even of their own design. We have predetermined notions about what is fair, what is difficult, what is possible, what is ethical, what is good and so on. 

Any goal we set is going to be difficult to achieve and we will inevitably be disappointed at some point along the way. So why not set these goals much higher than we deem worthy from the beginning? 

If they are going to require work, effort, energy and persistence then why not exert 10 times as much of each? What if we are underestimating our capabilities? 

When we put in the necessary effort, persistence and energy towards our goals the marketplace will sense by our actions that we are a force to be reckoned with and are not going away – and it will begin to respond accordingly. 

Mankind seems to have this built in automatic calculator whose only purpose is to explain away failure. And this calculator tends to be more emotional than logical. 

We cannot afford to play the victim. Anytime we play that card to be right we are taking on the identity of a victim. 

Once we start to approach every situation as someone who is acting – not being acted upon – we will start to have more control over our life. We are the source, the generator, the origin, and the reason for everything – both positive and negative that happens in our life. 

Nothing happens to us; it happens because of us – we are both the problem and the solution. We always have a choice in how to respond to things. 

We have to assume that every project we attempt will take more time, money, energy, effort, and people than we can imagine. We must multiply every expectation we have by 10 and if it doesn’t take 10 times more than anticipated, great. It is better to be pleasantly surprised than greatly disappointed. 

Grant isn’t telling us to be pessimistic; just to be prepared and tackle our projects with the 10x rule as if our life depended on it. To manage every action as though we have a camera on us every step of the way; pretending we’re being recorded as a model by which our children and grandchildren will learn how to succeed in life one day. 

Always remember to follow through completely: that is the great common denominator of all winners. They see every action through to completion. Making no excuses and adopting the ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. 

Success doesn’t merely happen. It is the result of relentless, proper actions taken over time. And success is needed in order to perpetuate people, places and things and it is followed by taking necessary actions over time until it is acquired. 

We have to start approaching success as a duty, obligation and our responsibility. 

Luck clearly has something to do with it but anyone who is getting lucky will tell us that their luck is directly proportional to what they’ve done. The more action they took, the better their chances were of getting lucky. 

If we quit caring then we quit winning; quit winning long enough and we will just plain quit. Will our kids benefit when they’ll see us losing or quitting? Does anyone benefit when we can’t get our art sold or that book published or that great idea that will improve society? No one will benefit from our failures. 

We simply cannot train or prepare for normal amounts of gravity or resistance, competition and market conditions. We can’t think average, we have to think massive. 

We must prepare for massive, persistent action, 10x action, so we can win! 

Newton talked about the law of inertia: an object in motion continues in motion. So we keep taking action until we can’t stop our forward momentum. 

The other interesting fact is the more we commit to new actions the more creative we’ll become. It is as though our imagination opens up and new possibilities just pour from it.

We must go all the way and then keep going until our fire burns so hot that people stand in admiration of our ability to take action. 

We’ll be amazed by how much we can get done when we quit thinking, calculating and procrastinating and just get on with it and make a habit of acting now. 

Now means now. We start with first things first; make our initial list of goals, then a list of actions that will propel us in that direction. Then without overthinking it – start taking those actions. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Lets not reduce our goals as we write them 
2. Lets not get lost in the details of how to accomplish them at this point 
3. Lets ask ourselves ‘what actions can we take today to move us toward these goals?’
4. Lets take whatever action we come up with regardless of what they are or how we feel.
5. Lets not prematurely value the outcome of our actions.
6. Lets go back each day and review the list. 

Remember: successful people commit first and figure the rest out later. So le’ts constantly be prepared for success so that we can grab the opportunity when it comes along. 

Success is not a choice or an option it’s our duty to operate at the right level of thoughts and actions. Let’s follow through on our responsibility to leave a footprint on this planet so that when we are done with our tour of duty we will be remembered for approaching life with nothing less than the biggest of dreams and the most remarkable actions.