The Law of Precession and how it can help you
The Law of Precession – Recently while watching a webinar with online business mentors Stuart and Jay, I heard Jay mention The Law of Precession. You may be wondering what this is and I was too, so I did a bit of reading around and discovered that it is basically what we also know as “the ripple effect” or at least closely related to it.
The Law of Precession
Like a stone dropped in water with the resulting ripples extending outwards, the ripple effect analogy in other areas of life refers to how seemingly loosely or unconnected situations and events get affected by an initial action.
The Law of Precession is very similar. It is a scientific law at heart that states that for each action made, there arises a side effect at 90 degrees to the direction of the initial action. An example of precession working is with a gyroscope or toy spinning top, when spinning and especially when slowing down and the orientation of the spin starts to move around in a circle. See here for an example.
The idea of the law of precession working in everyday life was made popular by the architect, inventor and author, Buckminster Fuller with his example of bees gathering nectar. The bee just wants to collect nectar. Which is the main action. The bee doesn’t realise that from this attraction to the flower and its nectar, a monumentally important side effect arises at right angles to the bee’s main action – cross pollination.
So how does this law affect us in our lives?
The main point I glean from looking into this, is that the desirable objective, the outcome you want, is not always what you think it is at the beginning. We start with an idea, a vision, a goal but then the road twists and turns and the journey evolves. Other factors, people and situations come into play and the path that was started on suddenly looks quite different. And that can be a very good thing.
Knowing this and how nearly everything changes, the danger would be to neglect creating objectives. If all things change anyway, why bother?
The answer is that the important thing is to just make a move in the direction of your original objective. One move to start with will do. The next step. The law of precession then comes into play as a move made has a knock on effect in ways that you don’t even imagine.
Possibilities start to open up via an action and then the next step after that becomes clearer. An example would be if you begin with a plan to do something extra, in addition to the day job, to save a little money towards a holiday or some home improvements.
You start to look around online at ways you could sell some excess belongings or even market some craft pieces you have made. While doing this you stumble across a video about making a living using the internet and discover a whole community dedicated to supporting each other in their success with online business.
You decide to join this community and learn about how to market online – YouTube, Facebook, banner advertising, copyrighting. Before long you have booked to attend a three day event in an interesting country to meet your new friends in the community and the founders of the coaching company.
Whilst at the event, you meet a whole lot more like minded individuals (as well as enjoy cocktails on the beach). Two people you hit it off with in particular. They are marketing certain creative items online and are looking for a creative partner. Your interests and background seem perfect and you begin to create a successful business together. Not only that but one of them invests in overseas properties, something you are very interested in and agrees to help you find and purchase your first investment property.
From a starting goal and moving down a path to develop a little extra income for things for the house and a holiday, a year or so
later you have new friends all over the world, a successful online business and are looking to buy your first overseas investment property. That is the law of precession at work.
So when the way forward seems daunting or unclear, it is worth remembering how this all works – you just have to make a move and take a step, in the direction that feels best at the time. Overwhelm comes from projecting yourself into the future unnecessarily and imagining the task ahead as an unconquerable mountain. The cure for this overwhelm is to just focus on the next step or the next two or three steps maximum.
Not only does this reduce the daunting feeling about the tasks ahead, it also provides quick feedback and reward for the progress made. From there, other situations will come along, maybe different people will be met and sparks of inspiration will occur that open up the path ahead and sometimes in amazingly unexpected ways.
To begin your own journey with a free trial to learning online business from scratch, click here and meet Stuart and Jay. Founders of the SFM and Digital Experts Academy. A place where a community of like minded individuals are learning all they need to know about growing a successful business on the internet from a standing start.
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