It’s not possible to live life without failing somewhere along the line.
Remember that it took Thomas Edison 10,000 failures before he created the
light bulb. That’s what I call persistence.
We come into this world with few
skills and little knowledge and learn by trial and error. We try, we fail,
and we adjust and try again and so on until we reach, or at least come close
to the desired objective. This is the way a baby learns to crawl and walk,
how a child learns to ride a bike or fly a kite.
There are four areas concerning Leaving a Legacy that I consider to be
fundamental; a Life Well-Lived, Principles to Live By, The Importance of
a Spiritual Legacy and an Impact Legacy and a Financial Legacy. Today I
would like to share on a Life Well-Lived.
We’ve all been encouraged by someone to go out and live our
dreams. Our dreams, themselves, have even been personally
calling us for many years but we have not taken the call. Most
of us have looked at the caller ID and decided not to
answer. There’s also a percentage of us that hide behind
excuses, like -- "I don't know what my calling is" or "I don't
have a dream.” Those excuses have merely kept us in the
bleachers of life, refusing to come onto the playing field. As
my mentor always says, “Excuses are the tools of the
incompetent, used to build bridges that go absolutely
nowhere.” The simple truth of the matter is that most people
have allowed fear to paralyse their dreams and goals.
Four steps to getting the results you want
in business--and in life
Changing our behaviour to achieve better
results is the most important challenge we face in trying to
compete in this chaotic world. Maybe you're in a slump or know
deep down that you've accepted an average performance when a
great one is possible. When you're ready to change--to increase
your sales, to take some calculated risks, to improve any and
all aspects of your life--you may not know how to begin. What
can you do differently to create more positive results in your
work and personal life?
Once we have begun to open the doors of
opportunity we usually find roadblocks and
challenges in the way toward our desired
success. Many give up in the face of such
obstacles. They give up on their dreams and
settle for much less. We’ve all done it.
The truly successful in any endeavour will
move past these challenges and persistently
press forward.
One month down and we are already at February. (I know,
that was quick)!
Just stop for a moment and think back to those business goals,
work targets, KPI's, and personal aspirations (lose weight, get
fit, learn something new, etc.) that you set at the beginning of
2006 (or the end of 2005). Think about those visions
of success, profits and happiness you saw yourself achieving
this year.
Are you still on track? ...or have you broken some of those promises already?
"Just a moment", I hear your say "I never
*promised* that I would achieve them, I just committed to trying
my best. I didn't break any promises, I just got caught up
in other things"
To me, this is an excuse.
It is a habit of allowing yourself to not stick to your targets
because you lose focus when under pressure.
Am I being a little harsh? Perhaps.
Am I being truthful and accurate? Absolutely!
By definition, an affirmation is a statement repeated time and
again either verbally or mentally -- or written down. The words of
the affirmation statement - in themselves -when spoken, thought of,
or written *without* a pictorial (visualized) or emotional
connection -- make a very weak affirmation.
Affirmations, when worded correctly -- and when emotionally charged
- are able to tap into the unlimited creative power of your
subconscious mind, and manifest your desires.
Affirmations are not all created equal. Some are, of course,
better than others. There are *power affirmations* that
have been proven again and again to work - and I'll reveal some of
them in a moment.
When you examine the structure of these power affirmations, you,
too, can learn how to create your own powerful affirmations for your
specific purposes.
Consider the following:
Cognitive science is the study of the brain mechanisms
responsible for an individual's thoughts, moods,
decisions, and actions. Cognition refers to everything
that takes place in an individual's brain that helps him
understand the world around him. To accomplish such an
understanding involves mental processes such as
concentration, memory, conceptualization, creativity,
and emotions.
The Top Six Ways to Stay Motivated
I receive many emails from people that basically ask the same
question: How can I keep myself motivated long term? This seems to
be quite a common dilemma for many people so I want to address it
because it can be done! Here are my tips for staying motivated:
This is the text of
the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar
Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honoured to be
with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the
world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've
ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from
my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
It happens to everyone. It's
one of those days where everything feels blocked, you're
frustrated and the dread creeps in because your financial
flow feels like it is stuck. You desperately search high and
low for any ways to get the cash flow up but it seems to
have disappeared. What do you do now?
Opening the yellowed pages, he glanced over a short entry,
and his lips curved in an unconscious smile. Even his eyes brightened as he
read the words that spoke clear and sweet to his soul.
It was the voice of the little boy who had grown up
far too fast in this very house, and whose voice had grown fainter and
fainter over the years. In the utter silence of the attic, the words of a
guileless six-year-old worked their
magic and carried the old man back to a time almost
totally forgotten.
Entry after entry stirred a sentimental hunger in
his heart like the longing a gardener feels in the winter for the fragrance
of spring flowers. But it was accompanied by the painful memory that his
son’s simple recollections of those days were far different from his own.
But how different?
When you lose a sale, miss a deadline, become rundown, or feel
overloaded with work, do you encourage yourself to bounce back
quickly?
A close friend of mine once said "each morning when I look at myself in
the mirror I say 'now, that's the person I am going to spend the rest of
my life with'. Since I'm stuck with you, I need to treat you with
kindness, care and encouragement".
Putting yourself down reduces the effort you put into your next sale,
project, client, etc. Research has found that people who don't
believe in their abilities or encourage themselves to bounce back, tend
not to try as hard to achieve their goals - especially after a
setback.
You may not be aware of it; but you might have been held hostage in the
past, not by a cold-blooded terrorist, but by that sinking disillusioned
feeling called discouragement.
Is thankfulness a survival skill?
Perhaps most of you would respond with, "No, Jim, thankfulness is not
key to survival", and I would tend to agree with you. Most of us have
probably already solved the necessary problems of survival, gone beyond
that and are now working to achieve our desires. But let me give you
this key phrase, "Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while
you pursue all that you want." I believe one of the greatest and perhaps
one of the simplest lessons in life we can learn is to be thankful for
what we have already received and accomplished.
I believe we would all agree that having a
winning feeling is prerequisite to achieving outstanding
results. A person can't possibly expect to win if they're
constantly focusing on failure! The real secret here is to
capture that winning feeling of success as often as you can to
create the environment necessary to succeed.Article
continues
It can be summarized in this one statement:
"We were created in the image of our creator, therefore
we are creators." Think about this statement very
carefully. Everything that you, or anyone else has done
since the beginning of time, began first with a thought.
Read the
whole article
"Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will
spread beyond all boundaries."
-- Corita Kent
Imagine thirty thousand menacing obstacles in
your path to success.
You’re dehydrated. Hungry as hell. And wobbling
like an
Irishman on too much Guinness. Your eyes hurt,
your head throbs and your will is all but broken.
You’re not even sure you want to go on.
You feel like Frodo.
As in the character Frodo, in the final episode of the
‘Lord of the Rings-The Return of the King.’
Remember the master teacher once said 2000 years ago, "Unless you can
become like little children, your chances are zero; you haven't got a
prayer." A major consideration for adults.
Be like children and remember there are four ways to be
more like a child no matter how old you get…
In
almost any kind of business, sometimes there is a need to
motivate others. (NB: This is as distinct from "motivational
programs" which are structured incentive schemes, usually
aimed at sales staff to get them to sell more. This is a
different area altogether and one which we can look at
another time...
FOR ONCE
IT'S NOT ABOUT SELLING
The cynics amongst us would probably say that all you need
to do to motivate people, is to use sales techniques on
them. There might be a bit of truth in that from the point
of view that in order to motivate people, you've got to show
them "what's in it for them." However that's probably where
the resemblance ends.
I believe there is a difference between selling people an
idea and motivating them to "buy into it." With motivation
you need to focus more on generating and activating desire.
That's not something you necessarily have to do with
selling, because in that case you should be selling into a
ready-prepared market opportunity. (But that's straying into
marketing issues which we're not discussing now.)
