The most profound truths in the business of life are usually quite simple. So simple that they are either overlooked or ignored by almost everyone. And this is one that causes the most misunderstanding and the most unhappiness, frustration and failed potential.
Everything counts! Not just what you want to count, but everything. It all adds up. Wolfgang von Goethe, the German philosopher and one of the most brilliant men of history, said that the greatest invention of his age was double-entry bookkeeping.
When he was asked why such a simple aspect of accounting appeared so important to him, he replied that the process of accounting for debits and credits explained the human experience, and individual results, better than any other method.
In double-entry bookkeeping, every transaction is recorded as either a debit or a credit. In life, everything you do is either a plus or a minus. In bookkeeping, a company with more credits than debits is solid, solvent and profitable. In your life, when you rack up more pluses than minuses, you are happy, healthy and prosperous. And everything counts.
I have a friend who is chronically overweight by about 30 pounds. He insists that all he eats is “fresh fruit, salads and vegetables” and he can’t understand why he has a weight problem.
One day, I found him polishing off his second piece of cheesecake over lunch and I asked him about it. He looked me squarely in the eye, pointed to the dessert and said, “I don’t count that.”
The world is full of people who hope and wish and pray that everything doesn’t count. They don’t realize that everything they do adds up to either a great life or an unhappy one.
If it’s not moving you toward your goals, it’s probably moving you away. Every action (and inaction) is going onto your personal balance sheet. Everything counts and the clock is running.
Make sure that everything you do is moving you in the direction of where you want to end up. Because if you do, you will.
By:
Brian Tracy
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Effective Parenting
If you have children, one of the most important questions you will ever ask is this: “What is the real role of parenting?” Parents are required to do a thousand different things in the process of bringing up their children, but what is the fundamental, central role of parenting? I have four children of my own, and I have studied this question for more than twenty years.
The role of parenting is to raise your children with high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem so that they leave you feeling completely capable of making their own way and succeeding in the world. This definition is sufficient to govern your behavior from the time your child is born to the time he or she leaves home, and for years afterward.
The biggest single mistake that parents make with regard to their children is that they conclude, usually unconsciously, that their children exist to fulfill the parents’ expectations, to be what the parents want them to be.
What I learned very early, an awareness that has helped me to be a better parent, is that children belong to themselves. They are not personal possessions. Parents do not own children. The job of parents entails raising their children to feel terrific about themselves, to feel capable of dealing with the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Whether a child comes from a good home with every material blessing or a poor home with limited resources doesn’t really matter in the long run. What does matter is how confident the child feels when it comes to setting goals, making decisions, overcoming obstacles and succeeding in his or her chosen areas of endeavor. If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.
So how can you plant the necessary seeds in your child’s mind and heart to assure that he or she grows up straight and strong and capable? First, understand that parents have a tremendous ability to influence the growth and development of their child. The little things that you do or say over the months and years can have a powerful impact on how your child thinks and feels about himself or herself and how he or she turns out. It is therefore extremely important that you be very aware of what you are doing and saying, and why, and the likely consequences of you words and actions.
Abraham Maslow identified two sets of needs experienced by every person: deficiency needs and growth needs.
The major deficiency needs are for survival, security, and belongingness, or acceptance. If a child, or an adult for that matter, is preoccupied with physical survival and physical needs, or emotional security, or whether or not he or she is accepted by others, he or she will continually think about satisfying these deficiencies. The child will become tense, anxious, uncertain, and insecure. And the child will develop fears of failure and rejection, and will be constantly looking over his or her shoulder.
The primary growth needs that Maslow identified are for self-esteem and self-actualization. The self-esteem need is satisfied when the child learns to love himself or herself. And children love and respect themselves to the exact degree to which they feel that their parents love and respect them. Whatever genuine emotions you express toward your children repeatedly will eventually be impressed deep into their minds and will have a tremendous impact on forming their characters and personalities.
The self-actualization need is satisfied when your relationship with your child is so secure that his or her energies can be dedicated to being the very best person he or she can be.
There are two qualities that Dr. David McClellen of Harvard University has identified as the fundamentals for raising a happy, healthy child. The first of these is the establishment of a democratic environment at home. This means that the child’s opinion and views are solicited and considered from an early age. The child is asked what he or she thinks about personal and family issues.
My wife and I involve our children in all decisions affecting them, such as selecting the clothes they wear, the activities they engage in, the schools they go to and how they will spend their leisure time. The important thing to remember about creating a democratic environment at home is that you do not have to agree with everything you children want to do. You can argue and disagree when you feel that their decisions would not be in their best interests over time. As long as you solicit their opinions and carefully consider their viewpoints, they will feel that what they have to contribute is valuable and important to the family. They then grow up feeling that their ideas can be valuable and important to any group.
The second ingredient in raising happy, healthy children is positive expectations. We know that expectations tend to be fulfilled, one way or another. If you have positive expectations for your children, they will do everything possible not to disappoint you.
In planting the seeds of success, it’s important to remember that expectations are not the same as demands. Many parents think that putting intense pressure on their children to perform to some particular standard is the same as expressing positive expectations. But children can be destroyed psychologically if they believe that their parents will no longer love them if they do not excel at a particular subject or sport. Positive expectations that graduate into ceaseless demands can cause lasting harm to a child.
One of the most important things you can do in planting the seed for your children is to continually refer to the future. Use words like “next time.” In regard to a poor grade in school, for example, you can say something like, “Next time, if you really apply yourself you can bring that up a full grade, can’t you?”
Or you can use the words, “in the future,” or “from now on.” Instead of becoming upset or critical about a particular mistake that your child has made, you can say something like, “In the future, you could do it in this way.” Or, “From now on, why don’t you try this approach?”
There are three steps to high achievement for your child, and these steps will remain the same throughout his or her lifetime.
They are:
1. The acceptance of complete responsibility.
2. The setting of clear goals and plans for their accomplishment.
3. The development of persistence in overcoming obstacles and achieving goals.
Starting when they were very young, I have continually reminded my children that they are responsible to themselves. They are responsible to their decisions. They are responsible for getting good grades and for cleaning their bedrooms. They are responsible for contributing to the family. Like a mantra, I have repeated the word “responsibility” over and over again. And it really works.
It is absolutely amazing how intelligent your children’s decisions will be when you make them fully responsible for them. Of course, responsibility must be age appropriate. A young child cannot be responsible for major financial decisions. But encouraging the level of responsibility that is appropriate at each age is fundamental to planting the seeds of success later in life.
Out of the soil of responsibility grow the flowers of goals and plans. Young people feel like winners to the degree to which they set goals for themselves and then attain those goals. Children who learn to set small goals and then accomplish those goals soon become excited about setting even larger goals and accomplishing those goals as well.
When a child has achieved a goal, large or small, you should make a big deal about it. The more you celebrate the successes of your children, the more they will look forward to celebrating future successes. Soon they will develop an unconscious, instinctive drive toward the attainment of worthwhile objectives. You will have set them up psychologically for life.
The final step toward high achievement is cultivating persistence. Children, especially young children, easily become tired and discouraged in pursuing a goal of any kind. Your job is not to force them to keep at it; rather, you need to continually encourage them and guide them when their interest or attention begins to weaken. Sometimes you need to get right in there with them and do part of the task yourself. The most important thing is that they develop the habit of staying the course until the task is accomplished. Soon, they will find their own motivation for overcoming obstacles and adversity as they move toward task completion and goal accomplishment.
The very best way for children to grow is in the direction of his or her own natural talents and abilities. Each child is unique. Each child has his or her own particular agenda. Your job is to listen to your children, to ask them questions, to probe and to find out what it is they really want to do. Then, give them every opportunity possible to do it. If they decide later that they don’t want to do that particular task or engage in that particular activity, you should let them off the hook gently and guide them toward something that will be of greater interest.
Remember, motivation requires motive, and motive is invariably personal. It is your children’s job to try a lot of different things as they grow up until they find the best fit. And it is your job to offer encouragement and love to sustain them during their search.
As a parent, the most important and longest-lasting thing you can ever do is to raise happy, healthy, self-confident children. You do this by planting the seeds of success early in life. You help them accept responsibility, set goals and persist in the face of adversity until it becomes a habit for them. You invite their opinions and tell them continually how much you believe in them. You never use destructive criticism; instead, you keep them focused on doing better in the future. And you enhance all aspects of your relationship with your child with the magic of unconditional love.
When you plant the seeds of future happiness and achievement in the fertile soil of love and caring, you can be assured that your children will grow up straight and strong, good and true. And for the rest of your life, you will enjoy the bountiful harvest.
By: Brian Tracy
The role of parenting is to raise your children with high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem so that they leave you feeling completely capable of making their own way and succeeding in the world. This definition is sufficient to govern your behavior from the time your child is born to the time he or she leaves home, and for years afterward.
The biggest single mistake that parents make with regard to their children is that they conclude, usually unconsciously, that their children exist to fulfill the parents’ expectations, to be what the parents want them to be.
What I learned very early, an awareness that has helped me to be a better parent, is that children belong to themselves. They are not personal possessions. Parents do not own children. The job of parents entails raising their children to feel terrific about themselves, to feel capable of dealing with the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Whether a child comes from a good home with every material blessing or a poor home with limited resources doesn’t really matter in the long run. What does matter is how confident the child feels when it comes to setting goals, making decisions, overcoming obstacles and succeeding in his or her chosen areas of endeavor. If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.
So how can you plant the necessary seeds in your child’s mind and heart to assure that he or she grows up straight and strong and capable? First, understand that parents have a tremendous ability to influence the growth and development of their child. The little things that you do or say over the months and years can have a powerful impact on how your child thinks and feels about himself or herself and how he or she turns out. It is therefore extremely important that you be very aware of what you are doing and saying, and why, and the likely consequences of you words and actions.
Abraham Maslow identified two sets of needs experienced by every person: deficiency needs and growth needs.
The major deficiency needs are for survival, security, and belongingness, or acceptance. If a child, or an adult for that matter, is preoccupied with physical survival and physical needs, or emotional security, or whether or not he or she is accepted by others, he or she will continually think about satisfying these deficiencies. The child will become tense, anxious, uncertain, and insecure. And the child will develop fears of failure and rejection, and will be constantly looking over his or her shoulder.
The primary growth needs that Maslow identified are for self-esteem and self-actualization. The self-esteem need is satisfied when the child learns to love himself or herself. And children love and respect themselves to the exact degree to which they feel that their parents love and respect them. Whatever genuine emotions you express toward your children repeatedly will eventually be impressed deep into their minds and will have a tremendous impact on forming their characters and personalities.
The self-actualization need is satisfied when your relationship with your child is so secure that his or her energies can be dedicated to being the very best person he or she can be.
There are two qualities that Dr. David McClellen of Harvard University has identified as the fundamentals for raising a happy, healthy child. The first of these is the establishment of a democratic environment at home. This means that the child’s opinion and views are solicited and considered from an early age. The child is asked what he or she thinks about personal and family issues.
My wife and I involve our children in all decisions affecting them, such as selecting the clothes they wear, the activities they engage in, the schools they go to and how they will spend their leisure time. The important thing to remember about creating a democratic environment at home is that you do not have to agree with everything you children want to do. You can argue and disagree when you feel that their decisions would not be in their best interests over time. As long as you solicit their opinions and carefully consider their viewpoints, they will feel that what they have to contribute is valuable and important to the family. They then grow up feeling that their ideas can be valuable and important to any group.
The second ingredient in raising happy, healthy children is positive expectations. We know that expectations tend to be fulfilled, one way or another. If you have positive expectations for your children, they will do everything possible not to disappoint you.
In planting the seeds of success, it’s important to remember that expectations are not the same as demands. Many parents think that putting intense pressure on their children to perform to some particular standard is the same as expressing positive expectations. But children can be destroyed psychologically if they believe that their parents will no longer love them if they do not excel at a particular subject or sport. Positive expectations that graduate into ceaseless demands can cause lasting harm to a child.
One of the most important things you can do in planting the seed for your children is to continually refer to the future. Use words like “next time.” In regard to a poor grade in school, for example, you can say something like, “Next time, if you really apply yourself you can bring that up a full grade, can’t you?”
Or you can use the words, “in the future,” or “from now on.” Instead of becoming upset or critical about a particular mistake that your child has made, you can say something like, “In the future, you could do it in this way.” Or, “From now on, why don’t you try this approach?”
There are three steps to high achievement for your child, and these steps will remain the same throughout his or her lifetime.
They are:
1. The acceptance of complete responsibility.
2. The setting of clear goals and plans for their accomplishment.
3. The development of persistence in overcoming obstacles and achieving goals.
Starting when they were very young, I have continually reminded my children that they are responsible to themselves. They are responsible to their decisions. They are responsible for getting good grades and for cleaning their bedrooms. They are responsible for contributing to the family. Like a mantra, I have repeated the word “responsibility” over and over again. And it really works.
It is absolutely amazing how intelligent your children’s decisions will be when you make them fully responsible for them. Of course, responsibility must be age appropriate. A young child cannot be responsible for major financial decisions. But encouraging the level of responsibility that is appropriate at each age is fundamental to planting the seeds of success later in life.
Out of the soil of responsibility grow the flowers of goals and plans. Young people feel like winners to the degree to which they set goals for themselves and then attain those goals. Children who learn to set small goals and then accomplish those goals soon become excited about setting even larger goals and accomplishing those goals as well.
When a child has achieved a goal, large or small, you should make a big deal about it. The more you celebrate the successes of your children, the more they will look forward to celebrating future successes. Soon they will develop an unconscious, instinctive drive toward the attainment of worthwhile objectives. You will have set them up psychologically for life.
The final step toward high achievement is cultivating persistence. Children, especially young children, easily become tired and discouraged in pursuing a goal of any kind. Your job is not to force them to keep at it; rather, you need to continually encourage them and guide them when their interest or attention begins to weaken. Sometimes you need to get right in there with them and do part of the task yourself. The most important thing is that they develop the habit of staying the course until the task is accomplished. Soon, they will find their own motivation for overcoming obstacles and adversity as they move toward task completion and goal accomplishment.
The very best way for children to grow is in the direction of his or her own natural talents and abilities. Each child is unique. Each child has his or her own particular agenda. Your job is to listen to your children, to ask them questions, to probe and to find out what it is they really want to do. Then, give them every opportunity possible to do it. If they decide later that they don’t want to do that particular task or engage in that particular activity, you should let them off the hook gently and guide them toward something that will be of greater interest.
Remember, motivation requires motive, and motive is invariably personal. It is your children’s job to try a lot of different things as they grow up until they find the best fit. And it is your job to offer encouragement and love to sustain them during their search.
As a parent, the most important and longest-lasting thing you can ever do is to raise happy, healthy, self-confident children. You do this by planting the seeds of success early in life. You help them accept responsibility, set goals and persist in the face of adversity until it becomes a habit for them. You invite their opinions and tell them continually how much you believe in them. You never use destructive criticism; instead, you keep them focused on doing better in the future. And you enhance all aspects of your relationship with your child with the magic of unconditional love.
When you plant the seeds of future happiness and achievement in the fertile soil of love and caring, you can be assured that your children will grow up straight and strong, good and true. And for the rest of your life, you will enjoy the bountiful harvest.
By: Brian Tracy
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Discovering Your Talents
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Do you value life? Then waste not time, for that is the stuff of which life is made.” The value of anything that you obtain or accomplish can be determined by how much of your time, or your life, that you spent to acquire it. The amount of yourself that you use up in achieving the goals that are important to you is a critical factor to consider, even before you begin. Only by discovering your innate strengths and developing and exploiting them to their highest degree can you utilize yourself to get the greatest amount of satisfaction and enjoyment from everything you do.
Deciding what you want to do, what you can do well, and what can give you the highest rewards for your efforts is the starting point in getting the best out of yourself.
When we do strategic planning for corporations, we begin with the premise that the whole purpose of the exercise is to reorganize and reallocate people and resources to increase the rate of return on equity, or capital invested in the business. Invariably, this is done by emphasizing some areas and de-emphasizing others, by allocating more resources to areas with higher potential return and by taking resources away from those areas that represent lower potential returns. By developing or promoting newer and better products and services and by discontinuing those products and services that are less profitable, the company and all the people in it can channel their resources to maximize their returns.
In doing personal strategic planning, the first thing you want to think about is increasing your personal “return on energy,” rather than return on equity. You need to realize that the most essential and valuable thing that you have to bring to your life and to your work is your ability to think, to act and to get results. Your earning ability—which is a function of your education, knowledge, experience and talents—is your human capital, or your equity. And the way you use it will largely determine the quality and quantity of your rewards, both material and psychological, both tangible and intangible.
For example, a young man in one of my seminars came up to me and told me that he was working as a plumber for a large plumbing-contracting firm. He made good wages, but he was very envious of the salespeople in his company who made more money, drove nicer cars, wore nicer clothes and had much better life-styles. He had completed all his training and had his journeyman’s certificate, and he was at the top of his wage scale. The only way he could earn more money was by working longer hours. He realized, however, that that was not the answer. Instead, he wanted to get into sales, where his income could be higher and would not be fixed on an hourly basis.
I remember advising him that if he wanted to get into sales, it was up to him to learn how to sell and then to do everything possible to get his management to give him a chance at selling plumbing services. His future was up to him, but he first had to learn how to do the new and higher-paying job.
A little more than a year later, he attended another seminar that I was giving in that same city, and he told me his story. He had told his management that he wanted to get into sales. The managers had discouraged him, telling him that plumbers had very little aptitude for the hard, interpersonal work involved in selling a complex service. He then asked them what he would have to do to prove to them that he could sell well. To make a long story short, they helped him to learn how to sell their company’s services by having him study manuals and take extra courses on his own time. He bought books and listened to tapes and began spending time talking to the salespeople in the organization.
Now a year had passed. He had been a full-fledged salesman for about five months. He was already earning more than twice as much as the most he had ever earned as a plumber. But most of all, he was happier. He was more excited and more enthusiastic about himself and his work than he had ever been. He loved the field of selling, and he considered his career change to be one of the best decisions he had ever made.
This story is typical of countless stories that have been related to me over the years. In each case, the individual had discovered and developed his or her strengths and, subsequently, improved the quality of his or her life. And you can do the same. In fact, this may be one of the most important things you ever do.
This first part of personal strategic planning is called “values clarification.” You ask yourself, “What values and virtues do I most admire and wish to practice in my life?” If you wanted to discover your strengths in the work world, first you would define your values as they apply to employment. The values that companies settle upon would be similar to the values that you organize your work life around. Often, both companies and individuals will choose values such as integrity, quality, respect for others, service, profitability, innovation, entrepreneurship, market leadership, and so on. For example, General Electric, as one of its values, is determined to be either first or second in quality and market share with any product that it offers. If it cannot achieve a first- or second-place position, it will make every effort to grow into it, or it will leave the market entirely.
In a similar vein, you could use those values to define your position with regard to your work. You could decide to plan your work life around the values of quality, excellence, service, profitability, and innovation. There are dozens of values that you can pick from, but whichever you choose, and the order of priority you place on your choices, will determine your approach to your work.
Your next step is to create your personal mission statement. This is a clear, written description of the person you intend to be in your work life. I have often found that this is even more important than setting specific financial or business or sales goals. Once you have decided how much you want to earn, you need to write out a mission statement that describes the kind of person you intend to become in order to earn that amount of money.
For example, you might say, “I’m an outstanding salesperson, well-organized, hardworking, thoroughly prepared, positive, enthusiastic, and intensely focused on serving my customers better than anyone else can.” With this as your mission statement, you have a series of organizing principles that you can use to guide your career choices, your personal- and professional-development activities, and your work schedule for each day. This mission statement also tells you the kind of person that you’re going to be in your interactions with the people whose satisfaction will determine your career success. A clear mission statement also is a definition of the areas in which you intend to become stronger in order to achieve your goals.
Remember: Your goal is to identify your strengths so that you can deploy yourself in such a way as to increase your personal return on energy. One of the best mental techniques that you can use to accomplish this is to see yourself as a “bundle of resources” that can be applied in a variety of directions to achieve a variety of objectives. As a bundle of resources, the amount of time and energy that you have is limited; therefore, your time and energy must be put to their highest and best use. Stand back and imagine that you’re looking at yourself objectively, as if through the eyes of another person, and you’re thinking about how you could apply yourself to bring about the best results. See yourself as your own employer or boss. What could you do to maximize the output of which you’re capable, and where could you do it?
Once you have defined your values and written out your mission statement, the next step is to do what is called a “situational analysis.” Sometimes we call it a “performance audit.” This is the process of analyzing yourself thoroughly before you begin setting specific goals and planning certain activities. You begin your performance audit by asking yourself some key questions.
One of those questions should be, “What are my marketable skills?” Think about it. What can you do for which someone else will pay you? What can you do particularly well? What can you do better than others? What have you done particularly well in the past?
A wage or a salary is merely an amount of money that is paid to purchase
a certain quality and quantity of labor or output. The results that you’re able to get by applying your strengths and your energies largely determine your rewards in life. If you wish to increase the quality and quantity of your rewards, you have to increase your ability to achieve more and better results. It’s very simple.
Earl Nightingale said that the amount you’re paid will be determined by three things: (1) the work you do, (2) how well you do that work, and (3) the difficulty of replacing you.
The laws of supply and demand also affect the labor market, of which you are a part. Employers or customers will always seek the very most for the very least. That means that you’ll always be paid the very least that is necessary to prevent you from moving to another organization.
Abraham Lincoln said that the only security a person can have is the ability to do a job uncommonly well.
The height of your income will be determined largely by how well you do your job and the difficulty of replacing you. In areas where workers can be replaced easily, the workers are paid only the minimum amount necessary to keep them. In increasing your return on energy, one of your objectives is to become so good in your chosen field that the cost of replacing you is extremely high. This is the way to assure that you will always be paid well because no one can get the kind of results that you can get for the amount that you charge, or the amount that you’re paid (which are the same).
In reality, you’re the president of your own personal-services corporation. You’re completely in charge of production, quality control, training and development, marketing, finance, and promotion. Thinking of yourself passively, as being employed and, therefore, subject to the dictates of someone else, can be fatal to your long-term success. On the other hand, seeing yourself as self-employed forces you to see that you also are self-responsible and self-determining, that everything that happens to you happens because of your conduct and your behavior. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’re behind the steering wheel of your life. It’s up to you to decide how to utilize your talents and abilities in such a way as to bring you the very highest return on investment of your time and energy. No one else is going to do it for you. You’re the boss. Others can help you, guide you, direct you, channel you, point you in the right direction and even give you opportunities, but in the final analysis, no one can make the critical decisions that will determine your future and your fortune.
Here are four questions that you need to ask yourself on a regular basis: (1) “What do I most enjoy doing?” (2) “How would I describe my ideal job?” (3) “If I could have any job at all, anywhere, what would it be?” (4) “If I won a million dollars in the lottery and I had to pick a job to work at indefinitely, what would I choose to do with my time?”
In uncovering your strengths, ask yourself, “What are my unique talents and abilities?” What have you been good at in the past? What things do you do easily that seem to be difficult for other people? In what areas of work do you seem to get the best results, and do you derive the most pleasure from? The answers to those questions all are indications of how you might deploy yourself to increase your return on energy invested.
As a result of your genetic structure, your education, your experiences, your background, your interests and proclivities, you’re a unique and rare combination of talents and abilities. You can be extremely good at something. You’re responsible for finding out what that something is and then throwing your whole heart into it, without reservation or holdback. Only when you discover what you really enjoy doing and then commit yourself to it wholeheartedly do you begin to feel really alive and fully engaged in life.
Look at your current job and current abilities, and ask yourself, “Where do I want to be in three to five years?” What kind of work do you want to be doing? What kind of people do you want to be working with? What level of responsibility do you desire? What kind of money do you want to be earning? What part of the country do you want to be living in?
Let your imagination flow freely for a while. Imagine that there are no limitations on what you can do or be, or where you can do it or be it. Imagine that all options are open to you.
Look at your work and at your life in general today, and ask yourself, “What kind of people do I admire and most want to be like?” Who do you know, or know about, who is doing the kind of work that you want to do and living the kind of life that you want to live? What changes would you have to make in your life to be like that person? Remember: Whatever anyone has done, someone else can do as well. You’ll never be exactly the same as another person, but you don’t need to be. You can use the successes and achievements of other people as examples and guidelines to help you decide where you want to arrive at the end of your particular journey, but you can be unique and different and successful in your own way.
Harold Geneen, the former CEO of ITT and one of the most powerful business executives in American history, always used to say, “Start with the goal and work back.” So decide where you want to end up somewhere down the road, and then plan back to the present day to determine what you’re going to have to do to get there. If you can make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, your threats and vulnerabilities, your areas of potential opportunity and the areas that might be holding you back, you’re in a perfect position to begin looking forward to the future, to decide where you want to go and what you want to achieve.
Finally, in personal strategic planning, the aim is always to achieve leadership in your chosen market niche. Business leaders have the authority to determine the area of excellence in their business. Analogously, on a personal level, you can choose the thing at which you’re going to become absolutely excellent and achieve extraordinary results. So in what areas are you going to work to achieve results that are far beyond what the average person could be expected to accomplish?
What can you—and only you—do that, if done well, will make an extraordinary difference in your life? What can you do now, or can you learn to do in the future, that will give you the biggest payoff for the amount of time that you invest in it?
Remember: You were put on this earth with a special combination of talents and abilities that make you different from anyone who has ever lived. Whatever you’re doing today, it’s nowhere near what you’re really capable of doing. The key to a happy and prosperous life is for you to regularly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, to become very good in the areas you most enjoy, and then to throw your whole heart into what you’re doing.
By: Brian Tracy
Deciding what you want to do, what you can do well, and what can give you the highest rewards for your efforts is the starting point in getting the best out of yourself.
When we do strategic planning for corporations, we begin with the premise that the whole purpose of the exercise is to reorganize and reallocate people and resources to increase the rate of return on equity, or capital invested in the business. Invariably, this is done by emphasizing some areas and de-emphasizing others, by allocating more resources to areas with higher potential return and by taking resources away from those areas that represent lower potential returns. By developing or promoting newer and better products and services and by discontinuing those products and services that are less profitable, the company and all the people in it can channel their resources to maximize their returns.
In doing personal strategic planning, the first thing you want to think about is increasing your personal “return on energy,” rather than return on equity. You need to realize that the most essential and valuable thing that you have to bring to your life and to your work is your ability to think, to act and to get results. Your earning ability—which is a function of your education, knowledge, experience and talents—is your human capital, or your equity. And the way you use it will largely determine the quality and quantity of your rewards, both material and psychological, both tangible and intangible.
For example, a young man in one of my seminars came up to me and told me that he was working as a plumber for a large plumbing-contracting firm. He made good wages, but he was very envious of the salespeople in his company who made more money, drove nicer cars, wore nicer clothes and had much better life-styles. He had completed all his training and had his journeyman’s certificate, and he was at the top of his wage scale. The only way he could earn more money was by working longer hours. He realized, however, that that was not the answer. Instead, he wanted to get into sales, where his income could be higher and would not be fixed on an hourly basis.
I remember advising him that if he wanted to get into sales, it was up to him to learn how to sell and then to do everything possible to get his management to give him a chance at selling plumbing services. His future was up to him, but he first had to learn how to do the new and higher-paying job.
A little more than a year later, he attended another seminar that I was giving in that same city, and he told me his story. He had told his management that he wanted to get into sales. The managers had discouraged him, telling him that plumbers had very little aptitude for the hard, interpersonal work involved in selling a complex service. He then asked them what he would have to do to prove to them that he could sell well. To make a long story short, they helped him to learn how to sell their company’s services by having him study manuals and take extra courses on his own time. He bought books and listened to tapes and began spending time talking to the salespeople in the organization.
Now a year had passed. He had been a full-fledged salesman for about five months. He was already earning more than twice as much as the most he had ever earned as a plumber. But most of all, he was happier. He was more excited and more enthusiastic about himself and his work than he had ever been. He loved the field of selling, and he considered his career change to be one of the best decisions he had ever made.
This story is typical of countless stories that have been related to me over the years. In each case, the individual had discovered and developed his or her strengths and, subsequently, improved the quality of his or her life. And you can do the same. In fact, this may be one of the most important things you ever do.
This first part of personal strategic planning is called “values clarification.” You ask yourself, “What values and virtues do I most admire and wish to practice in my life?” If you wanted to discover your strengths in the work world, first you would define your values as they apply to employment. The values that companies settle upon would be similar to the values that you organize your work life around. Often, both companies and individuals will choose values such as integrity, quality, respect for others, service, profitability, innovation, entrepreneurship, market leadership, and so on. For example, General Electric, as one of its values, is determined to be either first or second in quality and market share with any product that it offers. If it cannot achieve a first- or second-place position, it will make every effort to grow into it, or it will leave the market entirely.
In a similar vein, you could use those values to define your position with regard to your work. You could decide to plan your work life around the values of quality, excellence, service, profitability, and innovation. There are dozens of values that you can pick from, but whichever you choose, and the order of priority you place on your choices, will determine your approach to your work.
Your next step is to create your personal mission statement. This is a clear, written description of the person you intend to be in your work life. I have often found that this is even more important than setting specific financial or business or sales goals. Once you have decided how much you want to earn, you need to write out a mission statement that describes the kind of person you intend to become in order to earn that amount of money.
For example, you might say, “I’m an outstanding salesperson, well-organized, hardworking, thoroughly prepared, positive, enthusiastic, and intensely focused on serving my customers better than anyone else can.” With this as your mission statement, you have a series of organizing principles that you can use to guide your career choices, your personal- and professional-development activities, and your work schedule for each day. This mission statement also tells you the kind of person that you’re going to be in your interactions with the people whose satisfaction will determine your career success. A clear mission statement also is a definition of the areas in which you intend to become stronger in order to achieve your goals.
Remember: Your goal is to identify your strengths so that you can deploy yourself in such a way as to increase your personal return on energy. One of the best mental techniques that you can use to accomplish this is to see yourself as a “bundle of resources” that can be applied in a variety of directions to achieve a variety of objectives. As a bundle of resources, the amount of time and energy that you have is limited; therefore, your time and energy must be put to their highest and best use. Stand back and imagine that you’re looking at yourself objectively, as if through the eyes of another person, and you’re thinking about how you could apply yourself to bring about the best results. See yourself as your own employer or boss. What could you do to maximize the output of which you’re capable, and where could you do it?
Once you have defined your values and written out your mission statement, the next step is to do what is called a “situational analysis.” Sometimes we call it a “performance audit.” This is the process of analyzing yourself thoroughly before you begin setting specific goals and planning certain activities. You begin your performance audit by asking yourself some key questions.
One of those questions should be, “What are my marketable skills?” Think about it. What can you do for which someone else will pay you? What can you do particularly well? What can you do better than others? What have you done particularly well in the past?
A wage or a salary is merely an amount of money that is paid to purchase
a certain quality and quantity of labor or output. The results that you’re able to get by applying your strengths and your energies largely determine your rewards in life. If you wish to increase the quality and quantity of your rewards, you have to increase your ability to achieve more and better results. It’s very simple.
Earl Nightingale said that the amount you’re paid will be determined by three things: (1) the work you do, (2) how well you do that work, and (3) the difficulty of replacing you.
The laws of supply and demand also affect the labor market, of which you are a part. Employers or customers will always seek the very most for the very least. That means that you’ll always be paid the very least that is necessary to prevent you from moving to another organization.
Abraham Lincoln said that the only security a person can have is the ability to do a job uncommonly well.
The height of your income will be determined largely by how well you do your job and the difficulty of replacing you. In areas where workers can be replaced easily, the workers are paid only the minimum amount necessary to keep them. In increasing your return on energy, one of your objectives is to become so good in your chosen field that the cost of replacing you is extremely high. This is the way to assure that you will always be paid well because no one can get the kind of results that you can get for the amount that you charge, or the amount that you’re paid (which are the same).
In reality, you’re the president of your own personal-services corporation. You’re completely in charge of production, quality control, training and development, marketing, finance, and promotion. Thinking of yourself passively, as being employed and, therefore, subject to the dictates of someone else, can be fatal to your long-term success. On the other hand, seeing yourself as self-employed forces you to see that you also are self-responsible and self-determining, that everything that happens to you happens because of your conduct and your behavior. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’re behind the steering wheel of your life. It’s up to you to decide how to utilize your talents and abilities in such a way as to bring you the very highest return on investment of your time and energy. No one else is going to do it for you. You’re the boss. Others can help you, guide you, direct you, channel you, point you in the right direction and even give you opportunities, but in the final analysis, no one can make the critical decisions that will determine your future and your fortune.
Here are four questions that you need to ask yourself on a regular basis: (1) “What do I most enjoy doing?” (2) “How would I describe my ideal job?” (3) “If I could have any job at all, anywhere, what would it be?” (4) “If I won a million dollars in the lottery and I had to pick a job to work at indefinitely, what would I choose to do with my time?”
In uncovering your strengths, ask yourself, “What are my unique talents and abilities?” What have you been good at in the past? What things do you do easily that seem to be difficult for other people? In what areas of work do you seem to get the best results, and do you derive the most pleasure from? The answers to those questions all are indications of how you might deploy yourself to increase your return on energy invested.
As a result of your genetic structure, your education, your experiences, your background, your interests and proclivities, you’re a unique and rare combination of talents and abilities. You can be extremely good at something. You’re responsible for finding out what that something is and then throwing your whole heart into it, without reservation or holdback. Only when you discover what you really enjoy doing and then commit yourself to it wholeheartedly do you begin to feel really alive and fully engaged in life.
Look at your current job and current abilities, and ask yourself, “Where do I want to be in three to five years?” What kind of work do you want to be doing? What kind of people do you want to be working with? What level of responsibility do you desire? What kind of money do you want to be earning? What part of the country do you want to be living in?
Let your imagination flow freely for a while. Imagine that there are no limitations on what you can do or be, or where you can do it or be it. Imagine that all options are open to you.
Look at your work and at your life in general today, and ask yourself, “What kind of people do I admire and most want to be like?” Who do you know, or know about, who is doing the kind of work that you want to do and living the kind of life that you want to live? What changes would you have to make in your life to be like that person? Remember: Whatever anyone has done, someone else can do as well. You’ll never be exactly the same as another person, but you don’t need to be. You can use the successes and achievements of other people as examples and guidelines to help you decide where you want to arrive at the end of your particular journey, but you can be unique and different and successful in your own way.
Harold Geneen, the former CEO of ITT and one of the most powerful business executives in American history, always used to say, “Start with the goal and work back.” So decide where you want to end up somewhere down the road, and then plan back to the present day to determine what you’re going to have to do to get there. If you can make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, your threats and vulnerabilities, your areas of potential opportunity and the areas that might be holding you back, you’re in a perfect position to begin looking forward to the future, to decide where you want to go and what you want to achieve.
Finally, in personal strategic planning, the aim is always to achieve leadership in your chosen market niche. Business leaders have the authority to determine the area of excellence in their business. Analogously, on a personal level, you can choose the thing at which you’re going to become absolutely excellent and achieve extraordinary results. So in what areas are you going to work to achieve results that are far beyond what the average person could be expected to accomplish?
What can you—and only you—do that, if done well, will make an extraordinary difference in your life? What can you do now, or can you learn to do in the future, that will give you the biggest payoff for the amount of time that you invest in it?
Remember: You were put on this earth with a special combination of talents and abilities that make you different from anyone who has ever lived. Whatever you’re doing today, it’s nowhere near what you’re really capable of doing. The key to a happy and prosperous life is for you to regularly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, to become very good in the areas you most enjoy, and then to throw your whole heart into what you’re doing.
By: Brian Tracy
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Cultivating Your Self-Esteem
Your self-esteem is probably the most important part of your personality. It precedes and predicts your performance in almost everything you do. It is the energy source or the reactor core of your personality, and how much self-esteem you have determines your levels of vitality, enthusiasm and personal magnetism. People with high self-esteem are more positive, more likable and more effective in every part of their lives.
Everything that you do or say or think will affect your self-esteem. Your job, therefore, is to keep your self-esteem high and positive on a continuing basis.
Probably the best definition of self-esteem is this: the level to which you respect and value yourself as an important, worthwhile person. People with high self-esteem feel terrific about themselves and their lives. When you feel really good about yourself, you tend to be the very best person you can possibly be.
Your level of self-esteem is really your level of “mental fitness.” It’s a measure of how healthy, hardy, and resilient you are in dealing with the inevitable ups and downs of daily life. Your self-esteem determines how much peace of mind and inner contentment you experience. It is also closely linked to your health and levels of energy. People with high self-esteem are seldom sick and seem to have an inexhaustible flow of energy and enthusiasm that progressively moves them toward their goals.
How much you like and respect yourself also determines the quality of your relationships with people. The more you like and enjoy yourself, the more you will like and enjoy others, and the more they will like you. In fact, when your self-esteem is hurt in any way, the very first thing that is affected is the way you get along with people.
To perform at your best and to feel terrific about yourself, you should be in a perpetual state of self-esteem building and maintenance. Just as you take responsibility for your level of physical fitness, you need to take complete responsibility for the content and quality of your mind.
I have developed a simple formula that contains all the critical elements of self-esteem building, and you can use it on a regular basis to assure maximum performance.
This formula is comprised of six basic elements. They are: goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others, recognition, and rewards. Let’s take them one at a time.
How much you like and respect yourself is directly affected by your goals. The very act of setting big, challenging goals for yourself and making written plans of action to achieve them actually raises your self-esteem, which causes you to feel much better about yourself.
Self-esteem is a condition you experience when you are moving step-by-step toward the accomplishment of something that is important to you. For that reason, it’s really important to have clear goals for each part of your life and to continually work toward achieving those goals. Each progressive step causes your self-esteem to go up and makes you feel more positive and effective in everything else you do.
The second element in self-esteem building is having clear standards and values to which you are committed. Men and women with high self-esteem are very clear about what they believe in. The higher your values and ideals are, and the more committed you are to living your life consistent with those values and ideals, the more you will like and respect yourself, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Lasting self-esteem comes only when your goals and your values are congruent—that is, when they fit into each other like a hand into a glove. Much of the stress that people experience comes from believing one thing and trying to do another. But when your goals and values are in harmony with each other, you feel a wonderful surge of energy and well-being, and that’s when you start to make real progress.
Many people tell me that they are unhappy with their job because they can’t seem to achieve success no matter how hard they try. I always ask them if they are doing what they really care about and believe in. In many cases, people realize that they are not happy with their job because it is the wrong kind of work for them. Once they change jobs and start doing something that they really enjoy, something that is more consistent with their innermost convictions, they start to make real progress and get a lot of satisfaction out of their work.
The third element in self-esteem building involves having success experiences. Once you have set your goals and standards, it is important that you make them measurable so that you can keep score of your small and large successes along the way. The very act of setting up a goal, breaking it down into smaller parts, and then completing those parts makes you feel like a winner and causes your self-esteem to go up. But remember that you can’t hit a target you can’t see. You can’t feel like a winner unless you clearly lay out the standards by which you are going to measure your success and then achieve those standards.
Let’s say that you set a goal to sell a certain amount or earn a certain amount of income in a given year. If you break that down into monthly and weekly goals, and then you achieve the first of those goals, you will feel great about yourself. Each time you reach another milestone, your self-esteem and ability to perform will increase, and you will feel encouraged and enthusiastic about the next challenge.
The fourth element of self-esteem is comparison with others. Leon Festinger of Harvard University concluded that in determining how well we are doing, we do not compare ourselves with abstract standards, but, rather, we compare ourselves with people we know. To feel like a winner, you must know for sure that you are doing as well as or better than someone else. The more you know about how well the others in your field are doing, and the more favorably you compare with them, the more you will feel like a winner, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Successful people continually compare themselves with other successful people. They think about them and read about them and study their performances, and then they work to surpass them one step at a time. Eventually, successful people reach the point where they compete only with themselves and with their past accomplishments. But this comes after they have moved to the top and left many of their competitors behind.
The next element for self-esteem is recognition of your accomplishments by people whom you respect. To feel really great about yourself, you need the recognition of people you look up to and admire, such as your boss, your coworkers, your spouse and people in your social circle. Whenever you are recognized and praised for any accomplishment by someone whose opinion you hold in high regard, your self-esteem goes up, along with your eagerness and enthusiasm to do even better on the job.
The final element of self-esteem involves rewards that are consistent with your accomplishments. You may work in a field where you receive financial bonuses, status symbols—larger offices, bigger cars—or even plaques and trophies for superior achievement. All of those symbols can have an incredible impact on raising your self-esteem and causing you to feel terrific about yourself.
If, however, your existing situation does not offer the tangible or intangible rewards that are necessary for you to build and maintain your self-esteem, you must create rewards for yourself. One of the smartest things you can do is to design a system for giving yourself rewards for both small and large accomplishments as you move progressively toward your goals. For example, people who do telephone prospecting will often treat themselves to a cup of coffee after every 10 calls. After 25 calls, they will reward themselves with a walk around the building or the block. After 50 calls, they will go out to lunch. Each of those rewards serves as an incentive that motivates them to repeat the performance. The end result is success, enthusiasm, and high self-esteem.
Whether or not your current environment provides the six elements of self-esteem building—goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others, recognition, and rewards—you need to establish your own structure and take full responsibility for building yourself up on a regular basis.
Of course, it is possible to like yourself in the abstract, to think of yourself as a valuable and worthwhile person, but this tends to be a very shaky form of self-esteem that is easily knocked down by a negative experience or a temporary disappointment. The only real way for you to absolutely know that you are a valuable and worthwhile person is for you to make the effort, overcome the obstacles and pay the price to bring these elements into your life. When you have that foundation, you will experience a form of mental fitness and unshakable optimism that will sustain you through failure and propel you to success.
By: Brian Tracy
Everything that you do or say or think will affect your self-esteem. Your job, therefore, is to keep your self-esteem high and positive on a continuing basis.
Probably the best definition of self-esteem is this: the level to which you respect and value yourself as an important, worthwhile person. People with high self-esteem feel terrific about themselves and their lives. When you feel really good about yourself, you tend to be the very best person you can possibly be.
Your level of self-esteem is really your level of “mental fitness.” It’s a measure of how healthy, hardy, and resilient you are in dealing with the inevitable ups and downs of daily life. Your self-esteem determines how much peace of mind and inner contentment you experience. It is also closely linked to your health and levels of energy. People with high self-esteem are seldom sick and seem to have an inexhaustible flow of energy and enthusiasm that progressively moves them toward their goals.
How much you like and respect yourself also determines the quality of your relationships with people. The more you like and enjoy yourself, the more you will like and enjoy others, and the more they will like you. In fact, when your self-esteem is hurt in any way, the very first thing that is affected is the way you get along with people.
To perform at your best and to feel terrific about yourself, you should be in a perpetual state of self-esteem building and maintenance. Just as you take responsibility for your level of physical fitness, you need to take complete responsibility for the content and quality of your mind.
I have developed a simple formula that contains all the critical elements of self-esteem building, and you can use it on a regular basis to assure maximum performance.
This formula is comprised of six basic elements. They are: goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others, recognition, and rewards. Let’s take them one at a time.
How much you like and respect yourself is directly affected by your goals. The very act of setting big, challenging goals for yourself and making written plans of action to achieve them actually raises your self-esteem, which causes you to feel much better about yourself.
Self-esteem is a condition you experience when you are moving step-by-step toward the accomplishment of something that is important to you. For that reason, it’s really important to have clear goals for each part of your life and to continually work toward achieving those goals. Each progressive step causes your self-esteem to go up and makes you feel more positive and effective in everything else you do.
The second element in self-esteem building is having clear standards and values to which you are committed. Men and women with high self-esteem are very clear about what they believe in. The higher your values and ideals are, and the more committed you are to living your life consistent with those values and ideals, the more you will like and respect yourself, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Lasting self-esteem comes only when your goals and your values are congruent—that is, when they fit into each other like a hand into a glove. Much of the stress that people experience comes from believing one thing and trying to do another. But when your goals and values are in harmony with each other, you feel a wonderful surge of energy and well-being, and that’s when you start to make real progress.
Many people tell me that they are unhappy with their job because they can’t seem to achieve success no matter how hard they try. I always ask them if they are doing what they really care about and believe in. In many cases, people realize that they are not happy with their job because it is the wrong kind of work for them. Once they change jobs and start doing something that they really enjoy, something that is more consistent with their innermost convictions, they start to make real progress and get a lot of satisfaction out of their work.
The third element in self-esteem building involves having success experiences. Once you have set your goals and standards, it is important that you make them measurable so that you can keep score of your small and large successes along the way. The very act of setting up a goal, breaking it down into smaller parts, and then completing those parts makes you feel like a winner and causes your self-esteem to go up. But remember that you can’t hit a target you can’t see. You can’t feel like a winner unless you clearly lay out the standards by which you are going to measure your success and then achieve those standards.
Let’s say that you set a goal to sell a certain amount or earn a certain amount of income in a given year. If you break that down into monthly and weekly goals, and then you achieve the first of those goals, you will feel great about yourself. Each time you reach another milestone, your self-esteem and ability to perform will increase, and you will feel encouraged and enthusiastic about the next challenge.
The fourth element of self-esteem is comparison with others. Leon Festinger of Harvard University concluded that in determining how well we are doing, we do not compare ourselves with abstract standards, but, rather, we compare ourselves with people we know. To feel like a winner, you must know for sure that you are doing as well as or better than someone else. The more you know about how well the others in your field are doing, and the more favorably you compare with them, the more you will feel like a winner, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Successful people continually compare themselves with other successful people. They think about them and read about them and study their performances, and then they work to surpass them one step at a time. Eventually, successful people reach the point where they compete only with themselves and with their past accomplishments. But this comes after they have moved to the top and left many of their competitors behind.
The next element for self-esteem is recognition of your accomplishments by people whom you respect. To feel really great about yourself, you need the recognition of people you look up to and admire, such as your boss, your coworkers, your spouse and people in your social circle. Whenever you are recognized and praised for any accomplishment by someone whose opinion you hold in high regard, your self-esteem goes up, along with your eagerness and enthusiasm to do even better on the job.
The final element of self-esteem involves rewards that are consistent with your accomplishments. You may work in a field where you receive financial bonuses, status symbols—larger offices, bigger cars—or even plaques and trophies for superior achievement. All of those symbols can have an incredible impact on raising your self-esteem and causing you to feel terrific about yourself.
If, however, your existing situation does not offer the tangible or intangible rewards that are necessary for you to build and maintain your self-esteem, you must create rewards for yourself. One of the smartest things you can do is to design a system for giving yourself rewards for both small and large accomplishments as you move progressively toward your goals. For example, people who do telephone prospecting will often treat themselves to a cup of coffee after every 10 calls. After 25 calls, they will reward themselves with a walk around the building or the block. After 50 calls, they will go out to lunch. Each of those rewards serves as an incentive that motivates them to repeat the performance. The end result is success, enthusiasm, and high self-esteem.
Whether or not your current environment provides the six elements of self-esteem building—goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others, recognition, and rewards—you need to establish your own structure and take full responsibility for building yourself up on a regular basis.
Of course, it is possible to like yourself in the abstract, to think of yourself as a valuable and worthwhile person, but this tends to be a very shaky form of self-esteem that is easily knocked down by a negative experience or a temporary disappointment. The only real way for you to absolutely know that you are a valuable and worthwhile person is for you to make the effort, overcome the obstacles and pay the price to bring these elements into your life. When you have that foundation, you will experience a form of mental fitness and unshakable optimism that will sustain you through failure and propel you to success.
By: Brian Tracy
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