Steve Thompson FocalPoint Business Coaching

Increasing Your Earning Potential

2010-06-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

Throughout most of human history, we have been accustomed to evolution, or the gradual changing and progressing of events in a straight line. Sometimes the process of change was faster and sometimes it was slower, but it almost always seemed to be progressive, from one step to the other, allowing you some opportunities for planning, predicting and changing.

Today, however, the rate of change is not only faster than ever before, but it is discontinuous. It is taking place in a variety of unconnected areas and affecting each of us in a variety of unexpected ways. Changes in information processing technologies are happening separately from changes in medicine, changes in transportation, changes in education, changes in politics and changes in global competition. Changes in family formation and relationships are happening separately from the rise and fall of new businesses and industries in different parts of the country. And if anything, this rate of accelerated, discontinuous change is increasing. As a result, most of us are already suffering from what Alvin Toffler once called, “future shock.”

You can’t do very much about the enormity of these changes, but the one thing that you can do is to think seriously about yourself and your basic need for security and stability. In no area is this more important than in the areas of job security and financial security. You must give special attention to your ability to make a good living and provide for yourself in the months and years ahead.

Above all, to position yourself for tomorrow, you must think continuously and seriously about your work today, your earning ability , and the work that you will be doing one, three, and five years from today. You must plan to achieve your own financial security, no matter what happens.

Charles Kettering said that you should give a lot of thought to the future because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life. One of the greatest mistakes that people can make, and the one with the worst long-term consequences, is to think only about the present and give very little thought to what might happen in the months and years ahead.

When our grandfathers started work, it was quite common for them to get a basic education and then go to work for a company and stay with that same company for the rest of their working lives. When our parents went to work, it was more common for them to change jobs three or four times during their lifetime, although it was difficult and disruptive.

Today, with increased turbulence and change in the national and global economy, a person starting work can expect to have five full-time careers between the ages of 21 and 65, and 14 full-time jobs lasting two years or more. According to Fortune Magazine, fully 40 percent of American employees in the 21st Century will be “contingency” workers. This means that they will never work permanently for another company. They will continue to move as needed, from company to company, from job to job, earning less money than full-time employees and accruing very few, if any, benefits in terms of health care and pension plans.

Imagine what your job will look like five years from today. Since knowledge in your field is probably doubling every five years, this means that fully twenty percent of your knowledge and your ability in your field is becoming obsolete each year. In five years, you will be doing a brand new job with brand new skills and abilities. Ask yourself, “What parts of my knowledge, skills and work are becoming obsolete? What am I doing today that is different than what I was doing one year ago and two years ago?” What are you likely to be doing one year, two years, three years, four years and five years from today? What knowledge and skills will you need and how will you acquire them? What is your plan for your economic and financial future?

We are now in the knowledge age. Today, the chief factors of production are knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to achieving results for other people. Your earning ability today is largely dependent upon your knowledge, skill and your ability to combine that knowledge and skill in such a way that you contribute value for which customers are going to pay.

The Law of Three says that you must contribute three dollars of profit for every dollar that you wish to earn in salary. It costs a company approximately double your salary to employ you in terms of space, benefits, supervision, and investment in furniture, fixtures, and other resources. For a company to hire you, they have to make a profit on what they pay you. Therefore, you must contribute value greatly in excess of the amount you earn in order to stay employed. To put it another way, your earning ability must be considerably greater than the amount you are receiving, or you will find yourself looking for another job.

To position yourself for tomorrow, here is one of the most important rules you will ever learn: “The future belongs to the competent.” The future belongs to those men and women who are very good at what they do. Pat Riley, in his book The Winner Within, wrote that, “If you are not committed to getting better at what you are doing, you are bound to get worse.” To phrase it another way, anything less than a commitment to excellent performance on your part is an unconscious acceptance of mediocrity. It used to be that you needed to be excellent to rise above the competition in your industry. Today, you must be excellent even to keep your job in your industry.

The marketplace is a stern task master. Today, excellence, quality, and value are absolutely essential elements of any product or service, and of the work of any person. Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance. Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive. It’s not personal. It’s just the way our economy works.

To earn more, you must learn more. You are maxed out today at your current level of knowledge and skill. However much you are earning at this moment is the maximum you can earn without learning and practicing something new and different.
And here’s the rub. Your accumulated knowledge and experience is becoming obsolete bit by bit, day by day. The knowledge in your field is doubling every three to five years. That means that your knowledge must double every three to five years just for you to stay even.

The solution to the dilemma of unavoidable change and restructuring is continuous self-development. Your personal knowledge and your ability to apply that knowledge are your most valuable assets. To stay on top of your world, you must continually add to your knowledge and your ability. You must continually build up your mental assets if you want to enjoy a continuous return on your investment. And only by building on your current assets do you stop them from deteriorating.
By engaging in continuous self-improvement, you can put yourself behind the wheel of your own life. By dedicating yourself to enhancing your earning ability, you will automatically be engaging in the continuous process of personal development. By learning more, you prepare yourself to earn more. You position yourself for tomorrow by developing the knowledge and skills that you need to be a valuable and productive part of our economy, no matter which direction it goes.

By: Brian Tracy

www.focalpointcoaching.com

Increasing Your Value

2010-05-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

We are living in an economic age for which most people are largely unprepared. Massive shifts in economic activities and incredible dislocations of businesses and industries are taking place all over the country. Being either an employer or an employee today is like being a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

Your goal is to organize your life in such a way that you enjoy a good income, a high standard of living, and that you are the master of your economic destiny rather than a victim of changing economic times.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, America and Americans entered into a golden age that had never existed before and will never exist again. Those of us who grew up during this golden age developed a particular way of looking at the world that was greatly influenced by what was going on in America at the time. We developed certain assumptions about our lives and about business in general, and we have a hard time giving them up. But give them up we must if we are going to survive in the economy of the future.

At the end of World War II, America and American industry dominated the world. We had not only abundant natural resources but also advanced technology, an intact industrial base, most of the money in the world, an advanced educational system, millions of competent workers, and a fully integrated system of roads, schools, hospitals, cities, and farms. It was said that America got rich by coming late into two world wars, and it was certainly true in the late ‘40s and ‘50s.

Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world, in both Europe and the Far East, was bombed to rubble. Our industrial and economic competitors had been ravaged by war. For this reason, anything that American factories produced found a ready market, both nationally and internationally. The economy took off. There was good-paying work for everyone. The ‘50s became an age of expanding prosperity, tremendous job security, and opportunities for all.

In this economic environment, anyone could get a job. Not only that, but there were plenty of low-skill jobs that paid high salaries and benefits for average work. A working person in America could have a nice house, a car⎯maybe two cars⎯and eventually a motor home, a boat, and all the other trappings of the good life.

After a few years of this robust, expanding economy with opportunities and jobs for all, Americans began to accept the good life as their birthright. People began to feel that because they were born in America, they were entitled to the good life, whether or not they worked hard. The Unions took full advantage of this mind-set and negotiated ever higher wages and benefits from American manufacturers. The increased costs of the products and services were simply passed on to the customers. Since the rest of the industrial world was still rebuilding, the only products to buy were American products. And since American consumers were also workers who were making good wages, as prices went up, sales also went up.

But by the '60s, the world was already changing. Our industrial competitors, especially Germany and Japan, had begun to rebuild and to manufacture and export products. Competition for the good life began to emerge all over the world. The pace began to pick up, slowly. The average American wasn’t aware of it, but the golden age was coming to an end.

In the '70s, America began to be flooded with high-quality products from all over the world. American companies and American working people had become complacent with their captive markets and had let their quality deteriorate. Low-price, high-quality products coming in from Japan, Germany and other countries began to take sizable chunks of the market. The affected industries cried out to government for protection, which was just another way of selling higher-priced goods to captive customers. And it didn’t work.

By the '80's, we were in a real race. Everyone in the world wanted to enjoy the same living standards Americans had. And people were willing to work long hours and produce high-quality goods and services in order to achieve those living standards.

We lost our advantage in natural resources. We lost our edge in technology. And we lost our edge in capital. Today, any change in economic policy anywhere, in any country, instantly causes capital to flow in or out of the affected areas. Countries can not even control the value of their currencies.

The one edge that America maintained is that we have the most productive workforce in the world. America and Americans produce more goods and services per capita than any other country. But there is a race on, and we are in it, and if you want to be employed in a good job for the indefinite future, you must get in and start competing as you have never done before.
Your job is an opportunity to contribute a value to your company in excess of your cost. In its simplest terms, your job is as secure as your ability to render value in excess of what it costs to keep you on the payroll.

If you want to earn more money at your current job, you have to increase your value, your contribution to the enterprise. If you want to get a new job, you have to find a way to contribute value to that enterprise. If you want any kind of job security, you must continually work at maintaining and increasing your value in the competitive marketplace.

And here's a key point. Your education, knowledge, skills and experience all are investments in your ability to contribute a value for which you can be paid. But they are like any other investments. They are highly speculative.

Once you have learned a subject or developed a skill, it is a sunk cost. It is time and money spent that you cannot get back. No employer in the marketplace has any obligation to pay you for it, unless he can use your skill to produce a product or service that people are ready to buy, today.

Whatever job you are doing, you should be preparing for your next job. And the key question is always: Where are the customers? Which businesses and industries are growing in this economy, and which ones are declining?
I continually meet people who ask me how they can increase their income when their entire industry is shrinking. I tell them that there are jobs with futures and there are jobs without futures, and they need to get into a field that is expanding, not contracting.

There are three forms of unemployment in America: voluntary, non-voluntary, and frictional. Voluntary employment exists when a person decides not to work for a certain period of time, or not to accept a particular type of job, hoping that something better will come along. Non-voluntary unemployment exists when a person is willing and able to work but cannot find a job anywhere. Frictional unemployment is the natural level; this includes the approximately 4 or 5 percent of the working population who are between jobs at any given time.

However, there are always jobs for the creative minority. You never have to be unemployed if you will do one of three things: change the work that you are offering to do, change the place where you are offering to work, or change the amount that you are asking for your services.

If there is no demand for your particular skills and experience, you will have to learn to do something else and provide skills that are in demand at the time. Employers don't care about your past. They care only about your future and your ability to contribute value to their customers.

You can change your location. Sometimes you will have to move from one part of the country to another, from where there are few jobs to where there are more jobs. Many people transform their entire lives by moving from an area of high unemployment to an area of low unemployment.

The third thing you can do to get back into the work force is to lower your demands. Remember, because your labor is a commodity, it is subject to the laws of supply and demand. If you ask too much, people will not hire you, because customers will not pay your demands in the price of the product or service that your organization produces. It is not the employer who is forcing this downward revision in wage requirements; it is the customer, through his or her buying behavior.

There is a small, creative minority in America who are never unemployed. No matter what happens, they always have a job⎯sometimes two jobs. If they lose a particular position in one place, they find another position doing the same thing, or something else, somewhere else. They are fast on their feet. They move quickly and they don't accept unemployment as an option. And they always have jobs.

There are always jobs to be done. Even in the worst economy, there are always problems to be solved and consumer needs to be met. For this reason, all long-term unemployment is ultimately voluntary.

There are more opportunities for you to fulfill your dreams and aspirations in the American economy than have ever before existed, or than exist anywhere else in the world. You can be, have, or do anything that you can dream of by preparing yourself for better and better jobs. It is never crowded at the top. There are no traffic jams on the extra mile. Your job is to get good, get better, and then make yourself indispensable.

By: Brian Tracy

www.focalpointcoaching.com

Increasing Your Earning Potential

2010-05-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hello Mr. President!

2010-05-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

While speaking at a seminar the other day, I asked the audience, “How many people here are self-employed.” Of the 3,000 people who had come for motivation and inspiration, only about 300 raised their hands.
That’s the usual number. About 10 percent. I know because I ask audiences that question all the time when I’m trying to make a key point.

I then tell them, “The biggest mistake you can ever make is to think that you work for anyone else but yourself. You’re all self-employed. From the time you take your first job to the day you retire, you’re working for yourself.” And this goes for you as well.

You are the president of your own personal services corporation. You are the Chief Executive Officer, the Chairman of the Board. Legally, you can form your own sole proprietorship, and using your own name (William Smith and Associates, Susan Jones and Associates) just by deciding to do so. You can print business cards today with your name and the word “President” under it.

You don’t need permission from anyone. You don’t need to register anywhere. You can be the president of your own legal corporation from this moment forth.

You are the president of your own career. You are the boss of your own life. Your current employer is merely your “best client.” If another client offers you a better deal, you can take your personal services and sell them elsewhere.
How, some things in life are optional and some things are mandatory. Going to Fiji for your vacation is optional. Being president of your own life is mandatory. The only question is whether you accept it or not.

The very act of defining yourself as self-employed, no matter who signs your paycheck, moves you into the top three percent of Americans. These are the people who “act like they own the place.” This elite is distinguished from others by their attitude toward themselves and their lives. They are proactive rather than reactive. They take charge of their work situations rather than accepting them passively.

You choose your own job. You set the terms of your employment. You decide your own pay. If you want a raise, look in the mirror and negotiate with your boss. You’re in charge. How, what are you going to do about it?

By: Brian Tracy

Give Me A Break

2010-04-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

The most dangerous and life threatening psychological illness-afflicting America today is what Dr. Martin Seligman calls “Learned Helplessness.”

More than twenty-five years of research in cognitive psychology, the study of how your thoughts affect your behaviors, has reached a startling conclusion; chains of our own making bind us all.

Amahans Maslow said that the story of the human race is the story of men and women “selling themselves short.” We have a tendency to settle for less and to make excuses instead of progress.

Give me a break! You’ve heard the saying, “I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.” Well, I’m just as tempted, as you are to fall in love with my excuses for the things I’m not happy about, but unfortunately, it can become a real trap!

Everyone wants to be happy, healthy, and financially independent and working at something they enjoy. Well, why aren’t they? Why aren’t you? What are your excuses? What’s holding you back?

But, you say, “I have very good and valid reasons for being in this unsatisfactory situation.”

Do you? Here’s the test. Ask yourself, “Is there anyone else with my particular problem or obstacle that is succeeding in spite of it?”

If there is, your excuse doesn’t hold water. Whatever it is, there are probably thousands of men and women who’ve had it far worse than you could ever imagine, who have overcome their obstacles and are doing well.

There are men and women who have become paraplegics and quadriplegics, confined to wheel chairs for life, who are busy, happy, successful and respected by those around them.

There are men and women with every conceivable problem who are building good lives for themselves.

Give me a break! What they have done, you can do. They’d probably give anything to trade places with you. Your excuses don’t hold water. Go for it!

By: Brian Tracy

Getting Your Ideas Across

2010-04-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I’ve learned that fully 85 percent of what you accomplish in your career and in your personal life will be determined by how well you get your message across and by how capable you are of inspiring people to take action on your ideas and recommendations.

You can be limited in other respects⎯by education, contacts and intelligence⎯but if you can interact effectively with others, minute by minute and hour by hour, your future can be unlimited.

I an going to share with you some ideas, techniques and skills that you can use to accelerate your progress toward power communication. But first, there are two major myths about communication that must be dispelled.

The first myth, which many people believe, is that because they can talk, they can communicate with others. Men especially, according to the research, think that by speaking louder and faster, they’re more effective in dealing with people. Many people think that because they have the gift of gab, because they have no problem talking to others on any subject that comes to mind, they’re good communicators.

Often, exactly the opposite is true. Many people who talk a lot are often poor communicators⎯even terrible communicators. Many people in sales and business think that being able to string a lot of words together in a breathless fashion makes them excellent at getting a message understood by others. However, in most cases, those people are seen as boring or obnoxious, or both.

Let me say this slowly and clearly: The ability to talk is not the same as the ability to communicate. As I will discuss later, the ability to communicate is the ability both to send and to receive a message. The ability to communicate is the ability to make an impact on the thoughts, feelings and actions of someone. Many people who consider themselves excellent talkers are not very effective at all in this regard.

So let’s dispel the first myth, the myth that talking is equal to communicating. Don’t allow yourself to become complacent. The ability to talk to one or more persons is only the basic requirement for communication. It’s the starting point. It’s the jumping-off place. Effective communication is something else again.

The second myth about effective communication is that it’s a skill that people are born with. Either you have it or you don’t have it. If you’re not extroverted, gregarious and outgoing, you don’t have what it takes to be a good communicator.
Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Communication is a skill that you can learn. it’s like riding a bicycle or typing. It takes time and practice, over and over. But if you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life, as you will soon see.

Communication requires both a sender and a receiver. The process of communication happens rapidly, and this same process takes place whenever two or more people exchange ideas. First, the sender thinks of an idea or image that he or she wishes to convey to the receiver. The sender then translates the idea or image into a form, or words, either written or spoken. Those words constitute the basic message that is transmitted to the receiver. The receiver catches the words, like a baseball player catches a baseball, and then translates the words into the ideas and pictures that they represent in order to understand the message that was sent.

The receiver then acknowledges receipt, and replies by translating his or her ideas and pictures into words and transmitting them to the sender. When the message has been sent and the receiver has acknowledged receiving it by transmitting a response that the sender receives, accepts and understands, the communication is complete.

If this sounds complicated, it is. Probably 99 percent of all the difficulties between human beings, and within organizations, are caused by breakdowns in the communication process. Either the senders do not say what they mean clearly enough, or the receivers do not receive the message in the form in which it was intended.

An enormous number of factors can interfere in any communication, and every one of them can lead to a distortion of the message in some way. Probably every problem you’ll ever have will be somehow associated with a failure or breakdown in the communication process.

Let me explain. According to Albert Mehrabian, a communications specialist, there are three elements in any direct, face-to-face communication: words, tone of voice and body language. You’ve probably heard that words account for only 7 percent of the message, tone of voice accounts for 38 percent of the message, and body language accounts for fully 55 percent of the message. For an effective communication to take place, all three parts of the message must be congruent. If there is any incongruency, the receiver will be confused and will tend to accept the predominant form of communication rather than simply the literal meaning of the words.

Very often, you will say something that you feel is innocuous to a person and he will be offended. When you try to explain that you felt the words you used were inoffensive, the person will tell you that your tone of voice was the issue.

The third ingredient of communication, body language, is also very important. The way you sit or stand or incline your head or move your eyes, relative to the person with whom You’re communicating, will have an enormous effect on the message received.

For example, you can dramatically increase the effect of your communications by leaning toward the person You’re speaking with. If You’re sitting down, this is easy. If You’re standing up, you can accomplish the same effect by shifting your weight forward onto the balls of your feet and leaning slightly toward the person You’re talking to. When you make direct eye and face contact with the person, combined with focused attention, you double the impact of what You’re saying.

In fact, one of the easiest ways for you to break off a conversation, almost like knocking a needle off a phonograph record, is by just turning away from a person and looking into the distance when he is speaking. That will usually abruptly cause the person to stop speaking. He will feel that he’s just been abandoned in the middle of the conversation.

So your choice of words is important, but even more important is your tone of voice and your body language. The better you can coordinate all three of those ingredients, the more impact your message will have, and the greater will be the likelihood that a person will both understand it and react the way you want him to.

you’ve heard the saying that God gave man two ears and one mouth, and in conversation, you should use them in those proportions. Truer words were never spoken. The best communicators are excellent listeners. The worst communicators are continuous talkers. In fact, often the most important part of the message is the part that is conveyed by the pauses you make between thoughts and ideas. The message is conveyed in the silence that takes place during the lulls in conversation. All master communicators have learned to be comfortable with silence. Remember that a person can absorb only a certain amount of information, as ground can absorb only a certain amount of water. If you pour too much water onto the ground, it will form into puddles instead of soak in. A person’s mind is very much the same. If you don’t give someone an opportunity to absorb what you’re saying, by pausing and waiting quietly and patiently, he will be overwhelmed by the continuous stream of thoughts and ideas, and often will distort the message and miss the point.

One of the most vital requirements for effective communication, especially with important messages, is preparation. Preparation is the mark of the true professional. The late Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant of the University of Alabama football team was famous for saying, “It’s not the will to win but the will to prepare to win that counts.” In all communications, the will to prepare in advance of talking and interacting with people is the key to achieving maximum effectiveness.

In high school and college debating, where the individuals and teams are judged on the effectiveness of their ability to get their ideas across and to win their points, they’re taught to prepare exhaustively. Especially, they’re taught to prepare the debate from the point of view of the opposition before they prepare their own arguments. Lawyers were taught to do this in law school. Before they go into court, lawyers think through every possible piece of evidence or information that favors the opposing party. They then prepare their arguments in such a way as to undermine what they think the opposing party will present as its strongest point.

Remember that in communicating, people do things for their own reasons, not for yours. Everyone’s favorite radio station is WIIFM, which means “What’s in it for me?”

The more important the communication, either in business or personal life, the more important it is to prepare for it. Think through where the other person is coming from. What is his or her point of view? What are his or her problems or concerns? What is he or she trying to accomplish? What is his or her level of knowledge or information about the subject under discussion?

The best communicators do not use a lot of words, but they choose their words carefully, in advance. People appreciate straight talking. Avoid the tendency to dress up your message and sugarcoat it. When you have a question or a concern, or you want something, come right out and say it without confusion or distortion. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel and how much more positively someone will respond to your message.

In getting your point across, perhaps the most important word of all is the word ask. The most effective people are those who are the best at asking for what they want. They ask questions to uncover real needs and concerns. They ask questions to illuminate objections and problems that people might have with what They’re suggesting. They ask questions to expand the conversation and to increase their understanding of where people are really coming from.

You get your message understood by getting out of yourself, by putting your ego aside, and by focusing all of your attention on the other person. You get people to do the things you want them to do by presenting your arguments in terms of their interests, in terms of what they want to be and have and do. You prepare thoroughly in advance of any important conversation. You think before you speak, and you think on paper. You can say almost anything if you say it, or ask it, pleasantly, positively and with courtesy and friendliness.

The ability to communicate is a skill that you can learn by becoming genuinely interested in people and by putting their needs ahead of your own when sending a message or asking them to do something for you. When you concentrate your attention on building trust, on the one hand, and on seeking to understand, on the other hand, You’ll become known and respected as an effective communicator everywhere you go.

By: Brian Tracy

Generating Energy

2010-04-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

You may have a thousand different goals over the course of your lifetime, but they all will fall into one of four basic categories. Everything you do is an attempt to enhance the quality of your life in one or more of these areas.

The first category is your desire for happy relationships. You want to love and be loved by others. You want to have a happy, harmonious home life. You want to get along well with the people around you, and you want to earn the respect of the people you respect. Your involvement in social and community affairs results from your desire to have happy interactions with others and to make a contribution to the society you live in.

The second category is your desire for interesting and challenging work. You want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, you want to really enjoy your occupation or profession. The very best times of your life are when you are completely absorbed in your work.

The third category is your desire for financial independence. You want to be free from worries about money. You want to have enough money in the bank so that you can make decisions without counting your pennies. You want to achieve a certain financial state so that you can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not you have enough money to support your lifestyle. Financial independence frees you from poverty and a need to depend upon others for your livelihood. If you save and invest regularly throughout your working life, you will eventually reach the point where you will never have to work again.

The fourth category is your desire for good health, to be free of pain and illness and to have a continuous flow of energy and feelings of well-being. In fact, your health is so central t your life that you take it for granted until something happens to disrupt it.

The common denominator of these four goals, and the essential requirement for achieving each of them, is a high level of energy. The achievement of even a small amount of success in any one of these areas requires the development and expenditure of energy. Energy is a critical fuel and the one ingredient without which no other accomplishment is possible.

The aim of strategic planning for corporations is to find ways to organize the business to increase ROE, return on equity. ROE refers to the return on the capital invested in the enterprise. By shifting resources from areas of lower value to areas of higher potential value, the ROE in the business an be increased. In personal strategic planning, the aim is similar. It is also to increase ROE, but in this case, ROE stands for return on energy. All the work on personal development, self-improvement, goal setting, and time management is aimed at helping you to increase your return on energy, or as my friend Ken Blanchard calls it, “your return on life.” You are continually organizing and reorganizing your time and your resources so that you can get the very most pleasure, satisfaction, and rewards from the time and energy you put into your activities on a day-to-day basis.

Whereas companies have financial capital, you have human capital. Your human capital is composed of mental, emotional, and physical energy. The more energy you have to invest, and the more intelligently you invest it, the greater will be your rewards.

It is not the amount of time that you spend at your work or on your relationships that matters. Rather, it is the amount of yourself that you put into the time. If you have gone to bed late, gotten up early, and gone to work tired, you may be physically present for eight hours, but the quality and quantity of work that you can accomplish during that period of time is compromised. You’ll achieve only a small percentage of your potential productivity compared with what you can accomplish when you are fully rested and filled with enthusiasm.

In every area of your life, it is the quality of the time that you put into your activities that determines the rewards and satisfaction that you receive from them; this depends upon your energy level.

Building and sustaining your energy level is imperative. Since your energy is central to everything you accomplish, you should be very sensitive to things that either build or deplete it. Here are six keys to building and maintaining a high level of energy and vitality:

1. Proper weight. Carrying extra weight on your body is like carrying a pack loaded with bricks on your back — uphill. Excess weight tires you out. It taxes your heart, your lungs, and your muscles. Extra weight forces your body to burn up more energy than it normally would just to maintain life and proper functioning.

On the other hand, losing weight will increase your energy level almost immediately. Your self-esteem will go up. You will feel healthier and happier. As you lose weight, you will feel a greater sense of power and personal control. When you reach your ideal weight, you will be more effective in everything else you do.

2. Proper diet. The foods you eat have a tremendous impact on your energy level throughout the day. Changes in your diet can make you feel fresher, more alive, more alert, and filled with greater vitality than you can imagine.

The way to live to a ripe, happy, healthy old age is to shift the proportions of food you eat so you are consuming more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products. When you get used to eating highly nutritious foods, you’ll be less willing to eat foods that are not particularly good for you.

3. Proper exercise. The more regularly you exercise, the more energy you have, the better you feel, and the longer you will live. Regular exercise enhances your digestion, reduces the number of hours that you need to sleep, and increases your vitality in the physical, mental, and emotional realms.

There are three basic types of exercise: flexibility, strength, and endurance.

Flexibility exercises, such as yoga, require gentle stretching of all your muscles and the articulation of each of your joints each day. The more you stretch your muscles on a regular basis, the more relaxed, coordinated, and looser you will feel.

Strength exercises include calisthenics, weight lifting, and other exercises that build your muscles.

But perhaps the most important are endurance, or aerobic, exercises. One of the keys to long life and good health is aerobic exercise at least three times per week for a minimum of 30 minutes per time. You can achieve aerobic fitness by walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing, or cross-country skiing. The important thing is that you exercise at least three times per week — and many people say five times per week — for the rest of your life. This will affect your levels of health and energy in everything else you do. Everything counts.

4. Proper rest and recreation. On average, you need seven to eight hours of good, solid sleep each night. Some people can get by on less. But you should plan and organize your evenings so that you are “early to bed and early to rise.” Remember, nature demands balance in all things. If you are going to work hard during the day, you must take time off to rest and recuperate in the evenings and on the weekends. The more balance you have between work and recreation, the more energy you will have and the more productive you will be.

5. Proper breathing. By breathing, I mean deep diaphragmatic breathing, where you fill your lungs to the count of 10, hold to the count of 10, and then exhale to the count of 10. If you do this seven to 10 times, two or three times per day, you will be amazed at how much fresher and more relaxed you feel.

6. Proper attitude. Positive Mental Attitude seems to go hand in hand with great achievement and success in every walk of life. The more positive you are, the more energy you have. The more positive you are, the happier you are. The more positive you are, the more positive are the people and situations you attract into your life. The more positive you are, the easier it seems for you to get the cooperation of other people. The more positive you are, the more effectively you perform.

On the other hand, negative emotions drain your energy, enthusiasm, and vitality. They tire you out and depress your immune system. Bouts of fear, anger, doubt, resentment, or guilt will be manifested in your physical body.

Keep your energy level high by always looking for the good in every person, in every situation. Seek the valuable lesson in every setback or adversity. Look for the equal or greater benefit that comes out of every disappointment. Be a perennial optimist. Be cheerful and positive. Be helpful and supportive. Be a source of encouragement and inspiration. Be the kind of person everybody looks forward to seeing and talking to.

Every success is the result of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of tiny efforts that nobody may ever see or appreciate. These tiny efforts, sacrifices, and disciplines accumulate to make you an extraordinary person.

Everything that you do counts in some way. Nothing is neutral. Everything either helps you or hurts you. Everything either adds up or takes away. Everything either propels you toward your goal or moves you away from it. Everything counts.

With regard to your levels of health and energy, everything that you do, or don’t do, will have an impact on how you feel and how you perform. And the results of all these activities are cumulative. People who are healthy and energetic in their 50s and 60s were engaging in positive health habits in their 20s and 30s. People who live a long, healthy, happy life into their 80s are people who began planning for it and disciplining themselves in their 30s and 40s. Everything counts.

By: Brian Tracy

www.focalpointcoaching.com

Gaining Visibility

2010-03-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that some workers receive more promotions and greater pay than do their colleagues do, even though they are apparently not as competent or as capable as their colleagues are? This doesn’t seem fair. Why should some people get ahead when others who seem to be working far harder, and even longer hours, get passed over for promotion and the additional rewards that go with it?

The fact is that to be a great success, it is important not only to be good at what you do, but also to be perceived as being good at what you do. Human beings are creatures of perception. It is not what they see but what they think they see that determines how they think and act.

If your coworker is perceived as being more promotable than you are, for whatever reasons, then it is very likely that your coworker will get additional responsibilities and more money, even though you know that you could do a better job, if given the chance.

Fortunately, however, there are several things that you can do to increase your visibility and accelerate the speed at which you move ahead in your career.

The starting point to attain high visibility is to develop competence. Determine what parts of your job are most important to your boss and to your company, and then make the decision to become very good in those areas. You must be perceived as being very competent at what you do; your future depends on it. That perception alone will bring you to the attention of more people faster than you can imagine. The perception of excellent performance will open up opportunities for greater responsibilities, higher pay and better positions. Becoming good at what you do should be the foundation of your strategy for gaining higher visibility and rapid advancement in your career.

Employers everywhere are looking for men and women of action, people who will get in there and get the job done right as soon as possible. When you develop a reputation for competence and capability, you quickly become visible to all the key people in your working environment.

Excellence at what you do is essential, but it’s not enough. There are additional elements that go into the perception that others have of you. And one of the most important elements is your overall image, from head to toe. How you appear to others makes a real difference.

A recent survey of personnel executives found that the decision to hire or not to hire is made in the first 30 seconds. Many people believe that the decision to accept or reject a job candidate is actually made in the first four seconds. Many capable men and women are disqualified from job opportunities because they simply do not look the part.

There are many elements of your life over which you have no control and which you cannot choose. But your external dress and appearance are totally a matter of personal preference. Through their choice of clothes, their grooming and their overall appearance, individuals deliberately make a statement about the kind of people they are. The way you look on the outside is a representation of the way you see yourself on the inside. If you have a positive, professional self-image, you will take pains to make your external appearance consistent with it.

It’s a good idea to dress the way the senior people in your company dress. Dress for the position two jobs above your own. Since people judge you largely by the way you look on the outside, be sure to look thoroughly professional. Consequently, the perception of the people who can help you in your career will be positive. They will open doors for you in ways that you cannot now imagine.

Another powerful way to increase your visibility is to join one or two professional associations connected with your business or field. Begin by attending meetings as a guest to carefully assess whether or not a professional association can be of value to you. Determine if the members are the kind of people you would like to know and are well-established in their careers. Then, if you have decided that becoming known to the key people in this association can advance your career, take out a membership and get involved.

Most people who join any club or association do little more than attend the regular meetings. For some reason, they are too busy to assist with the various things that need to get done. This is not for you. Your job is to pick a key committee and volunteer for service. Find out which committee seems to be the most active and the most influential in that organization, and then step up to the plate. Volunteer your time, expertise and energy, and get busy. Attend every meeting. Take careful notes. Ask for assignments, and complete them on time and in an excellent fashion.

In each case, you have an opportunity to perform for other key people in your profession in a non-threatening environment. You give them a chance to see what you can do and what kind of a person you are. You expand your range of valuable contacts in one of the most effective ways possible in America today. The people you get to know on these committees can eventually be extremely helpful to you in your work and in your career.

Also, join a well-known charitable organization, such as the United Way, and become active by donating your services to its annual fund-raising programs. You may not be wealthy now, but you do have time, and your willingness to give of yourself will soon be noticed by people who are higher up. Many men and women with limited contacts and limited resources have risen to positions of great prominence as the result of getting to know the key community leaders who participate in charitable organizations and professional associations.

Some years ago, I joined a statewide chamber of commerce and volunteered to work on its Economic Education Committee. As usual, very few of the members contributed any time or effort to the committee, so there was always lots of work for those few people who were willing to put in the effort. Within one year, I was speaking at the annual convention for this association. The audience was composed of some of the most influential business executives in the entire state. In the following year, I was invited to give a key briefing to the governor and his aides at the state capitol. I became so well-known in the business community that within six months, I was offered a position to run a new company at triple my former salary. It all came from becoming active in the chamber of commerce and becoming known to the other members.

About three years later, I volunteered to work with the United Way and had a very similar experience. In fact, my whole business life was changed because of my involvement in helping that charitable organization in its annual fund-raising drive.
It’s amazing how far and how fast you will go when you begin to give your time and energy to others on a volunteer basis. It’s one of the fastest ways up the ladder of success in America.

There are many other things that you can do to increase your visibility⎯things that don’t occur to most people. For example, a study of 105 chief executive officers concluded that there were two qualities that would put a person onto the fast track in his or her career. The first quality was the ability to set priorities, to separate the relevant from the irrelevant when facing the many tasks of the day. The second quality was a sense of urgency, the ability to get the job done fast.

Managers place very high value on a person who can set priorities and move quickly to get the job finished. Dependability in job completion is one of the most valued traits in the American work force. When your employer can hand you a job and then walk away and never worry about it again, you have moved yourself onto the fast track, and your subsequent promotion and pay are virtually guaranteed.

Another way to increase your visibility is to continually upgrade your work-related skills, and to make sure that your superiors know about it. Look for additional courses you can take to improve at your job, and discuss them with your boss. Ask him or her to pay for the courses, but make it clear that you’re going to take them anyway.

A young woman who worked for me was able to double her salary in less than six months by aggressively learning the computer, bookkeeping and accounting skills she needed as our company grew. And she was worth every penny.
Ask your boss for book and audio program recommendations. Then follow up by reading and listening to them and asking for further recommendations. Bosses are very impressed with people who are constantly striving to learn more in order to increase their value to their companies. Doing this regularly can really accelerate your career.

Finally, you’ll be more visible if you develop a Positive Mental Attitude. People like to be around and to promote people they like. A consistent, persistent attitude of cheerfulness and optimism is quickly noticed by everybody. When you make an effort to cultivate an attitude of friendliness toward people, they, in return, will go to extraordinary efforts to open doors for you.

In summary, here are the five keys to increasing your visibility so that you can be more successful, faster in your career:

1. Become excellent at the important things that you have been hired to do. Excellence in your chosen occupation is the primary stepping-stone to higher positions and better pay.

2. Look, act and dress the part. Become knowledgeable about styles, colors and fabrics. Dress the way senior people in your company dress. Never take anything for granted. Remember that in the area of image, “casualness brings casualties.”

3. Develop your contacts, both inside and outside the company. Always be looking for ways to give of your time and effort, as an investment, so that others will be willing to give of their time and effort to help you sometime in the future.

The most successful men and women in any community are those who are known by the greatest number of other successful people. Begin with your professional association or club, and join a local charity that you care about and that also has a prestigious board of directors.

4. Take additional courses to upgrade your skills, and make sure that everyone knows about it. Ask your boss for book and audio program recommendations. Then read and listen, and go back to your boss with your comments on what you’ve learned and to ask for further recommendations.

When your boss feels that you are eager to learn and grow, often he’ll become a mentor to you and will help you up the ladder of success. This process of being mentored, or guided, has been instrumental to the careers of many successful executives in America.

5. Be positive, cheerful and helpful. Be the kind of person other people want to see get ahead. Treat other people with friendliness and patience, and always have a good word to say to the people you work with.

In the final analysis, taking the time to become an excellent human being will do more to raise your visibility and improve your chances for promotion than will any other single thing that you can do. And you can do it if you really want to.

By: Brian Tracy

Forging Your Self-Confidence

2010-03-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

A young woman wrote to me recently, telling me that her whole life had taken a different turn since she heard me ask the question, “What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?” She wrote that, up to that time, this was a question she had never even dared to consider, but now, she thought of nothing else. She had realized, in a great, blinding flash of clarity, that the main thing separating her from her hopes and dreams was the belief in her ability to achieve them.

Most of us are like this for most of our lives. There are many things that we want to be, and have and do, but we hold back. We are unsure because we lack the confidence necessary to step out in faith in the direction of our dreams.

Abraham Maslow said that the story of the human race is the story of men and women “selling themselves short.” Alfred Adler, the great psychotherapist, said that men and women have a natural tendency toward feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Because we lack confidence, we don’t think we have the ability to do the kind of things that others have done, and in many cases, we don’t even try.

Just think: What difference would it make in your life if you had an absolutely unshakable confidence in your ability to achieve anything you really put your mind to? What would you want and wish and hope for? What would you dare to dream if you believed in yourself with such deep conviction that you had no fears of failure whatsoever?
Most people start off with little or no self-confidence, but as a result of their own efforts, they become bold and brave and outgoing. And we’ve discovered that if you do the same things that other self-confident men and women do, you, too, will experience the same feelings and get the same results.

The key is to be true to yourself, to be true to the very best that is in you, and to live your life consistent with your highest values and aspirations.

Take some time to think about who you are and what you believe in and what is important to you. Decide that you will never compromise your integrity by trying to be or say or feel something that is not true for you. Have the courage to accept yourself as you really are—not as you might be, or as someone else thinks you should be—and know that, taking everything into consideration, you are a pretty good person.

After all, we all have our own talents, skills and abilities that make us extraordinary. No one, including yourself, has any idea of your capabilities or of what you might ultimately do or become. Perhaps the hardest thing to do in life is to accept how extraordinary you really can be, and then to incorporate this awareness into your attitude and personality.

In developing unshakable levels of self-confidence, your self-esteem and self-regard are important starting points, but they are not enough. People have tried positive thinking and wishing and hoping for years, with only mixed results. To develop the deep-down kind of self-confidence that leads to victory, you need positive knowing, not just positive thinking.

Lasting self-confidence really comes from a sense of control. When you feel very much in control of yourself and your life, you feel confident enough to do and say the things that are consistent with your highest values. Psychologists today agree that a feeling of being “out of control” is the primary reason for stress and negativity and for feelings of inferiority and low self-confidence. And the way for you to get a solid sense of control over every part of your life is to set clear goals or objectives, to establish a sense of direction based on purposeful behavior aimed at predetermined ends.

Being true to yourself means knowing exactly what you want and having a plan to achieve it. Lasting self-confidence comes when you absolutely know that you have the capacity to get from where you are to wherever you want to go. You are behind the wheel of your life. You are the architect of your destiny and the master of your fate.

Instead of being preoccupied with the fear of failure and loss, as most people are, you focus on the opportunity and the possible gains of achievement. With a clearly defined track to run on, you become success-oriented, and you gradually build your confidence up to the stage where there is very little you will not take on.

Another essential way to build your self-confidence, through positive knowing rather than just positive thinking, is to become very good at what you do. The flip side of self-confidence is “self-efficacy,” or the ability to perform effectively in your chosen area.

You can raise your self-confidence instantly by the simple act of committing yourself to becoming excellent in your chosen field. You immediately separate yourself from the average individual who drifts from job to job and accepts mediocrity as the adequate standard.

Some years ago, a young man named Tim came to one of my personal-development seminars. He was shy and introverted. His handshake was weak and he had tremendous difficulty making eye contact. He sat in the back of the seminar room with his head down, taking notes. He seemed to have few friends, and he didn’t socialize very much during the breaks. At the end of the seminar, he told me that he was in sales and hadn’t been doing very well up to that time. But he had resolved to change, to go to work on himself, to overcome his shyness and to become very good at selling for his company. He then said good-bye, and I wished him the best of luck as he went on his way.

A year later, he came back to take the seminar again. But this time, he was distinctly different. He was calmer and more self-assured. He was still a little shy, but when he shook hands, his grip was firmer, and his eye contact was better. He sat toward the middle of the seminar room, and he interacted quietly with people around him. At the end of the seminar, he told me that he was starting to move up in his sales force and had had his best year ever. He was determined to do even better in the year to come.

About 14 months later, Tim came back to the seminar. This time, he brought five people from his company, all of whom he had convinced to come to the seminar, and he had offered to pay their tuition if they weren’t satisfied. He walked right up to me and shook hands firmly, looking me straight in the eye with a strong, self-confident smile. He asked if I remembered him, and I told him that I remembered him very well. He said that he had brought something that he wanted to show me. He took out of his pocket a letter from the president of a national corporation—one of the biggest companies in the country—personally congratulating him for the outstanding job he had done in sales in his territory in the past year.

It turned out that Tim had gone from number 33 to number one out of 42 salespeople. His income had risen from $26,000 a year to $98,000, and he had increased his sales volume at a faster rate than any other salesperson in the country had. He was still quiet, but he had a wonderful air of power and purposefulness about him. He had taken the steps and paid the price to build himself into a fine young man. He had made the decision to do whatever was necessary to overcome his shyness and to develop the kind of personality that he admired in others. He was, and is, in every sense of the word, a self-made man.

Perhaps the most wonderful result of developing high levels of self-confidence is the positive impact that your personality will have on your relationships. There are two mental laws that are always operating and that determine much of what happens to you in your interactions with people. The first is the law of attraction, which says that you will inevitably attract into your life people who are very much like you. The second law is the law of correspondence, which says that your outer world of relationships will correspond perfectly, like a mirror image, to your inner world of personality and temperament.

In combination, these laws simply say that as you change in a positive direction, you will find yourself surrounded by people who are very much like the new person you are becoming. As you get better, the quality and quantity of your relationships will get better. You will meet nicer, more self-confident, more interesting and enjoyable people. You will find yourself getting along better with members of the opposite sex, including your spouse. You will find yourself doing better at your job, or even in a new job, and getting along better with your boss and your coworkers. Your attitude of confidence and calm assurance will make you more attractive to people. They will want to be around you, to open doors for you, to make opportunities available to you that would not have arisen when you didn’t feel as terrific about yourself as you do now.

Often, people lack self-confidence in their relationships with others because they judge themselves poorly in comparison. Sometimes you become self-conscious of what you are doing and saying, and sometimes you are afraid that people will not like you or accept you the way you want them to. Well, there is an important mindset that you can adopt to improve your ability to get along well with others in a more relaxed and confident fashion.

It’s important to remember that no one can affect your thoughts or feelings unless there is something that you want from him, or something that you want him to refrain from doing. As soon as you begin to practice detachment and decide in your own mind that there is nothing that you want or expect from another person, you will find that his ability to shake your self-confidence is greatly reduced. The people who are the most successful in human relationships are those who practice a calm, healthy detachment from others, and although they are friendly and engaged in the conversation, they don’t allow the behaviors of others to determine how they think and feel about themselves.

As you can see, it is our fears and doubts that, more than anything else, undermine our self-esteem and self-confidence and cause us to think in negative terms about ourselves and our possibilities. As Maslow said, we begin to “sell ourselves short” and see all the reasons why something might not be possible for us. We magnify the difficulties and minimize the opportunities. We become preoccupied with the possible losses we might suffer and the possible criticisms we might endure. Our fears and doubts paralyze us, preventing us from acting boldly, lowering our self-confidence and causing us to think and talk in negative terms. In fact, this probably describes the great majority of mankind. Most people are so preoccupied with their fears that they have time for little else, and this preoccupation manifests itself in much of what they say and do.
The only real antidote to doubt and worry and fear and all the other negative emotions that sabotage our self-confidence is action. Your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, positive or negative. When you engage in systematic, purposeful action, using and stretching your abilities to the maximum, you cannot help but feel positive and confident about yourself.

Act as though it were impossible to fail. Act as though you already had a high level of self-confidence. And continually ask yourself, “What one great thing would I dare to achieve if I knew I could not fail?” Whatever your answer, you can have it if you can dream it, and if you have the self-confidence to go out and get it.

By: Brian Tracy

Finding Your True Calling

2010-03-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

In my courses on time management, I point out that the very worst use of time in life is to stay at a job for months and years for which you are completely unsuited. There are a great number of people who spend their whole lives doing something during the week so that they can somehow find something enjoyable to do on the weekends.

In every case, these are men and women with very little future before them. They look upon their jobs as a form of drudgery, a penance they have to pay in order to enjoy the rest of their lives. And because of this attitude, they will seldom advance or be promoted. They will stay pretty much at the level they are, moving from job to job, and always wondering why other people seem to be living the good life while they feel like they are living lives of quiet desperation.

People who are not successful and happy in their work are those who have not taken the time to sit down and deal honestly and openly with themselves. They have not looked deep within themselves to find the inner treasures of talent and ability that they have demonstrated throughout their lives. They are content to do work that other people design and to achieve goals that other people have set.

Over time, people who are not following their true callings begin to feel helpless. They feel that there is nothing they can do to change things. Their income only rises enough to meet their expenditures, and they worry about money all the time. The future looks to them to be very much the same as the past. But this is not for you. Your aim in life is to become everything you are capable of becoming, to enjoy full self- expression of your talents and abilities. Your job is to develop yourself to the point where every day is a source of joy and satisfaction, and you have so many interesting things to do that you do not have enough time to do them. Your job is to continually hold up a mirror to yourself and refuse to work at anything that is not an expression of everything that is good and capable within you.

Success comes from being excellent at what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance and below-average rewards⎯and insecurity⎯for below-average performance.
But excellence is a journey, not a destination. You never really get there. You can never relax. The market is always changing and what constitutes excellence today will be different tomorrow and very different next year and the year after.

All really successful and happy people know in their hearts that they are very good at what they do. If you are doing what you really love and enjoy, if you are following your true calling, you will know because of your attitude toward excellence.
When you have found your true calling, nothing but the best will do for you, and you will go any distance, pay any price, overcome any obstacle to develop yourself to the point where you are really good at your occupation.

When you find your true calling, you will have a continuous desire to learn more about it. People who are not driven to learn more about their fields are people who are in the wrong jobs. And if a person is in the wrong job and not constantly learning and growing in their field, their value and their employability is diminishing with each passing day.

When you find your true calling, you will be determined to join the top 10 percent of people in your field. You will be willing to pay any price that is necessary to rise to the top. You will be willing to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. You will take additional courses on the evenings and weekends.

You will see technology as an opportunity to do your job better. You will be interested in the various learning programs that you can install on your computer that can help you learn better and faster. You will be hungry for new knowledge in your quest to move upward in your chosen field.

A simple test as to whether or not you are in your true calling is this: If you are doing the job that is meant for you, that uses your unique talents and abilities, you will automatically admire those who are at the top of your field. You will look up to them and want to be like them. They will be your role models and you will pattern your work and activities after them. You will want to meet them, talk to them, read their books, and listen to their talks. The very best people in your chosen field will become the examples that give you guidance, both spoken and unspoken, on your upward journey.

Throughout the years, I have been continually asked by people what they can do to be more successful. In almost every case, they are working in jobs that they don’t like, for bosses they don’t particularly respect, producing or selling products or services to customers they don’t care about. And many of them think that if they just hang in there long enough, the clouds will part and everything will get better.

But the fact is that you are where you are and who you are because you have chosen to be there. Nobody can help you or change your situation for you. The economic goal of your company is to hire people at the very lowest cost so that they can serve customers at the very lowest cost in a competitive market. For this reason, no one has any obligation to pay you any more than you are getting. If possible, they would like to pay you less.

The one thing I tell people over and over again is that they must become very good at doing what they are doing if they want to move up. And if they don’t have the inner desire to be very good at their jobs, it means they are probably in the wrong jobs.
The great tragedy is the number of people who do their job in an average or mediocre fashion with the idea that, when the right job comes along, they will really put their heads down and do a good job. But for some reason, the right job never comes along. They are always passed over for promotion and advancement. They are always the last ones hired and the first ones laid off.

If you’re still not sure about your true calling, ask the people the closest to you. Ask them, “What do you think I would be the very best at doing with my life?” It is absolutely amazing how people around you, including your spouse, your best friends, and your parents can see clearly what you should be doing when often you cannot see it yourself.

Remember, you are put on this earth to do something wonderful with your life. You have within you talents and abilities so vast that you could never use them all if you lived to be a thousand. You have the natural skills and talents that can enable you to overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you could ever set for yourself. There are no limits on what you can be, have, or do if you can find your true calling, and then throw your whole heart into doing what you are made to do in an excellent fashion.

By: Brian Tracy

Exercising Your Influence

2010-03-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

The ancient Greeks spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the effect of one personality on another. They broke down the process of communication into three parts, which they called ethos, pathos and logos.

The ethos of communication is defined as the ethical part. This revolves around the person you really are and, more important, the person you are perceived to be. If you are in sales or business, the way you are perceived by someone, which will largely determine the influence you have over him or her, will be strongly affected by your level of credibility, your ethos. In the area of personal credibility, the rule is that everything counts. Everything you do or don’t do either adds to or takes away from your credibility and your capability to influence someone. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, in essence, that what you are shouts at me so loudly, I cannot hear a word you are saying. Ethos is very important.

Perhaps the simplest example of the application of this rule, that everything counts, involves your image or appearance. You’ve heard it said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The fact is that when you first meet a person, he makes a judgment about you in approximately four seconds, and his judgment is finalized largely within 30 seconds of the initial contact. In a survey of the members of the American Personnel and Guidance Association⎯those men and women who are responsible for hiring people for large companies⎯members generally agreed that they made their decision to hire or not to hire a person within 30 seconds of the first meeting.

Everything contributing to the way you look on the outside is important. If it’s not helping you, it’s hurting you. While you cannot control your physical features, you have total control over your dress and grooming. In fact, we generally assume that a person consciously and deliberately makes a personal statement about himself with every part of his appearance that he can affect in any way.

Your clothes are responsible for 95 percent of the first impression that you make on someone because, in most instances, your clothes cover 95 percent of your body. Your grooming, your hair style and the other ways you can determine your appearance from the neck up also exert an inordinate influence on the way that you are perceived, on your ethos with someone. Your accessories, such as purse or briefcase, watch, tie, rings, pens and other elements, all make a statement that will or will not help to put you in a position to influence someone.

The second part of communication and influence that the Greeks wrote about is pathos. Pathos refers to the emotional elements of a conversation. In modern selling and marketing, pathos is the ability to communicate with the deep, subconscious needs of a customer. Human beings are largely emotional, in that everything that we do and say, all of our decisions, and our indecisions, are determined by our emotions. Therefore, to have a great influence on others, we need to be able to connect with whatever causes them to feel strongly one way or another.

There is a little saying that we teach in our sales seminars: “If you can see Joe Jones through Joe Jones’s eyes, you can sell Joe Jones what Joe Jones buys.” This simply means that if you can develop a high level of empathy and put yourself into the mind and heart of a person, you can have an inordinate influence on his actions and his behaviour.

The best salespeople and the most effective influencers of behavior are extremely empathetic and sensitive to others. They listen closely to what others are saying, and they listen for the messages that are being conveyed between the lines. They are aware that there are things that are said and things that are not said. If you can get your ego out of the way long enough to focus in, like a laser beam, on a person, you will often be aware of concerns that the person has⎯concerns that you might have missed if you had allowed yourself to get wrapped up in your product or service, or in your desire to communicate your message.

Perhaps the most powerful ability you can develop to influence others is the ability to ask questions carefully and to listen attentively to the answers. Remember, listening can build trust and credibility. The more you listen to what a person is really saying, the more the person will trust you and be open to your influence. A basic rule is that you should never say anything if you can find a way to ask it instead. Telling is not selling.

The third part of communication, or human influence, is logos. The logos discussed by the Greeks refers to the factual content of a message, the words used. It refers to the argument that you present on behalf of your point of view. (However, we know that the facts themselves, although they are important, are not as powerful or as influential as the emotions are.)

In selling, we know that there are three parts to the process. These are, first, establishing rapport with the prospective customer, second, identifying the problem or need that the prospective customer has and, third, presenting the solution. These are the ethos, the pathos and the logos of selling to someone.

Your success in every area of life will be based largely on the quality and quantity of relationships that you can initiate and develop over time. In the world of business and sales today, relationships are everything. We often call this the “friendship factor.” We have discovered that a person will not do business with you until he or she is convinced that you are his or her friend

and are acting in his or her best interest. In other words, someone cannot be influenced by you unless he or she likes you in some way. Of course, it’s often possible for you to influence a person if he fears you, but that type of influence lasts only until the person can rearrange his situation and escape from the circumstances that enable you to have control over him.

The safest way to influence someone, then, is to earn his liking and respect by appealing to the friendship factor. This requires spending time with him, caring for him and respecting him. The more time that you are willing to spend with the person, the greater will be his tendency to trust you and to feel that you are acting in his best interest. The more obvious it is that you care about the person, about what he really needs, the more likely it is that he will be open to your influence. This is even more important in your personal relationships, with members of the opposite sex, your friends and your children. The more that people feel you care about them, the more open they will be to your influence in some way. The third ingredient of the friendship factor is respect. Being respected by others is very important to each of us. A survey done by the Gallup organization found that the most prominent living Americans rated the respect of others as the most important measure of success in life. They worked very hard to earn the respect of their parents, the respect of their spouses and children, the respect of their peers and colleagues, and the respect of mankind at large.

It seems that we truly respect ourselves only when we feel that we are respected by others, and we will go to great lengths to earn and keep that respect. When we feel that someone respects us for who we are and what we have accomplished, we tend to be more open to that person’s influence.

We can do two things to put ourselves in a position to be respected by others. The first is to develop our knowledge of our field. The more people perceive you know about your subject, the more they will respect you. The highest-paid people in almost every field are those who know more than the average people. They are recognized as experts, and they develop what is called “expert power.” Because of their superior knowledge, they are looked up to and listened to, and they are much more capable of influencing others to act in a particular way than they would be if their knowledge level were just average.

The best salespeople are those who know their products cold. They deeply understand every aspect of their products and the ways in which their products can be used to achieve the most important goals of their customers.

A good example comes from the field of life-insurance sales. One of the most successful and famous insurance salesman of all time is Ben Feldman. Ben Feldman is a legend in the life-insurance business. He has been written up in the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest salesman in the world.

There are many books and articles by and about Ben Feldman that describe one of the most important activities he engaged in to achieve his level of success. For many, many years, Ben Feldman spent two hours every night, from 10:00 P.M. to 12:00 midnight, studying the field of life insurance. He studied not only life insurance but also selling methodologies, persuasion skills, financial planning, actuarial tables, and every other subject he could think of that would make him more knowledgeable and, therefore, more capable of serving his customers. He became respected far and wide for his extraordinary ability to tailor a variety of life-insurance instruments to help individual business owners achieve and maintain financial estates that would live on after them. He became a walking embodiment of “expert power,” and because of that power, he had tremendous ability to influence others. As a result, he became a very wealthy, successful and respected businessman.

Another way to influence others is through expertise. Expertise is closely tied to knowledge, but it is a little different. Expertise is the ability to do, the ability to perform well in your chosen field. Men and women with expertise are those who practice over and over in whatever they do until they become known far and wide as the very best in their fields.

One of the most important qualities necessary for influence and success is result-orientation. It is the ability to get results, to get the job done, to deliver the goods. Your ability to get results, to make a commitment to achieve a set of goals and to go out and do it, will earn you the respect of everyone around you, and it will enable you to exert influence over people far out of proportion to what the average person could accomplish.

In every company, there are those men and women who can always be counted on to deliver the goods. They are the men and women who fulfill their commitments. They say that they will do something, and they don’t just accomplish it; they exceed expectations. They are relied upon to make a significant contribution to the goals of the organization. And when they speak, others listen. They have a tremendous ability to influence people⎯people above, below and at their level⎯because everyone looks up to them as people who deliver the results. And so can you, by deciding to do so and then by working on it.

Another way to become more influential is by developing a positive mental attitude. The more positive and enthusiastic you are about yourself and your work, the more influence you will have over people. The fact is that emotions are contagious. Your emotions have an impact on the behavior of others. When you get excited about what you are doing, you get others excited as well. The more positive and optimistic you are about what you are doing, about what you are selling or servicing, the more positive others will be toward you. Hence, the easier it will be for you to influence them to buy your products or services, to accept your ideas, to do what you want them to do to help you achieve your goals.

Perhaps the best way to develop a more positive mental attitude is to continually look for the good in every situation. Become an “inverse paranoid,” in that you assume that there is a conspiracy to make you successful, and always look for the silver lining in every cloud. No matter what problems or objections your prospective customers have, look for a constructive way to turn those objections around, to turn them into reasons for going ahead rather than not buying.

Every time you read a positive book, listen to a positive audiocassette, or interact with positive people, you are reinforcing your positive mental attitude and making yourself a more influential and persuasive person.

Perhaps the most powerful principle of all in personal influence is contained in what is called the Law of Reciprocity. It is also called the Law of Sowing and Reaping, and the Law of Action and Reaction. Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to it as the Law of Compensation, and Napoleon Hill called it the Law of Overcompensation. Probably the best summary of the Law of Reciprocity is the Golden Rule, which says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to love others as you love yourself.

After extensive research, Dr. Robert Cialdini of the University of Arizona concluded that the fastest and most powerful way to influence someone is to do things for that person. He found that each of us hates to be under a sense of obligation to another. When someone does something for us, we have an enormous desire to pay back the person, so we can be even. This is another way of saying that there is a deep, subconscious desire in all of us to be fair in our interactions with others. If someone has done something kind for us, we feel it is only fair to pay him back in some way.

One of the best ways to influence someone is to do something nice for him. I know many successful salespeople who make a habit of taking their prospects out to breakfast or lunch. During the breakfast or lunch, they do not talk about their products or services unless the client brings it up. They merely make small talk, ask questions and listen. They work on building trust, and they work on establishing a friendly relationship. At the end of the breakfast or lunch, they tell the prospect that they will be getting in touch with him sometime in the future with the possibility of talking to him about helping him in some way.

The best salespeople and businesspeople in America today are those who look upon their customers and prospective customers as friends and partners. They always look for ways to help their partners improve their lives in ways that are not directly related to the products or services they sell. They sow seeds, and they reap a harvest. They trigger a desire in people to reciprocate. When the time comes for those salespeople to approach their prospects with the possibility of buying their products or services, the prospects are wide open to the questions and inputs of the salespeople. The prospects have a deep-down desire to reciprocate.

One of the best ways to use this principle in your interactions is to continually look for ways to say and do positive things for people. Look for ways to do kind acts and favors for your friends and prospects. Send thank-you notes. Send birthday cards. Send clippings from newspapers about subjects that you feel may be of interest to them. Always keep your promises, and follow up on your commitments. Always do what you say you will do. Do everything possible to put in, knowing confidently that you will ultimately be able to get out far more. You will reap if you sow.

Someone has observed that no one ever built a statue to a person to acknowledge what he or she got out of life. Statues are built only to people to acknowledge what they gave. The most powerful, influential and successful people you will ever meet always look for ways to do nice things for others. When you meet someone under almost any circumstance, one of the best questions you can ask is this: “Is there anything that I can do for you?” Always look for ways to put in rather than to take out. The successful man or woman of today is a “go-giver” as well as a go-getter.

The more that people feel that you are open and empathetic and sensitive to their needs and concerns, the more open they will be to your influencing them positively in some way. And the more you can influence others with the power and impact of your personality, the more you will accomplish, and the faster you will accomplish it. The more rapidly you will move toward the great success that you desire and deserve.

By: Brian Tracy

Everything Counts

2010-02-23T13:51:00.000-08:00

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

Effective Parenting

2010-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

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

Discovering Your Talents

2010-02-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

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

Cultivating Your Self-Esteem

2010-02-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

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

Creative Problem-Solving

2010-01-25T11:40:00.000-08:00

Peter Drucker wrote some years ago that the definition of an executive is someone who is expected to get results. You are an executive to the degree to which results are expected of you. You don’t have to have a staff or an office to be an executive. All you have to do is be a person in charge of getting the job done in a timely and measurable fashion.

As an executive, your key ability is solving problems and making decisions. In fact, from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, you are continually taking in information, analyzing the information, solving problems based on that information, and making decisions that lead to action from yourself and others. It’s safe to say that the quality of your decision making and problem solving determines the quality of your life. If you want your future to be better than your present, you must simply improve your quality of thinking and make better choices. You must become a creative problem-solver.

Building creative brain power is a lot like building muscle power in that the more strain you place on your brain, the stronger it becomes. And you can pump “mental iron” by using two powerful methods for increasing your creative problem solving ability.
The first method is called “mindstorming.” To engage in mindstorming, also called “The 20-Idea Method,” all you need is a pen and a piece of paper. Begin by writing a particular goal or problem at the top of the page.
For example, if you want to increase your income by 50 percent over the next year, you would write something like, “What can I do to increase my income by 50 percent over the next 12 months?”

Or, you can be even more specific by writing the exact amount. If you are earning $50,000 a year today, you would write: “What can I do to increase my income by $25,000 over the next 12 months?”

The more specific the question is, the better the quality of answers will be. So don’t write, “What can I do to be happier over the next 12 months?” That kind of question is too fuzzy for your mind. Be specific, detailed, and focused in your questions and you will find practical, effective answers.

Once you have written the question, jot down twenty answers. Let your mind flow freely. Write down every answer that comes to you. Don’t worry about whether it is right or wrong, intelligent or foolish, possible or impossible. Just come up with at least 20 answers.

For example, you could start with answers such as, “work harder,” or “work longer,” or “work faster.” Eventually you might work up to more in-depth answers such as, “change jobs,” or “introduce new products or services,” or “start my own business.”

Whatever you write, keep writing until you have at least 20 answers. If you get stuck after writing the obvious answers, write about the opposite solutions. Don’t be afraid to be ridiculous. Very often, a ridiculous answer triggers a breakthrough thought that might save you years of hard work.

Next, go back over the answers and select the one that seems to be the most appropriate for you at this moment. You will often have an instinct or feeling about a particular answer. It appeals to you for some reason. This is an unconscious suggestion that you are on the right track.

Once you’ve selected the best option, here’s a way to double the creative impact of this exercise: Transfer the answer to the top of a new page and then write 20 ideas for implementing it in your life. You will be astonished at the outpouring of creative ideas that flow from your mind through your hand and onto the paper.

The second method of creative problem solving is called brainstorming. This is a form of mindstorming done with a group. In brainstorming you again start off with one problem or question, but this time, you have a variety of individuals contributing to the solution.

The keys to brainstorming are simple. First, the problem or question should be stated clearly and simply so that it is understood by each participant. Take a little time to discuss the problem questions, and then write it on a flip chart. This will dramatically increase the quality of answers generated.

The aim of the brainstorming session should be to generate the most ideas possible within a specific period of time. An effective session will last anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, and 30 minutes is usually ideal.

The best number of participants for a brainstorming session is between four to seven people. Any less than four, and you run the risk of not having enough stimulation. Any more than seven, and you may find that there is insufficient opportunity for everyone to contribute.

Each brainstorming session requires a group leader. The role of the leader is to keep the ideas as free-flowing as possible. The group leader is a stimulator of ideas, encouraging each person to speak up with anything he or she has to contribute.
The most important rule of brainstorming is to avoid evaluating the ideas during the process. The focus is on quantity, not quality. Evaluation and discussion of the ideas will take place at a separate session, away from the original brainstorming.
There should also be a recorder at each session. This person will write down every idea as it is generated so that the list can be typed up and circulated at a later time.

The final keys to successful brainstorming are positive emotions, laughter, ridiculous ideas, and absolutely no criticism of any kind. The group leader needs to ensure that no one says anything that throws water on the ideas of anyone else.
When I conduct brainstorming sessions, I find that the best way to get going is to first agree on the question or problem, and second, to go around the table one by one. Pretty soon, everyone will start to contribute and the session is off and running.
When it comes to evaluating the ideas in a later session, it can be helpful to bring together an entirely different group of people. This group will consider the ideas without the ego involvement and emotional attachment of the original group. As a result, they will be able to assess the ideas far more objectively.

The amazing thing about mindstorming and brainstorming is that virtually anyone can come up with an incredible number of ideas when stimulated by one or both of these methods. And you can never tell which ideas are going to provide the breakthrough solution that you need. So go for quantity, because the more ideas you generate, the greater the likelihood that you will have exactly the idea that you need at exactly the right time.

By practicing mindstorming and brainstorming on a regular basis, you can unleash a torrent of ideas that will enable you to accomplish your goals faster than you ever believed possible. Today, in the information age, ideas are the most valuable tools of production. And since your ability to generate innovative, effective, usable ideas is virtually unlimited, your future is unlimited as well.

By: Brian Tracy

Creating Your Own Security. By: Brian Tracy

2010-01-18T07:31:00.000-08:00

Throughout most of human history, we have been accustomed to evolution, or the gradual changing and progressing of events in a straight line. Sometimes the process of change was faster and sometimes it was slower, but it almost always seemed to be progressive, from one step to the other, allowing you some opportunities for planning, predicting and changing.

Today, however, the rate of change is not only faster than ever before, but it is discontinuous. It is taking place in a variety of unconnected areas and affecting each of us in a variety of unexpected ways. Changes in information processing technologies are happening separately from changes in medicine, changes in transportation, changes in education, changes in politics and changes in global competition. Changes in family formation and relationships are happening separately from the rise and fall of new businesses and industries in different parts of the country. And if anything, this rate of accelerated, discontinuous change is increasing. As a result, most of us are already suffering from what Alvin Toffler once called, “future shock.”

You can’t do very much about the enormity of these changes, but the one thing that you can do is to think seriously about yourself and your basic need for security and stability. In no area is this more important than in the areas of job security and financial security. You must give special attention to your ability to make a good living and provide for yourself in the months and years ahead.

Above all, to position yourself for tomorrow, you must think continuously and seriously about your work today, your earning ability , and the work that you will be doing one, three, and five years from today. You must plan to achieve your own financial security, no matter what happens.

Charles Kettering said that you should give a lot of thought to the future because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life. One of the greatest mistakes that people can make, and the one with the worst long-term consequences, is to think only about the present and give very little thought to what might happen in the months and years ahead.

When our grandfathers started work, it was quite common for them to get a basic education and then go to work for a company and stay with that same company for the rest of their working lives. When our parents went to work, it was more common for them to change jobs three or four times during their lifetime, although it was difficult and disruptive.

Today, with increased turbulence and change in the national and global economy, a person starting work can expect to have five full-time careers between the ages of 21 and 65, and 14 full-time jobs lasting two years or more. According to Fortune Magazine, fully 40 percent of American employees in the 21st Century will be “contingency” workers. This means that they will never work permanently for another company. They will continue to move as needed, from company to company, from job to job, earning less money than full-time employees and accruing very few, if any, benefits in terms of health care and pension plans.

Imagine what your job will look like five years from today. Since knowledge in your field is probably doubling every five years, this means that fully twenty percent of your knowledge and your ability in your field is becoming obsolete each year. In five years, you will be doing a brand new job with brand new skills and abilities. Ask yourself, “What parts of my knowledge, skills and work are becoming obsolete? What am I doing today that is different than what I was doing one year ago and two years ago?” What are you likely to be doing one year, two years, three years, four years and five years from today? What knowledge and skills will you need and how will you acquire them? What is your plan for your economic and financial future?
We are now in the knowledge age. Today, the chief factors of production are knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to achieving results for other people. Your earning ability today is largely dependent upon your knowledge, skill and your ability to combine that knowledge and skill in such a way that you contribute value for which customers are going to pay.

The Law of Three says that you must contribute three dollars of profit for every dollar that you wish to earn in salary. It costs a company approximately double your salary to employ you in terms of space, benefits, supervision, and investment in furniture, fixtures, and other resources. For a company to hire you, they have to make a profit on what they pay you. Therefore, you must contribute value greatly in excess of the amount you earn in order to stay employed. To put it another way, your earning ability must be considerably greater than the amount you are receiving, or you will find yourself looking for another job.

To position yourself for tomorrow, here is one of the most important rules you will ever learn: “The future belongs to the competent.” The future belongs to those men and women who are very good at what they do. Pat Riley, in his book The Winner Within, wrote that, “If you are not committed to getting better at what you are doing, you are bound to get worse.” To phrase it another way, anything less than a commitment to excellent performance on your part is an unconscious acceptance of mediocrity. It used to be that you needed to be excellent to rise above the competition in your industry. Today, you must be excellent even to keep your job in your industry.

The marketplace is a stern task master. Today, excellence, quality, and value are absolutely essential elements of any product or service, and of the work of any person. Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance. Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive. It’s not personal. It’s just the way our economy works.

To earn more, you must learn more. You are maxed out today at your current level of knowledge and skill. However much you are earning at this moment is the maximum you can earn without learning and practicing something new and different.
And here’s the rub. Your accumulated knowledge and experience is becoming obsolete bit by bit, day by day. The knowledge in your field is doubling every three to five years. That means that your knowledge must double every three to five years just for you to stay even.

The solution to the dilemma of unavoidable change and restructuring is continuous self-development. Your personal knowledge and your ability to apply that knowledge are your most valuable assets. To stay on top of your world, you must continually add to your knowledge and your ability. You must continually build up your mental assets if you want to enjoy a continuous return on your investment. And only by building on your current assets do you stop them from deteriorating.
By engaging in continuous self-improvement, you can put yourself behind the wheel of your own life. By dedicating yourself to enhancing your earning ability, you will automatically be engaging in the continuous process of personal development. By learning more, you prepare yourself to earn more. You position yourself for tomorrow by developing the knowledge and skills that you need to be a valuable and productive part of our economy, no matter which direction it goes.

Continuous Learning. By: Brian Tracy

2010-01-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

Throughout the developed world, we have moved from an era of manpower to an era of mind power. We have moved from the use of physical muscles to the use of mental muscles. Today the chief sources of value in our society are knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge in a timely fashion. In the information age, knowledge is king, and those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

When you learn and practice the techniques for rapid learning, when you join the learning revolution, you will learn how to unlock the incredible powers of your mind. You will learn how to become smarter⎯faster than ever before. You will learn how to become a master of your fate rather than a victim of circumstances. You will learn how to take complete control of your present and future destiny so that you can accomplish and achieve anything you want in life.

Knowledge is doubling every two to three years in almost every occupation and profession, including yours. This means that your knowledge must double every two to three years for you to just stay even. People who are not aggressively and continuously upgrading their knowledge and skills are not staying in the same place. They are falling behind. You see this demonstrated all over the place with massive lay-offs, declining wages, and growing insecurity in the workforce. You see it in the increasing bewilderment and despair on the part of people who are being displaced from low-skill jobs which have either moved overseas or disappeared altogether. We are in the midst of a societal revolution where unionized industrial workers are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of our workforce each year.

As recently as the 50s and 60s it was common to believe that you finished your schooling, got a job with a large company and stayed with that company for the rest of your life. This was based on the old paradigm of learning. In this old paradigm, life was divided into three parts. First were your “learning” years, during which you got your education, however extensive or limited. Then came your “earning” years. This was the period of time during which you worked for a living. After that came your “yearning” years. This was the period of retirement which would be paid for by Social Security, savings, and pensions.
Today, with workforce requirements changing so rapidly, you must continually be asking yourself, “What is my next job going to be?” You must also be asking yourself, on a regular basis, “What is my next career going to be?”

Imagine for a moment that your entire company or industry vanished overnight and you had to start all over again in an entirely new business doing an entirely different job. What would it be? And don’t think this question is speculative or that it applies to someone else. It is a question that you will probably have to deal with, perhaps far sooner than you expect. In thinking about your new job and your new career, here is the most important question of all: “What do I have to be absolutely, positively excellent at doing, in order to earn an excellent living in my new job and my new career?”

The answer to almost every question and the solution to almost every problem in the world of work is to learn and practice something new and different. When you learn how to use the incredible power of your brain to absorb and apply new ideas and information, you will be able to lead the field and rise to the top of any profession or occupation.

Here’s another question for you: What is your most valuable asset? In terms of cash flow, what is the most valuable thing you have? Well, unless you are very rich, or have a family trust account, your most valuable asset is your “earning ability.” It is your ability to earn money. It is your ability to apply your knowledge and skill in a timely fashion to get results for which others will pay.

All your education, knowledge, experience, reading, training, and work has contributed toward building up your earning ability. According to the research, the so-called “rich” in America, and in other countries, are almost invariably people who started from common beginnings, often with great disadvantages, and then overcame those circumstances by investing an enormous amount of time and effort on developing their earning ability. And you can do the same thing, starting today, or at any time.
Management consultant Peter Drucker says that the truly educated person today is a person who has learned how to learn continuously throughout life. Tom Peters says that continuous learning may be the only real source of sustainable competitive advantage for individuals and corporations. And Peter Senge, who wrote The Fifth Dimension, says that only learning organizations, those organizations that are capable of taking in new information, adapting it, and using it faster than their competitors, will survive in the fast-changing, competitive world of tomorrow.

The more you know, the better you will be at solving problems and getting results for which people will pay you. The more you know, the more freedom and opportunity you have. And the more you learn and the faster you learn it, the more rapidly you move upward and onward in your career and in every other area of your life.

Between where you are and where you want to go, there is almost always a gap, and in almost every case you will find that you can bridge this gap with knowledge and skills. In order to get from where you are to your goals, you have to learn and practice something new and different. You have to learn new skills and abilities. You have to learn new attitudes and methods. You have to learn new techniques and practices. If you want to be a better parent, you must learn and practice better parenting skills. If you want to be a better spouse, you must study and practice relationship skills. If you want to earn more money, you have to determine what it is that people will pay more money for, and then get busy learning and practicing those behaviors.
Specific knowledge and specific skills will become obsolete with the passing of time, but learning how to learn is a permanent skill that you can use all the days of your life. The people who join the learning revolution, and who learn how to learn faster, like those people who first learned how to operate computers, or learned how to become excellent in their fields, will be able to earn more in one or two years of work than the average person earns in perhaps five or ten years.

By joining the learning revolution, you will enhance every area of your life. You will be able to help your spouse and your children unlock and realize more of their individual potentials. You will be a better friend in helping your friends use more of their abilities. And you will be a better manager, developing the skills that will enable you to get far more out of yourself and other people than ever before.

Confident Decision Making

2010-01-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

Just imagine that someone gave you a simple but powerful computer that had the capacity to answer any question or solve any problem you would ever face. All you would have to do is properly program the problem into the computer. Then, at exactly the right time, it would bring you exactly the answer that you need; the answer would always be perfectly correct for you.

The fact is that you already have such a computer, and it’s installed right between your ears. The only real difference between extremely effective men and women and men and women who are not happy with their results is the degree to which they use this amazing computer. The wonderful thing is that you can easily learn to use this computer, and when you do, you will immediately start to benefit by making better decisions and getting better results.

To begin, it’s important for you to understand that your brain is divided into two hemispheres, commonly called the right brain and the left brain. Extensive research suggests that each part of the brain is responsible for specific functions.

Your left brain tends to be responsible for linear, sequential, orderly and organized functions. It is practical, analytical and skeptical. It is the part of the brain that deals with categories and concrete things. Your left brain deals with the verbal, the mathematical and the scientific. It is the engineering half of the brain, and it is primarily focused on processing facts in a step-by-step fashion.

Your right brain, on the other hand, is very different. Your right brain is holistic and spontaneous. While your left brain deals with individual details, your right brain deals with complete pictures and fully integrated ideas and situations. Your right brain is also in charge of your creative, musical and artistic abilities. It is responsible for dance and singing and laughter. Your right brain is also responsible for the intuitive processes of thinking, feeling, problem solving and decision making.

When you learn to harmonize the operations of both of these brains so they work together in cooperation, you begin to perform at exceptional levels. In fact, men and women begin to become great when they begin to utilize the marvelous capacities of the right brain, especially for making important decisions.

An intuitive decision, one that comes to you from within, is always superior to anything else that you can arrive at by simply considering the facts and details. An intuitive decision integrates all of your knowledge about a subject simultaneously and gives you an answer that is a superior synthesis to anything that you could have worked out in a step-by-step fashion. This is why the men and women who are at the top of virtually all organizations tend to be extremely intuitive in the way they solve problems and make decisions for themselves and others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson called intuition the “still, small voice within.” This inner voice is like an unfailing guide or mechanism that always tells you the correct thing to do or say. The more you trust it and believe in it, the better and more accurately it works for you. And your ability to use your intuitive decision-making powers precedes and predicts your success and effectiveness in virtually everything you do.

To trigger your intuition and tap into higher levels of your mind on a regular basis, you need to have four mental qualities. The first, as I mentioned, is a complete trust and belief, almost a childlike faith, in your intuition, and the disposition to just “go with the flow” of your inner mind. Your intuition functions effortlessly and works best when you stop trying to make something happen and instead just “let go” and accept whatever solution comes to you.

The second mental quality that enables you to use your intuition more efficiently is a positive mental attitude. By this, I mean that you are simply calm, relaxed and cheerful about outcomes. A positive mental attitude has been described as a constructive response to stress and adversity. When you respond in a relaxed, easygoing way, you create the mental climate that enables your brain to function at its best, and this is what triggers your intuition.

The third mental quality for enhancing your intuition is an attitude of confident expectation. The more positive and more confident you are, the sharper and quicker your intuitions and solutions will be. So confidently expect things to go well for you. Look for the valuable lesson in every difficulty and adversity. Seek out the advantage or benefit in each setback or obstacle that you face. Your conscious decision to keep your mind focused on the good parts of your situation, coupled with your refusal to dwell on the negative parts, will give you a mind that functions at its best to help you achieve your goals.

The fourth mental quality for intuitive decision making is listening. Women tend to be better at listening to their intuition than men are. This is probably why women’s intuition is so much more respected than men’s intuition is. However, both men and women have the same intuitive abilities. All they have to do is listen to them on a regular basis. Most of our mistakes in life result from ignoring our intuition or refusing to listen to our intuition because we think that by doing so, we will be better off. It always turns out to be a mistake.

There are three areas where you can use your intuition continuously to enable you to make better decisions and avoid costly mistakes.

The first place where intuition plays a major role is in your personal relationships. Whether it is with your spouse or child or a friend, your intuition will always tell you the right thing to do or say. All you need to do, in any situation, is to quietly turn to your intuition and listen, and then say or do what seems to be the most proper and natural thing to do.

In my experience, one of the major reasons for problems in relationships is that one or both parties are ignoring their intuition and refusing to listen to it or act on it. People get into, or out of, relationships, or make decisions in their interactions with others, even when, deep inside, they know that they are doing the wrong thing. And if ever you do the wrong thing from the standpoint of your intuition, you always create a problem that is bigger and more difficult to deal with than if you had made the intuitive decision at the beginning. Many people actually make themselves physically ill by refusing to follow their intuition and do what they know is the right thing to do.

A second area where your intuitive decision-making capabilities can be extremely helpful is in business. If you listen quietly, you will always get a good feeling, or intuition, about the right thing to do, or not to do, in every business situation. If you are in sales, when you are with a prospect or a client, you can rely completely on your intuition to tell you what to do and what to say, and when you follow it, you will always find that it is the right thing. Many salespeople have told me of their having a sudden impulse to bring up a particular subject in a sales interview, and later finding that it was exactly the right thing to say at exactly the right time. In fact, all top salespeople tend to trust their intuition and listen to it continuously in their sales work.
The third, and perhaps the most obvious, area to use your intuitive abilities is in the area of making choices. Whether you are communicating or negotiating or buying or selling, or accepting or leaving a job, you are always making choices of one kind or another. Some of these choices are not important, but many of them have potentially serious long-term consequences.

Accepting a job, or a salary, or going to work for a particular company, at a particular time, can have a significant impact on the whole direction of your life. Investing or spending or borrowing money for any reason can have significant long-term consequences. Any decision that has results that last long after you have made the decision is the kind of decision to which you need to apply your amazing intuitive powers.

Fortunately, there are some specific steps that you can take to hone your intuitive mind. Select any area of your life, any problem or situation that you are dealing with at the current time, and begin to program it into your mental computer by taking the following steps.

First, define your problem or situation clearly, in writing if possible. Your mind cannot go to work to bring you the right answer if the question itself is jumbled up and unclear. Exactly what are you trying to achieve, avoid or preserve? Is it a single problem, or is it a cluster problem⎯a problem made up of several smaller problems? Whichever it is, take some time to think it out and describe it clearly on paper so that you know exactly what you are trying to do. This is the beginning of the intuitive process.

Once you have a clear idea of the problem, ask yourself, “What else is the problem?” Are you dealing with a real problem, or are you simply dealing with a symptom of a deeper problem? Many people try to solve a problem with their dissatisfaction at work or in a relationship, but often, the real problem is that they are in the wrong job or relationship altogether. There is an old saying, “There is a price that you can pay to be free of any problem, and you always know what it is.” This is just another way of saying that if you listen to your intuition, it will tell you the right thing to do, although the right thing may not be the easy or convenient thing. But you must keep your mind open, in any case.

Once you have defined your problem clearly, begin to research and read and gather information about the problem. Has anyone else had this problem before you? What did he do about it? Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes a little research will turn up exactly the answer you are seeking.

For several months, two scientists at the IBM research laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland, had been intensely working on the problems of superconductivity. They knew what they were looking for but were making no progress, so they decided to take a break and come back to the problem later. During the break, one of the scientists went down to the company library and began browsing through a French journal on ceramics. One of the articles told of a new ceramic application that had just been developed. It turned out to be exactly the key that the scientist had been looking for. He immediately took the article back to the laboratory, and by applying the principle, they discovered the secret of superconductivity. It was such an important scientific breakthrough that these two men were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics the following year.

Once you have defined your problem clearly and researched it as thoroughly as you can, speak to people who may have information that you can use. It’s amazing how much you can learn simply by asking questions of others who may have had similar experiences. If you ask enough people, you can often find yourself in the position of being better informed than any one of them could be, acting in isolation.

A friend of mine, who is a management consultant, was employed by a large company to investigate the feasibility of placing a large sum of money in a particular type of real-estate investment. Company executives asked him to evaluate the possibilities nationwide and give them some advice on which direction to go.

First of all, he went to the library and got copies of several articles that had been written in this field over the past few months. After reading the articles, he phoned some of the people and companies mentioned in the articles, and told them he was thinking of investing a large amount of money in this industry. He asked them for their insights and their ideas and what advice they would give.

Over the next few days, he spoke to about 30 people in different parts of the country, all of whom specialized in this particular industry. Most of them were quite open to giving him whatever information he required⎯sometimes sending it via Federal Express⎯because they looked upon him as a prospective investor.

By the time he was finished with his inquiries, he was one of the most well-informed people on this subject in the United States. He then summarized his findings and recommendations in a detailed report and submitted it to his client, along with a bill of $30,000 for consulting services. The client read the report and paid the bill willingly. And the consultant went on to his next assignment.

Your most valuable asset is your ability to think, and to apply your mind toward getting results. The more you utilize your mental capabilities, by doing the things that other successful people do with their minds, the more successful and prosperous you will be, and the faster it will happen for you.

Let’s say that you have now defined your problem clearly, read and researched thoroughly, asked others for their advice and input, and written down every single detail of the problem or situation.

The very act of writing out all the details often stimulates intuitive breakthroughs that lead to ideas and solutions that are superior to those that are currently being used. Once you have written out the details, go over them several times, and let your mind soak them up so that your right brain is properly fueled to synthesize and integrate all the facts and respond intuitively.
If you still have no solution, your next step is to force yourself⎯discipline yourself⎯to write out 20 ways in which you think the problem could be solved. Quickly write out 20 solutions, or 20 answers or 20 courses of action, that might be possible. Forcing yourself to think in this way will often trigger your intuition and bring you an answer that will solve the situation perfectly.

If you have followed the previous steps and you still have not come up with a solution that satisfies you, take the next step in intuitive decision making, which is called “rumination” or “cerebration.” These words refer to the process of dropping all the information into your subconscious mind and then just forgetting about it for a while. During this period, your mind goes to work unconsciously to solve the problem while you are busy doing something else.

When they reach a dead end in problem solving or decision making, many people find it helpful to turn the entire matter over to their subconscious mind and simply “ask” for an answer. A good time to do this is just before you go to sleep. Sometimes you will wake up in the morning with the answer springing “full blown” into your mind. In other cases, as long as you keep your mind on other subjects, at a certain point the answer will emerge in its entirety, and you will know exactly what to do.
How do you recognize an intuitive decision? How do you know that this is not simply a decision or a solution that will lead to greater problems in the future? Well, there are four indicators that accompany every intuition-based solution or decision.
First of all, if the answer is truly from your intuition, it will come in a flash and be complete in every detail, answering every aspect of the problem, from beginning to end. The solution will integrate all of the various details and answer all of the concerns.

Second, an intuitive solution seems so simple that you wonder why you had not thought of it before. It feels like a “blinding flash of the obvious.” You are amazed at how perfect it is, and you have the feeling that it was lying under your nose all the time.

The third indicator of an intuitive decision is that, whatever it is, the actions required are completely within your capabilities and your resources. The solution will be something that you can do right now, with what you have, right where you are. You can act on it immediately.

And the fourth indicator is that each intuitive flash or solution comes accompanied by a burst of joy and energy, a feeling of elation, that excites you and makes you happy and makes you feel eager to implement the solution. You will be excited, and you will feel terrific about yourself.

Intuitive problem solving and decision making is your key to the future. It is perhaps the most powerful faculty of your brain. And the regular use of your intuitive abilities will make them better and stronger and sharper, until you reach the point where you believe that there is really nothing that you cannot do if you put your mind to it. And you’re probably right.

By: Brian Tracy

Capitalizing on Your Strengths

2009-12-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

One of the qualities of superior men and women is that they are extremely self-reliant. They accept complete responsibility for themselves and everything that happens to them. They look to themselves as the source of their successes and as the main cause of their problems and difficulties. High achievers say, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” When things aren’t moving along as fast as they want, they ask themselves, “What is it in me that is causing this problem?” They refuse to make excuses or to blame people. Instead, they look for ways to overcome obstacles and to make progress.

Totally self-responsible people look upon themselves as self-employed. They see themselves as the president of their own personal services corporation. They realize that no matter who signs their paycheck, in the final analysis they work for themselves. Because they have this attitude of self-employment, they take a strategic approach to their work.

The essential element in strategic planning for a corporation or a business entity is the concept of “return on equity.” All business planning is aimed at organizing and reorganizing the resources of the business in such a way as to increase the financial returns to the business owners. It is to increase the quantity of output relative to the quantity of input. It is to focus on areas of high profitability and return and, simultaneously, to withdraw resources from areas of low profitability and return. Companies that do this effectively in a rapidly changing environment are the ones that survive and prosper. Companies that fail to do this form of strategic analysis are those that fall behind and often disappear.

To achieve everything you are capable of achieving as a person, you also must become a skilled strategic planner with regard to your life and work. But instead of aiming to increase your return on equity, your goal is to increase your return on energy.

Most people in America start off with little more than their ability to work. More than 80 percent of the millionaires in America started with nothing. Most people have been broke, or nearly broke, several times during their young-adult years. But the ones who eventually get ahead are those who do certain things in certain ways, and those actions set them apart from the masses. Perhaps the most important thing they do, consciously or unconsciously, is to look at themselves strategically, thinking about how they can better use themselves in the marketplace, how they can best capitalize on their strengths and abilities to increase their returns to themselves and their families.

Your most valuable financial asset is your earning ability, your ability to earn money. Properly applied to the marketplace, it’s like a pump. By exploiting your earning ability, you can pump tens of thousands of dollars a year into your pocket. All your knowledge, education, skills and experience contribute toward your earning ability, your ability to get results for which someone will pay good money.

And your earning ability is like farmland. If you don’t take excellent care of it, if you don’t fertilize it and cultivate it and water it on a regular basis, it soon loses its ability to produce the kind of harvest that you desire. Successful men and women are those who are extremely aware of the importance and value of their earning ability, and they work every day to keep it growing and current with the demands of the marketplace.

One of the greatest responsibilities in life is to identify, develop and maintain an important marketable skill. It is to become very good at doing something for which there is a strong market demand.

In corporate strategy, we call this the development of a “competitive advantage.” For a company, a competitive advantage is defined as an area of excellence in producing a product or service that gives the company a distinct edge over its competition.

In capitalizing on your strengths, as the president of your own personal services corporation, you also must have a clear competitive advantage. You also must have an area of excellence. You must do something that makes you different from and better than your competitors. Your ability to identify and develop this competitive advantage is the most important thing you do in the world of work. It’s the key to maintaining your earning ability. It’s the foundation of your financial success. Without it, you’re simply a pawn in a rapidly changing environment. But with a distinct competitive advantage, based on your strengths and abilities, you can write your own ticket. You can take charge of your own life. You can always get a job. And the more distinct your competitive advantage, the more money you can earn and the more places in which you can earn it.

There are four keys to the strategic marketing of yourself and your services. These are applicable to huge companies such as General Motors, to candidates running for election and to individuals who want to accomplish the very most in the very shortest time.

The first of these four keys is specialization. No one can be all things to all people. A “jack-of-all-trades” also is a “master of none.” That career path usually leads to a dead end. Specialization is the key. Men and women who are successful have a series of general skills, but they also have one or two areas where they have developed the ability to perform in an outstanding manner.

Your decision about how, where, when and why you are going to specialize in a particular area of endeavor is perhaps the most important decision you will ever make in your career. It was well said that if you don’t think about the future, you can’t have one. The major reason why so many people are finding their jobs eliminated and finding themselves unemployed for long periods of time is because they didn’t look down the road of life far enough and prepare themselves well enough for the time when their current jobs would expire. They suddenly found themselves out of gas on a lonely road, facing a long walk back to regular and well-paying employment. Don’t let this happen to you.

In determining your area of specialization, put your current job aside for the moment, and take the time to look deeply into yourself. Analyze yourself from every point of view. Rise above yourself, and look at your lifetime of activities and accomplishments in determining what your area of specialization could be or should be.

And by the way, you might be doing exactly the right job for you at this moment. You already might be capitalizing on all your strengths, and your current work might be ideally suited to your likes and dislikes, to your temperament and your personality. Nevertheless, you owe it to yourself to be continually expanding the scope of your vision and looking toward the future to see where you might want to be going in the months and years ahead. Remember, the best way to predict the future is to create it.
You possess special talents and abilities that make you unique, different from anyone else who has ever lived. The odds of there being another person just like you are more than 50 billion to one. Your remarkable and unusual combination of education, experience, knowledge, problems, successes, difficulties and challenges, and your way of looking at and reacting to life, make you extraordinary. You have within you potential competencies and attributes that can enable you to accomplish virtually anything you want in life. Even if you lived for another 100 years, it would not be enough time for you to plumb the depths of your potential. You will never be able to use more than a small part of your inborn abilities. Your main job is to decide which of your talents you’re going to exploit and develop to their highest and best possible use right now.

So, what is your area of excellence? What are you especially good at right now? If things continue as they are, what are you likely to be good at in the future—say one or two or even five years from now? Is this a marketable skill with a growing demand, or is your field changing in such a way that you are going to have to change as well if you want to keep up with it? Looking into the future, what could be your area of excellence if you were to go to work on yourself and your abilities? What should be your area of excellence if you want to rise to the top of your field, make an excellent living and take complete control of your financial future?

When I was 22, I answered an advertisement for a copywriter for an advertising agency. As it happened, I had failed high-school English, and I really had no idea what a copywriter did. I remember the executive who interviewed me and how nice he was at pointing out that I wasn’t at all qualified for the job.

But something happened to me in the course of the interview process. The more I thought about it, the more I thought how much I would like to write advertising. Having been turned down flat during my first interview, I decided to learn more about the field.

I went to the city library and began to check out and read books on advertising and copywriting. Over the next six months, while I worked in a department store, I spent many hours devouring them. At the same time, I applied for copywriting jobs to advertising agencies in the city. I started with the small agencies first. When they turned me down, I asked them why they did so. What was wrong with my application? What did I need to learn more about? What books would they recommend? And to this day, I remember that virtually everyone I spoke with was helpful to me.

By the end of six months, I had read every book on advertising and copywriting in the library and applied to every agency in the city, working up from the smallest agency to the very largest in the country. And by the time I had reached that level, I was ready. I was offered jobs as a junior copywriter by both the number-one and number-two agencies in the country. I took the job with the number-one agency and was very successful in a short period of time.

The point of this story is that you can become almost anything you need to become, in order to accomplish almost anything you want to accomplish, if you simply decide what it is and then learn what you need to learn. This is such an obvious fact that most people miss it completely.

Some years later, I decided that I wanted to get into real-estate development. Again, I went to the library and began checking out and reading all the books on real-estate development. At the time, I had no money, no contacts and no knowledge of the industry. But I knew the great secret: I could learn what I needed to learn so that I could do what I wanted to do.

Within 12 months, I had tied up a piece of property with a $100 deposit and a 30-day option. I put together a proposal for a shopping center, and I tentatively arranged for major anchor tenants and several minor tenants that together took up 85 percent of the square footage I had proposed. Then I sold 75 percent of the entire package to a major development company in exchange for the company’s putting up all the cash and providing me with the resources and people I needed to
manage the construction of the shopping center and the completion of the leasing. Virtually everything that I did I had learned from books written by real-estate experts, books on the shelves of the local library.

As you might have noticed, the fields of advertising and copywriting and real-estate development are very different. But these incidents, and every business situation I have been in over the years, had one element in common. Success in each area was based on the decision, first, to specialize in that area and, second, to be extremely knowledgeable in that area so that I could do a good job.

In looking at your current and past experiences for an area of specialization, one of the most important questions to ask yourself is, “What activities have been most responsible for my success in life to date?” How did you get from where you were to where you are today? What talents and abilities seemed to come easily to you? What things do you do well that seem to be difficult for most other people? What things do you most enjoy doing? What things do you find most intrinsically motivating? What things make you happy when you are doing them?

In capitalizing on your strengths, your level of interest, excitement and enthusiasm about the particular job or activity is a key factor. You’ll always do best and make the most money in a field that you really enjoy. It will be an area that you like to think about and talk about and read about and learn about. Successful people love what they do, and they can hardly wait to get to it each day. Doing their work makes them happy, and the happier they are, the more enthusiastically they do it, and the better they do it as well.

In capitalizing on your strengths, the second key is differentiation. You must decide what you’re going to do to be not only different but also better than your competitors in the field. Remember, you have to be good in only one specific area to move ahead of the pack. And you must decide what that area should be.

The third strategic principle in capitalizing on your strengths is segmentation. You have to look at the marketplace and determine where you can best apply yourself, with your unique talents and abilities, to give yourself the highest possible return on energy expended. What customers, companies, markets, can best utilize your special
talents and offer you the most in terms of financial rewards and future opportunities?

The final key to personal strategic planning is concentration. Once you have decided the area in which you are going to specialize, how you are going to differentiate yourself, and where in the marketplace you can best apply your strengths, your final job is to concentrate all of your energy on becoming excellent there. The marketplace pays extraordinary rewards only for extraordinary performance.

In the final analysis, everything that you have done up to now is simply the groundwork for becoming outstanding in your chosen field. When you become very good at doing what people need, you begin moving rapidly into the top ranks of working people everywhere.

By: Brian Tracy

Beware the Boomerang

2009-12-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

How do you tell a good thinker from a poor thinker? How do you evaluate and separate a good decision from a bad one.

The answer to these questions is often the difference between a good life and poor one.

It’s simple. Consequences! What’s likely to happen down the road if you do something today?

You know that there are two reasons for doing anything. There is the reason that sounds good and then there is the real reason.

The real reason is almost always self-gratification, personal benefit, immediate reward for the person doing it. We call this “motivation.”

The reason that sounds good is almost always noble and aimed at benefiting others in some way.

Virtually every political plan to do something for the “people” is based on these two reasons. The real reason, according to Nobel prize winning economist Dr. James Buchaner, is that the program or spending plan will most help the politician get re-elected.

But beware the boomerang! The secondary consequences of a poor idea or decision can be far worse than if nothing were done at all.

All actions and inactions have consequences, and the superior person thinks about what they might be, carefully in advance of deciding.

Many things with happy short term consequences have very negative long term consequences. Take eating for example. Delicious food in excess can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, strokes and early death.

Lifelong learning is something with very positive long term consequences. Continually upgrading your skills and renewing your mind can lead to a life of material prosperity and personal happiness.

Too much television, newspapers, radio, socializing and unfocused activity may be fun at the moment. But these activities lead to underachievement, frustration and failure.

Beware the boomerang! Make sure that what you’re doing, what you’re spending out, will come back to you with the things you really want in the future.

By: Biran Tracy

Becoming a Person of Integrity

2009-12-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

Integrity is a value, like persistence, courage and industriousness. Even more than that, it is the value that guarantees all the other values. You are a good person to the degree to which you live your life consistent with the highest values that you espouse. Integrity is the quality that locks in your values and causes you to live consistent with them.

Integrity is the foundation of character. And character development is one of the most important activities you can engage in. Working on your character means disciplining yourself to do more and more of those things that a thoroughly honest person would do, under all circumstances.

To be impeccably honest with others, you must first be impeccably honest with yourself. You must be true to yourself. You must be true to the very best that is in you, to the very best that you know. Only a person who is living consistent with his or her highest values and virtues is really living a life of integrity. And when you commit to living this kind of life, you will find yourself continually raising your own standards, continually refining your definition of integrity and honesty.

You can tell how high your level of integrity is by simply looking at the things you do in your day-to-day life. You can look at your reactions and responses to the inevitable ups and downs of life. You can observe the behaviors you typically engage in and you will then know the person you are.

The external manifestation of high integrity is high-quality work. A person who is totally honest with himself or herself will be someone who does, or strives to do, excellent work on every occasion. The totally honest person recognizes, sometimes unconsciously, that everything he or she does is a statement about who he or she really is as a person.

When you start a little earlier, work a little harder, stay a little later and concentrate on every detail, you are practicing integrity in your work. And whether you know it or not, your true level of integrity is apparent and obvious to everyone around you.

Perhaps the most important rule you will ever learn is that your life only becomes better when you become better.

All of life is lived from the inside out. At the very core of your personality lie your values about yourself and life in general. Your values determine the kind of person you really are. What you believe has defined your character and your personality. It is what you stand for, and what you won’t stand for, that tells you and the world the kind of person you have become.

Ask yourself this question: What are your five most important values in life? Your answer will reveal an enormous amount about you. What would you pay for, sacrifice for, suffer for and even die for? What would you stand up for, or refuse to lie down for? What are the values that you hold most dear? Think these questions through carefully and, when you get a chance, write down your answers.

Here’s another way of asking that question. What men and women, living or dead, do you most admire? Once you pick three or four men or women, the next question is: Why do you admire them? What values, qualities, or virtues do they have that you respect and look up to? Can you articulate those qualities? What is a quality possessed by human beings in general that you most respect? This is the starting point for determining your values. The answers to these questions form the foundation of your character and your personality.

Once you have determined your five major values, you should now organize them in order of importance. What is your first, most important value? What is your second value? What is your third value? And so on. Ranking your values is one of the very best and fastest ways to define your character.

Remember, a higher order value will always take precedence over a lower order value. Whenever you are forced to choose between acting on one value or another, you always choose the value that is the highest on your own personal hierarchy.

Who you are, in your heart, is evidenced by what you do on a day-to-day basis, especially when you are pushed into a position where you have to make a choice between two values or alternatives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing.” In study after study, the quality of integrity, or a person’s adherence to values, ranks as the number one quality sought in every field. When it comes to determining whom they will do business with, customers rank the honesty of a salesperson as the most important single quality. Even if a they feel that a salesperson’s product, quality and price is superior, customers will not buy from that salesperson if they feel that he or she is lacking in honesty and character.

Likewise, integrity is the number one quality of leadership. Integrity in leadership is expressed in terms of constancy and consistency. It is manifested in an absolute devotion to keeping one’s word. The glue that holds all relationships together—including the relationship between the leader and the led—is trust, and trust is based on integrity.
Integrity is so important that functioning in our society would be impossible without it. We could not make even a simple purchase without a high level of confidence that the price was honest and that the change was correct. The most successful individuals and companies in America are those with reputations of high integrity among everyone they deal with. This level of integrity builds the confidence that others have in them and enables them to do more business than their competitors whose ethics may be a little shaky.

Earl Nightingale once wrote, “If honesty did not exist, it would have to be invented, as it is the surest way of getting rich.” A study at Harvard University concluded that the most valuable asset that a company has is how it is known to its customers⎯its reputation.

By the same token, your greatest personal asset is the way that you are known to your customers. It is your personal reputation for keeping your word and fulfilling your commitments. Your integrity precedes you and affects all of your interactions with other people.

There are several things you can do to move you more rapidly toward becoming the kind of person that you know you are capable of becoming. The first, as I mentioned, is to decide upon your five most important values in life. Organize them in order of priority. Then write a brief paragraph defining what each of those values means to you. A value combined with a definition becomes an organizing principle⎯a statement that you can use to help you make better decisions. It is a measure and standard which enables you to know how closely you are adhering to your innermost beliefs and convictions.

The second step to developing integrity and character in yourself is to study men and women of great character. Study the lives and stories of people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Thatcher. Study the people whose strength of character enabled them to change their world. As you read, think about how they would behave if they were facing the difficulties that you face.

Napoleon Hill, in his book, The Master Key to Riches, tells about how he created an imaginary board of personal advisers made up of great figures of history. He chose people like Napoleon, Lincoln, Jesus, and Alexander the Great. Whenever he had to make a decision, he would relax deeply and then imagine that the members of his advisory council were sitting at a large table in front of him. He would then ask them what he should do to deal effectively with a particular situation. In time, they would begin to give him answers, observations, and insights that helped him to see more clearly and act more effectively.

You can do the same thing. Select someone that you very much admire for their qualities of courage, tenacity, honesty, or wisdom. Ask yourself, “What would Jesus do in my situation?” or, “What would Lincoln do if he were here at this time?” You will find yourself with guidance that enables you to be the very best person that you can possible be.

The third and most important step in building your integrity has to do with formulating your approach based on the psychology of human behavior. We know that if you feel a particular way, you will act in a manner consistent with that feeling. For example, if you feel happy, you will act happy. If you feel angry, you will act angry. If you feel courageous, you will act courageously.

But we also know that you don’t always start off feeling the way you want to. However, because of the Law of Reversibility, if you act as if you had a particular feeling, the action will generate the feeling consistent with it. You can, in effect, act your way into feeling. You can “fake it until you make it.”

You can become a superior human being by consciously acting exactly as the kind of person that you would most like to become. If you behave like an individual of integrity, courage, resolution, persistence and character, you will soon create within yourself the mental structure and habits of such a person. Your actions will become your reality. You will create a personality that is consistent with your highest aspirations.

The more you walk, talk, and behave consistent with your highest values, the more you will like yourself and the better you will feel about yourself. Your self-image will improve and your level of self-acceptance will go up. You will feel stronger, bolder, and more capable of facing any challenge.

There are three primary areas of your life where acting with integrity is crucial. These are the three areas of greatest temptation for forsaking your integrity, as well as the areas of greatest opportunity for building your integrity. When you listen to your inner voice and do what you know to be the right thing in each of these areas, you will have a sense of peace and satisfaction that will lead you on to success and high achievement.

The first area of integrity has to do with your relationships with your family and your friends, the people close to you. Being true to yourself means living in truth with each person in your life. It means refusing to say or do something that you don’t believe is right. Living in truth with other people means that you refuse to stay in any situation where you are unhappy with the behavior of another person. You refuse to tolerate it. You refuse to compromise.

Psychologists have determined that most stress and negativity comes from attempting to live in a way that is not congruent with your highest values. It is when your life is out of alignment⎯when you are doing and saying one thing on the outside, but really feeling and believing something different on the inside⎯that you feel most unhappy. When you decide to become an individual of character and integrity, your first action will be to neutralize or remove all difficult relationships from your life.

This doesn’t mean that you have to go and hit somebody over the head with a stick. It simply means that you honestly confront another person and tell them that you are not happy. Tell them that you would like to reorganize this relationship so that you feel more content and satisfied. If the other person is not willing to make adjustments so that you can be happy, it should be clear to you that you don’t want to be in this relationship much longer anyway.

The second area of integrity has to do with your attitude and behavior toward money. Casualness toward money brings casualties in your financial life. You must be fastidious about your treatment of money, especially other people’s money. You must guard your credit rating the same way you would guard your honor. You must pay your bills punctually, or even early. You must keep your promises with regard to your financial commitments.

The third area of integrity has to do with your commitments to others, especially in your business, your work and your sales activities. Always keep your word. Be a man or a woman of honor. If you say that you will do something, do it. If you make a promise, keep it. If you make a commitment, fulfill it. Be known as the kind of person that can be trusted absolutely, no matter what the circumstances.

Your integrity is manifested in your willingness to adhere to the values you hold most dear. It’s easy to make promises and hard to keep them, but if you do, every single act of integrity will make your character a little stronger. And as you improve the quality and strength of your character, every other part of your life will improve as well.

By: Brian Tracy

Becoming a Master of Persuasion

2009-12-01T09:49:00.000-08:00

Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the support and respect of your customers, bosses, coworkers, colleagues and friends. The ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most important people in your community.

Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement of your goals and the solving of your problems.

You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the persuading.

The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.

President Eisenhower once said that, “Persuasion is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, and to like it.” You need always to be thinking about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your objectives.

People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses.

Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action. The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a “Robinson Crusoe” of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs. By doing this, you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks to himself or herself completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she will never be rich or successful.

The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage. Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in rather than doing everything yourself.

There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfill your full potential in our society: other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge, and other people’s money.

You leverage yourself through other people’s efforts by getting other people to work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won’t work for very long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby freeing you up to do higher-value work.

One of the most important laws of economics is called “Ricardo’s Law.” It is also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn for accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or outsource that part of the task.

For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250 day year, you need to make $50.00 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50.00 per hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of your work⎯like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters, or filling out expense forms⎯that is not valued at $50.00 per hour, you should stop doing it. You should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to do it for you. The more lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the more time you will have to do tasks that pay you higher amounts of money. This is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you need to become one of the higher paid people in your profession.

Management can be defined as “getting things done through others.” To be a manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

The second form of leverage that you must develop for success in America is other people’s knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?
It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country. With on-line computer services that access huge data bases all over the country, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don’t be afraid to ask, even if you don’t know the individual personally.

The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive abilities, is other people’s money. Your ability to use other people’s money and resources to leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability to buy and defer payment, to sell and collect payment in advance, to borrow, rent or lease furniture, fixtures and machinery, and to borrow money from people to help you multiply your opportunities is one of the most important of all skills that you can develop. And these all depend on your ability to persuade others to cooperate with you financially so that you can develop the leverage you need to move onward and upward in your field.

There are four “Ps” that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception.

The first “P” is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

The second “P” is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

The third “P” is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job.
The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

The fourth “P” of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge and other people’s money. The development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the most powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors for you in every area of your life.

By: Brian Tracy

Accessing Your Intuition.

2009-11-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

It has been said that men and women start to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices. Your intuition is your direct connection with infinite intelligence. Intuition is so powerful that it has been studies and written about by the greatest men and women of history for thousands of years. When you begin to use it regularly and systematically, there is virtually nothing that you cannot accomplish.

Your intuition has often been called the “still small voice” within. You may experience your intuition as a gut-feeling, as an inner sense of what is right or wrong for you. Sometimes your intuition manifests itself as a hunch or an inspiration. Often it comes as a flash of insight. Your intuition leads you to new ideas, concepts and breakthroughs. Sometimes, an intuitive flash will enable you to see a situation completely differently and solve it on a completely different level. Einstein was referring to intuition when he said, “No problem can be solved on the same level at which you meet it.”

In breakthrough thinking, we are taught to redefine a problem and take it to a higher level in order to find a solution for it. Since the more you do of what you’re doing, the more you’ll get of what you’ve got, trying to solve your current problem at your current level is often an exercise in frustration. You can unlock your intuition by using your imagination to think about your problem in a completely different way.

There are two major types of imagination that you use continually, both of which require the highest use of your intuitive powers. They are first, synthetic imagination and, second, creative imagination.
Synthetic imagination is your ability to assemble existing pieces of knowledge and information into new forms. It is very much like taking all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, having a clear idea of the picture or goal that you want to accomplish and assembling them into a single piece.

This form of imagination is often called, “integrative intelligence.” It is one of the highest forms of intelligence for success and achievement anywhere. Integrative intelligence is defined as your ability to integrate a large number of different pieces of information into a single precept for decision and action. It is your ability to recognize and sort many different facts and insights together, emphasizing some and discarding others, in the process of making the correct decision. This form of intelligence is extremely valuable in fast-moving, fluid situations that require your considering a large number of different pieces of information in making a decision.

It has been estimated that you need between 20,000 and 50,000 bits of information at your disposal to be really successful in any field of endeavor. We live in the information age, and knowledge is the raw material of production and value in this age. So the more different bits or “bytes” of information that you have, the more effective your integrative intelligence, or synthetic imagination, will be.

The people who rise to the top of any field of endeavor are invariably those who know more than others. In fact, the division in our society today is not between those who “have more” and “have less” but between those who “know more” and those who “know less.” One of your jobs is to be continually gathering additional bits of practical and useful information so that you have plenty of different ideas and concepts to draw upon when you are wrestling with any problem or striving toward any goal. Your intuition then goes to work for you by helping you quickly sort out the relevant facts and giving you the answers you need when you need them.

The more ideas you expose yourself to, the greater the probability that the right idea will appear at the right time. When it does, your intuition will help you to recognize the idea and integrate it into everything else you are doing.

The second form of imagination is creative imagination. This is a higher form of imagination where intuition plays an even more important part. Creative imagination refers to your ability to come up with completely new and different ideas and concepts to solve your problems and achieve your goals. It is the highest form of imagination and is responsible for all the great breakthroughs in science, technology, art, music, literature, and medicine. The most successful men and women of all time have been those who have deliberately trained themselves to tap into their creative imagination on a regular basis. And so can you, if you learn how.

Your creative imagination is the source of all hunches, inspirations, imagination, flashes of insight and new understandings of complex concepts. The cultivation and development of your creative imagination can enable you to make more progress in one or two years than the average person might make in ten or twenty. And your creativity, your intuitive sense is like a muscle. It grows with use. The more you practice with it and rely on it, the stronger it becomes and the faster it acts for you.
Men and women who have highly developed imaginations have often reached the point where they completely trust their intuition, their inner voices, to guide them in every situation. They never speak or act until they feel an inner urging to do so. They know that their intuition will always bring them exactly the right answer, at exactly the right time.

Your intuition is your direct pipeline to a form of intelligence that is completely beyond your conscious brain. It is accessed by your subconscious mind, which his controlled by the thoughts you think and the beliefs you hold in your conscious mind. The more you affirm and visualize your desired goals in your conscious mind, the more readily they are picked up by your subconscious mind and the more rapidly your intuition or creative imagination is triggered. Successful, effective, happy people are those who have gotten onto the beam of their own intuitive senses and who rely continuously on their inner guidance. And they seldom make mistakes.

In your lifetime, you have made a lot of decisions, some of them right and some of them wrong. But when your intuition tells you to do or to not do something, it is always correct. If you have ever gone against your intuition, your inner voice, haven’t you regretted it? Wherever you have pushed aside that nagging inner feeling, hasn’t it come back to haunt you? This is because your intuition is always correct. It always gives you exactly the right answer for you at any given time, and in any given situation. One of the smartest things that you can ever do is to listen carefully to your intuition and to postpone making a decision until you have an inner sense of what choices are correct.

You will often find that your intuition will urge you to either speak up or to remain silent in a social or business situation. Later, it will turn out that that was exactly the right thing to do. In retrospect, you will find that your intuitive learning has always been more accurate than anything that you could think of with your conscious mind.
All the great writers, composers, artists, and scientists have developed the habit of listening to their intuition. You have access to the same intuitive powers as the smartest men and women who ever lived.

By the way, research shows that men and women, tested separately, have intuitions that are equally accurate. They seem to come up with the same intuitive answers for complex problems and questions. Why is it, then, that women’s intuition is more respected than men’s? The answer is simple. Women listen to their intuition more, while men have a tendency to brush it aside.

When a woman says, “This situation doesn’t feel right,” she views this feeling as a valid and important assessment of whether the situation is right or wrong. Women are very respectful of their intuitive feelings and they generally refuse to go against them. Men will often put aside their intuitive leanings in favor of short-term advantage, only to pay the price later.
Perhaps the best method for stimulating your intuition is by learning to practice solitude on a regular basis. Throughout the ages, the greatest thinkers of all time have practiced solitude as a regular part of their work and life. They have taken time to be alone with themselves. They have gone off and sat quietly prior to any situation of importance. Most of the great thinkers of today use solitude as an essential tool in developing the creative insights and intuitions that often have the power to change our lives.

Most people have never practiced solitude because they wrongly believe that they have no time for it. However, one good idea that comes to you in the silence of solitude can save you a year of hard work. You cannot afford not to practice solitude on a regular basis. Here’s how you do it.

First, find a place to sit where you can be completely alone, in silence, without interruptions. You want to avoid any activities that will disturb your reverie, such as eating, drinking, listening to music, and getting telephone calls. You can sit in your basement, your backyard, or on a park bench. The main objective is to be completely alone with yourself.

And second, force yourself to sit without moving for 60 minutes. The first 25 or 30 minutes will be excruciatingly difficult. You will have an irresistible urge to get up and walk around. But you must persist. You must force yourself to stay still.

After 25 or 30 minutes, a wonderful thing will happen. You will start to feel very good about yourself and your life. You will relax completely. Your mind will become calm and clear. You will feel energy flowing through your body. The situations and difficulties of your life will seem to fade away, and you will begin to get tremendous clarity on how to reach your goals.
At the end of your 60 minutes, get up and do exactly what your intuition told you to do. Don’t worry about whether or not people will like it or approve of it. Just take the action, make the commitment, do the deed. You will find later that this was exactly the right thing to do.

Solitude requires no energy, no effort, no trying at all. It simply requires a state of relaxed awareness where you open your mind to infinite intelligence. And at the right moment, exactly the right answer you need will come to you, in exactly the right form.

You can overcome any obstacle, solve any problem or achieve any goal by tapping into the incredible powers of your mind and by trusting your intuition in everything you do. Once you begin to develop and use your intuition, you will become more alert, more aware, smarter and more effective in everything that you do. And your potential will begin to unfold at a speed that you cannot now imagine.

By: Brian Tracy

Accessing Your Inner Guidance

2009-11-16T15:41:00.000-08:00

We know that the body has a natural bias toward health and energy. It’s designed to last for 100 years with proper care and maintenance. When something goes wrong with any part of our body, we experience it in the form of pain or discomfort of some kind.

We know that when our body is not functioning smoothly and painlessly, something is wrong, and we take action to correct it. We go to a doctor; we take pills; we undergo physical therapy, massage or chiropractic. We know that if we ignore pain or discomfort for any period of time, it could lead to something more serious.

Every disease or ailment, whether it be cancer, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure or something else, has a series of warning signs. In every case, when we experience an abnormality, we tend to move quickly to do something to get back to normal. Our physical feelings tell us when we’re well, and they also tell us when we’re unwell, and we tend to obey them if we want to live a long, healthy life.

In the same sense, nature also gives us a way to tell what’s right for us and what’s wrong for us in life. Just as nature gives us physical pain to guide us to doing or not doing things in the physical realm, nature gives us emotional pain to guide us toward doing or not doing things in the emotional or mental realm. The wonderful thing is that you’re constructed so that if you simply listen carefully to yourself—to your mind, your body and your emotions—and follow the guidance you’re given, you can dramatically enhance the quality of your life.

Just as the natural physical state is health and vitality, the natural emotional state is peace and happiness. Whenever you experience a deviation from peace and happiness, it’s an indication that something is amiss. Something is wrong with what you’re thinking, doing or saying. You’re an incredibly complex organism, and your feelings of ease and unease, happiness and unhappiness, can be triggered by a myriad of factors. But the bottom line is that your feeling of inner happiness is the best indicator you could ever have to tell you what you should be doing more of and what you should be doing less of.

Unhappiness is to your life as pain is to your body. It’s sent as a messenger to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong for you.
There are many reasons why people don’t listen more closely to their feelings and, especially, why many people are reluctant to use their own happiness as the standard by which to judge the events in their lives. I’ve studied this subject for many years, and I think that there are three major myths about happiness that each of us believes to some degree.

The first myth about happiness is that it is not legitimate or correct for you to put your happiness ahead of everyone else’s. Throughout my life, I’ve met people who have said that it is more important to make other people happy than it is to make yourself happy. Of course, that is nonsense.

Human beings are happiness-driven organisms. Everything we do in life is oriented toward maintaining and increasing our level of happiness. We are psychologically constructed so that it’s impossible for us to be any other way without making ourselves mentally and emotionally ill. The fact is that you can’t give away to anyone else what you don’t have for yourself. Just as you can’t give money to the poor if you don’t have any, you can’t make someone else happy if you yourself are miserable.
The very best way to assure the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to share your happiness with them. Suffering and self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people. If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind of life and doing the kind of things that make you happy.

The second myth, which is closely tied to the first myth, is the admonition that we’re here to serve others rather than ourselves. Many poems and essays repeat that theme. They say that we’ve justified our life on this earth if we’ve made some other person happy on the way through. But as I’ve said before, making others happy goes hand in hand with making ourselves happy. It’s through service to others that we achieve a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Only when we lose ourselves in doing something that we feel benefits someone other than ourselves do we experience transcendence, do we feel ourselves rising above the tedium of day-to-day activity. To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson, everybody makes his living by serving someone. And the key is to serve with joy and happiness.

The third myth about happiness is that someone else’s definition of happiness is valid for you. Often, we feel a little uneasy if we’re not happy doing something that someone else thinks should make us happy. Many people allow their parents to influence their choices of career and find themselves miserable as a result. They want to please their parents, they want to make them happy, but they’re unable to experience any joy doing what they’re doing.

Happiness in life is like a smorgasbord. If 100 people went to a smorgasbord and each put food on his plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife would go up to the smorgasbord and come back with plates that looked completely different. Happiness is the same way. It’s composed of a great variety of ingredients, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about himself or herself.

And your mix is changing continually. If you went to the same smorgasbord every day for a year, you probably would come back with a different plateful of food each time. Each day—sometimes each hour—only you can tell what it takes to make you happy. Therefore, the only way to judge whether a job, a relationship, an investment, or any decision, is right for you is to get in touch with your feelings and listen to your heart.

In the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, there’s a scene where someone asks Cyrano why he, as an incredible individualist, should refuse to compromise his ideals or principles for anyone. He replies with these classic words: “I long ago made the decision that in every area of life, I will choose the path of least resistance in this, that I will please at least myself in all things.” That is one of the great lines in literature. To have the courage to please at least yourself in all things. Do what feels right for you, at the very minimum, and if it makes others happy as well, that’s terrific. If it doesn’t, you’ll know that you have done the very best you could under the circumstances.

You’re true to yourself only when you follow your inner light, when you listen to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “still, small voice within.” You’re being the very best person you can be only when you have the courage and the fortitude to allow your definition of happiness, whatever it may be, to be the guiding light of every part of your life. Whenever you feel stressed, anxious, worried or uneasy about any part of your life, it’s nature’s way of telling you that something is wrong. It’s a message that there’s something that you need to address or deal with. There’s something that you need to do more or less of. There’s something that you need to get into or out of. Very often, you’ll suffer from what has been called “divine discontent.” You’ll feel fidgety and uneasy for a reason or reasons that are unclear to you. You’ll be dissatisfied with the status quo. Sometimes, you’ll be unable to sleep. Sometimes, you’ll be angry or irritable. Very often, you’ll get upset with things that have nothing to do with the real issue. You’ll have a deep inner sense that something isn’t as it should be, and you’ll often feel like a fish on a hook, wriggling and squirming emotionally to get free.

And that is a good thing. Divine discontent always comes before a positive life change. If you were perfectly satisfied, you would never take any action to improve or change your circumstances. Only when you’re dissatisfied for some reason do you have the inner motivation to engage in the outer behaviors that lead you onward and upward.

You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, which says that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Well, there’s another law, which says that left to themselves, things have a tendency to go from bad to worse. When something is making you unhappy, for any reason, the situation will tend to get worse rather than better. So avoid the temptation to engage in denial, to pretend that nothing is wrong, to wish and hope and pray that, whatever it is, it will go away and you won’t have to do anything. The fact is that it probably will get worse before it gets better and that ultimately you will need to face the situation and do something about it.
There’s an old saying that you can’t solve a problem on the level that you meet it. This means that wrestling with a challenge is usually fruitless and frustrating. For example, if two people who are in a relationship together are constantly fighting and negotiating and looking for some way to resolve their difficulties, they’re attempting to solve the problem on the wrong level. Dealing with the problem on a higher level, those people would ask the question, “In terms of being happy, is this the right relationship for us in the first place?” As soon as you begin to use happiness as your measure of rightness, you begin to see a situation entirely differently.

Many people work very hard and experience considerable frustration trying to do a particular job. However, in terms of their own happiness, the right answer might be to do something else, or to do what they’re doing in a different place, or to do it with different people—or all three.

Following are a few questions for you to answer in this arena of happiness. Many people refuse to even consider these questions because they’re afraid that if they do, they won’t like the answers. But nevertheless, have the courage to clearly define your life in your own terms. Here are the questions; write them down at the top of a sheet of paper, and then write as many answers to each one as you possibly can.

The first question is: “What would it take for me to be perfectly happy?” Write down every single thing that you can imagine would be in your life if you were perfectly happy at this very moment. Write down things such as health, happiness, prosperity, loving relationships, inner peace, travel, car, clothes, homes, money, and so on. Let your mind run freely. Imagine that you have no limitations at all. Write everything down whether or not you think you have the capacity to acquire it or achieve it in the short term. Your first job is always to be clear about what it would take for you to have your ideal life.
The second question is a little tougher. Write down at the top of a page this question: “In what situations in my life, and with whom, am I not perfectly happy?” Force yourself to think about every part of your day, from morning to night, and write down every element that makes you unhappy or dissatisfied in any way. Remember, proper diagnosis is half the cure. Identifying the problematic situations is the first step to resolving them.

The third question will give you some important guidelines. Write down at the top of a sheet of paper these words: “In looking over my life, where and when have I been the happiest? Where was I, with whom was I, and what was I doing?”
By asking and answering those three questions, you begin to delve deeper and deeper into yourself and your feelings. You begin to accept your own happiness as a legitimate standard by which to evaluate everyone and everything in your life. You begin to develop the wisdom, the courage, and the foresight to organize your life in such a way that you become a much happier person.

Once you have the answers to those questions, think about what you can do, starting immediately, to begin creating the kind of life that you dream of. It may take you a week, a month or a year, but that doesn’t matter. Every single thing you do that moves you closer to your vision of happiness will be rewarding in itself. You’ll become a more positive and optimistic person. You’ll feel more confident and more in charge of your life.

And now here’s the most important exercise of all. It is from the advice of Dr. Gerald Jampolsky, who asks, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” He recommends that you set peace of mind as your highest goal and that you select and organize around it all your other goals in life. You hold up each part of your life to this standard of peace of mind, and you either get into or get out of anything that adds to it or detracts from it.

The most important part in this process of getting in touch with your feelings is to begin to practice solitude on a regular basis. Solitude is the most powerful activity in which you can engage. Men and women who practice it correctly and on a regular basis never fail to be amazed at the difference it makes in their lives.

Most people have never practiced solitude. Most people have never sat down quietly by themselves for any period of time in their entire lives. Most people are so busy being busy, doing something—even watching television—that it’s highly unusual for them to simply sit, deliberately, and do nothing. But as Catherine Ponder points out, “Men and women begin to become great when they begin to take time quietly by themselves, when they begin to practice solitude.” And here’s the method you can use.
To get the full benefit of your periods of solitude, you must sit quietly for at least 30 to 60 minutes at a time. If you haven’t done it before, it will take the first 25 minutes or so for you to stop fidgeting and moving around. You’ll almost have to hold yourself physically in your seat. You’ll have an almost irresistible desire to get up and do something. But you must persist.
Solitude requires that you sit quietly, perfectly still, back and head erect, eyes open, without cigarettes, candy, writing materials, music or any interruptions whatsoever for at least 30 minutes. An hour is better.

Become completely relaxed, and breathe deeply. Just let your mind flow. Don’t deliberately try to think about anything. The harder you “don’t try,” the more powerfully it works. After 20 or 25 minutes, you’ll begin to feel deeply relaxed. You’ll begin to experience a flow of energy coming into your mind and body. You’ll have a tremendous sense of well-being. At this point, you’ll be ready to get the full benefit of these moments of contemplation.

The incredible thing about solitude is that if it is done correctly, it works just about 100 percent of the time. While you’re sitting there, a stream, a river, of ideas will flow through your mind. You’ll think about countless subjects in an uncontrolled stream of consciousness. Your job is just to relax and listen to your inner voice. At a certain stage during your period of solitude, the answers to the most pressing difficulties facing you will emerge quietly and clearly, like a boat putting in gently to the side of a lake. The answer that you seek will come to you so clearly and it will feel so perfect that you’ll experience a deep sense of gratitude and contentment. You may get several answers in one period of quiet sitting. But in any case, you’ll get the answer to the most important situation facing you every single time.

When you arise from this period of quiet, you must do exactly what has come to you. It may involve dealing with a human situation. It may involve starting something or quitting something. Whatever it is, when you follow the guidance that you received in solitude, it will turn out to be exactly the right thing to do. Everything will be OK. And it will usually work out far better than you could have imagined. Just try it and see.

That brings us to the final point on getting in touch with your feelings: You must learn to trust yourself. You must learn to take time to listen to your emotions and your feelings as to what makes you happy or unhappy, as to what feels right or wrong. You must absolutely trust that what is right for you is the right thing to do. You must never compromise on what your inner voice tells you to do. You must never go against what you feel to be correct. You must develop the habit of listening to yourself and then acting on the guidance you receive.

When you listen to yourself and act on what you hear inside, you are setting out on the road to personal greatness.

By: Brian Tracy

Empowering Others

2009-11-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Once you know how to empower people, how to motivate and inspire them, they will want to work with you to help you achieve your goals in everything you do. Your ability to enlist the knowledge, energy and resources of others enables you to become a multiplication sign, to leverage yourself so that you accomplish far more than the average person and in a far shorter period of time.

There are three types of people that you want to and need to empower on a regular basis. They are, first of all, the people closest to you: your family, your friends, your spouse and your children. Second are your work relationships: your staff, your coworkers, your peers, your colleagues and even your boss. Third are all the other people that you interact with in your day-to-day life: your customers, your suppliers, your banker, the people with whom you deal in stores, restaurants, airplanes, hotels and everywhere else. In each case, your ability to get people to help you is what will make you a more powerful and effective person.

Empower means “putting power into,” and it can also mean “bringing energy and enthusiasm out of.” So the first step in empowering people is to refrain from doing anything that disempowers them or reduces their energy and enthusiasm for what they are doing.

With regard to the first group, those people closest to you, there are several simple things that you can do every single day to empower them and make them feel good about themselves.

The deepest need that each person has is for self-esteem, a sense of being important, valuable, and worthwhile. Everything that you do in your interactions with others affects their self-esteem in some way. You already have an excellent frame of reference to determine the things that you can do to boost the self-esteem and therefore the sense of personal power of those around you. Give them what you’d like for yourself.

Perhaps the simplest way to make another person feel good about himself or herself is your continuous expressions of appreciation for everything that person does for you, large or small. Say “thank you” on every occasion. Thank your spouse for everything that he or she does for you. Thank your children for their cooperation and support in everything that they do around the house. Thank your friends for the smallest of kindnesses. The more you thank other people for doing things for you, the more things those other people will want to do.

Every time you thank another person, you cause that person to like themselves better. You raise their self-esteem and improve their self-image. You cause them to feel more important. You make them feel that what they did was valuable and worthwhile. You empower them.

And the wonderful thing about thanking other people is that, every time you say the words “thank you,” you like yourself better as well. You feel better inside. You feel happier and more content with yourself and life. You feel more fully integrated and positive about what you are doing. When you develop an attitude of gratitude that flows forth from you in all of your interactions with others, you will be amazed at how popular you will become and how eager others will be to help you in whatever you are doing.

The second way to make people feel important, to raise their self-esteem and give them a sense of power and energy, is by the generous use of praise and approval. Psychological tests show that, when children are praised by the people that they look up to, their energy levels rise, their heart rates and respiratory rates increase and they feel happier about themselves overall.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson in Ken Blanchard’s book The One Minute Manager is his recommendation to be giving “one-minute praisings” at every opportunity. If you go around your home and through your social relationships praising and giving genuine and honest approval to people for their accomplishments, large and small, you will be amazed at how much more people like you and how much more willing they are to help you achieve your goals.

There is a psychological law of reciprocity that says, “If you make me feel good about myself, I will find a way to make you feel good about yourself.” In other words, people will always look for ways to reciprocate your kindnesses toward them. When you look for every opportunity to do and say things that make other people feel good about themselves, you will be astonished at not only how good you feel, but at the wonderful things that begin to happen all around you.

The third way to empower others, to build their self-esteem and make them feel important is simply to pay close attention to them when they talk. The great majority of people are so busy trying to be heard that they become impatient when others are talking. But this is not for you. Remember, the most important single activity that takes place over time is listening intently to the other person when he or she is talking and expressing himself or herself.

Again, the three general rules for empowering the people around you, which apply to everyone you meet, are appreciation, approval, and attention. Voice your thanks and gratitude to others on every occasion. Praise them for every accomplishment. And pay close attention to them when they talk and want to interact with you. These three behaviors alone will make you a master of human interaction and will greatly empower the people around you.

It’s certainly possible for you to get the cooperation of others by threatening or brow-beating them, but you will only get minimal cooperation, minimal output, and minimal assistance. To move to the top of your field, you must appeal to people’s inner motivations and drives, their deepest emotions.

What motivates people in the world of work? The biggest motivator is clarity. People need to know exactly what it is that they are supposed to do. They need to know why they are supposed to do it and how it fits into the big picture. They need to know how it will be measured, and when it is due. They need to know what standard of quality is expected and how their efforts affect the work of others. The greater the clarity that a person has about his or her assignment and the order of priority in which it is to be done, the happier and more empowered he or she feels right from the start.

On the other hand, the biggest demotivator in the world of work is not knowing what is expected. It is being in the dark about what is supposed to be done and in what order of priority. People are especially demotivated when they don’t know why they are doing a task or how it fits into the overall goals of the company or department.

The more time you spend talking to your people and inviting their feedback and comments on the work, the more empowered they will be to do the work well. The word we are talking about in empowerment in work is the word “ownership.” Your job is to transfer the ownership into the heart and mind of the employee. When he or she feels personal ownership for a job and the responsibility for doing it well, he or she will be completely empowered. This is one of the most important aspects of the art of management.

Another major motivator at work is consideration. Employees report that the best managers they ever had were people who cared about them as people and as friends. These managers took the time to ask them questions about their lives, and to listen patiently while they talked about the dilemmas and problems and situations in their families. The more that the employees felt that the boss liked them and respected them, the more empowered and motivated they felt.

The flip side of this motivator is the demotivating feeling that the boss doesn’t care. This is almost invariably expressed in a lack of recognition, a lack of approval, a lack of appreciation and a general failure to pay attention to the employee over time.

Remember, the amount of time that you spend talking to and listening to an employee is a signal to that employee that he or she is important to you and to the company. This is why the very best bosses spend a lot of time walking around and chatting with their employees. They sit with them for lunch and coffee. They invite their comments and encourage open discussion and disagreements about work. They create an environment where people feel that the work belongs to them as well as to the company. In that environment, employees feel good about themselves and more fully committed to doing the job and doing it well.

To empower and motivate the third group of people, the people around you, your customers, your suppliers, your bankers and so on, you simply need to practice what we’ve already talked about. The most important of all is that you be a genuine, positive and cheerful person. You develop a positive mental attitude. You be the kind of person from whom, “never is heard a discouraging word.” You are easygoing, genial, friendly, patient, tolerant and open minded. You make people feel comfortable being around you.

Remember, everyone is primarily emotional. Everything that people do, or refrain from doing, is triggered by their deeper emotions. Your job is to connect with their higher and more positive emotions so they feel so good about you they want to help you and please you in some way.

For example, whenever you go into a crowded restaurant, or get on a busy plane, or go up to a busy hotel desk, instead of becoming impatient with the slow rate of service, you should put yourself in the other person’s place, practice the Golden Rule, and ask them how they are doing.

Whenever I go into a busy restaurant, I always ask the waiter for his or her name. Then I address them by name while observing sympathetically, “You seem to be working hard today.”

From that moment on, the waiter always gives me special attention. Why? Because I took the time to empathize with his or situation rather than looking for sympathy for mine.

Try this approach with all the people at your workplace. Observe their situation and empathize with how hard they are working, how many difficulties they have, how overloaded they are, and so on. It is absolutely amazing how much better people feel about you when you take a special interest in them, rather than just thinking about yourself.

In life, you always have a choice. You can either do everything yourself or you can get others to help you do some of the work. Our entire economic structure is built on the principle of specialization. Specialization means that some people become very good at doing certain tasks while other people become very good at doing other tasks.

For you to achieve your full potential, you must contribute the greatest amount of value possible. You must concentrate all your energies on doing certain specialized tasks in an excellent fashion so that you can be paid the amount you want to earn and you can move ahead at the rate you want to move ahead. But in order for you to specialize and do what you are best at, and more of it, you must delegate, relegate and outsource virtually everything else.

Some non-managers feel that the subject of delegation does not apply to them. But even when you ask your child to bring you the newspaper, you are delegating a task. When you go out to lunch rather than making it yourself, you are delegating. When you go into a full service gas station rather than filling your own tank, again, you are delegating. You are in a process of continuous delegation from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to sleep at night. The only question is how you are at it.

Your ability to delegate effectively, which requires that you inspire and empower others to help you willingly, will determine how fast you move ahead. It will determine how much you earn in your job. It will determine the quality and quantity of your productivity. It will determine your ultimate financial success in life. And the key to all of this is your ability to empower others.

By: Brian Tracy

A Single Step.

2009-11-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

The hardest part of achieving any goal is usually starting in the first place.

You have amazing possibilities and potentials just waiting inside you, but most of them can die stillborn waiting for you to take action. The Nike commercial contains one of the best pieces of advice in the world: “Just Do It!”

“A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step,” wrote Confucius.

Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be thin? Do you want to work at something you really enjoy? Do you want to make money?

Whatever it is, write it down. Take a few minutes for “Gap Analysis.” Look at where you want to be and then look at where you are.

Examine the gap that exists between the two and think about how you could close, it like building a bridge or staircase across an open space.

What would be your first step? What would be your second step, and so on? Most of all, what action would you take right now if you were guaranteed of success?

What would you do if you had no fear of failure? What would be your first step on the staircase toward your goal?

All great accomplishments begin with a leap of faith into the unknown. They begin when you take action toward your hopes and dreams before you have any assurance of success.

Most people are paralyzed by the uncertainty that surrounds any new venture. They hesitate. They stop. They turn back.
But not you. You know that “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” You know that you have to stick your head up if you want to get above the crowd. You know you have to go out on a limb if you want to get the fruit, because that’s where it is.

Go for it! Take that first step and everything else will follow.

By: Brian Tracy

A Sense of Alignment.

2009-10-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Your most important aim in life is to be happy, to be calm, confident and relaxed and to feel in complete control of every aspect of your life. Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals and values are in alignment.

Nature demands balance in all things. You see balance all around you, from the most distant stars in the universe down to the individual cells of your body. Each of your billions of cells contains hundreds of chemicals, each of which is carefully regulated and kept in balance by your autonomic nervous system to ensure your health and longevity.

The wonderful thing is that balance is the norm in your life. Your body has a natural bias toward health and energy. It’s built to last for a hundred years and to perform smoothly and efficiently for most of that time. It’s only improper maintenance and incorrect operation that, in most cases, cause your body to get out of balance and lead to disease and pain, rather than ease and pleasure.
Emotionally, you also have a natural bias toward happiness and enjoyment. In fact, you have a natural barometer inside of you that tells you when you’re doing the things that are just right for your unique personality and temperament. This is your inner voice, your intuition, and it’s manifested in your level of peace of mind. Whenever you feel at peace with yourself and the world around you, you know that you’re doing the very things that you’re meant to do and that your inner and outer worlds are properly balanced and in alignment with each other.

There are two major areas of balance that you need to be concerned with on a daily basis. They are the physical and the emotional.

You need to adjust your behaviors in such a way that you enjoy high levels of physical health and energy most of the time. Even the richest person in the world is at a tremendous disadvantage if he loses his health. You need to guard your health like a sacred object. From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, you need to think about the things you can do to assure that you live a long, healthy life, free from the diseases and the debilitating illnesses that are causing our health-care outlays to be the highest in the world.

A study was conducted over a period of 20 years on 8,000 men to determine what physical habits they had that caused them to live longer lives or caused them to die earlier than their peers. This study, The Alameda County Study, discovered that there were seven common habits practiced regularly by the people who seemed to be the healthiest, live the longest and have the fewest sick days per year.

The first of these seven habits is eating regularly. Researchers found that people who ate irregularly, at different times and in different amounts throughout the day, were far more likely to be fatigued and have physical ailments than were those who ate on a regular basis.

The second habit is eating lightly. We know today that foods high in fat, sugar and salt are very bad for us. The more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean sources of protein you incorporate into your diet, the better you will feel, the deeper you will sleep, the fresher you will be and the better your whole life will be.

The third habit, which also involves diet, is not snacking between meals. The researchers found that when a person eats snacks between meals, the introduction of new food interrupts the ongoing digestive process and leads to drowsiness and improper digestion.

The fourth habit for longevity is not smoking. Smoking is so detrimental to the entire human system that it alone causes more illnesses than all the other environmental or hereditary factors put together. Researchers have identified at least 32 forms of illness, including a variety of cancers, that are caused by or aggravated in some way by smoking. The very act of quitting smoking can do more to improve a person’s overall health than a change in any other single health habit.

The fifth habit identified in the Alameda study is consuming alcohol moderately. This is a fairly narrow range that suggests not more than one or two drinks per day, and fewer is desirable. Since the number one cause of premature death up to the age of 40 is automobile accidents, and as many as 50 percent of automobile accidents are alcohol-related, this is a good piece of advice.
The sixth habit for longevity is sleeping seven to eight hours every night. Keeping yourself properly rested is one of the most important things you can do. If you allow yourself to become overtired for any period at all, your immune system begins to break down, and you become susceptible to a variety of illnesses, including colds, flu and even pneumonia. Getting regular rest is one of the most important things you can do to keep your physical life balanced.

The seventh habit identified in the Alameda study is exercising regularly. The rule with regard to your body is “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Regular exercise, even moderate exercise, can have a tremendous impact in helping you to feel better, digest better, sleep better and be a happier and more positive person.

Since the Alameda study was completed, insurance companies have identified two additional habits: first, wearing automobile seat belts, to reduce the possibility of harm in an automobile accident; and, second, deep breathing each day, to improve your digestion, increase the amount of oxygen going through your brain, and enable you to relax into a “state of alpha” on a regular basis.
One of the very best ways to engage in the process of “centering” is to take a few moments prior to any event of importance to breathe deeply six or seven times. Deep breathing causes you to relax and makes you feel more confident and more in control of yourself and the situation. It brings your inner world into better alignment with what is going on around you.

In fact, whenever you face a stressful situation, you can better prepare yourself to deal with it by taking a few moments to breathe deeply before you say or do anything. When you prepare yourself in this way, your words and actions will be far more effective than they would if you had just reacted when the situation came up. You will feel more in balance. And the more you act as though you are in balance, the more it becomes a habit for you to behave in a balanced way.

Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue does make cowards of us all.” When you are physically out of balance for any reason, when you are tired or you have eaten too much, or too much of the wrong foods, your emotions, your level of energy and your reactions to the various situations around you are adversely affected. When you are in excellent health, well rested, properly exercised and properly fed, you tend to perform at your best.

The second area of balance that is important to you is your emotional life. We know that how you feel emotionally has a dramatic impact on your physical body. The field of psychosomatic medicine deals with the impact of psycho-, the mind, on soma, the body; according to studies in this area, 80 to 90 percent of all your physical illnesses are mentally and emotionally caused.

How can you tell if you are out of balance emotionally? it’s easy. Just listen to your body and your emotions. Like a doctor, take a stethoscope to your life and listen intently to how you feel about how things are going on around you. When you are in balance, you feel calm, confident, relaxed, poised and at peace with yourself and life. When you are out of balance, you feel unhappy, stressed, anxious, angry, resentful, negative, pessimistic and depressed.

In each area of your life, you will have a different set of feelings. In some parts of your life, you will be perfectly happy. In other parts of your life, you will feel uneasy, tense and sometimes frustrated. Your job is to go through your life, like going through your closet to weed through old clothes, and take the time to develop a strategy to deal with each part of your life that is detracting from your happiness.

The most important breakthrough in psychology in the 20th century may have been the discovery of the self-concept. You have a self-concept, as does everyone else. This self-concept is the master program of your personal computer. it’s made up of all the ideas, experiences, decisions, emotions, knowledge and beliefs that you’ve developed from infancy, and possibly from even before that. This self-concept forms the operating instructions for your computer, and you always behave on the outside in a manner consistent with your self-concept on the inside.

You cannot change anything in your outer world permanently unless you first change your self-concept. You have a self-concept for the kind of person you are, for your personality and your attitude and your values. You have a self-concept for the kind of life you lead, for your income, your home, your car and the type of work that you do. You have a self-concept for your health and your weight and your level of fitness, for how well you perform in any athletic endeavor. You have a self-concept that governs your level of creativity, intelligence, sense of humor, memory, ability to speak to a public audience and level of competence in everything else that you do. And you always act on the outside consistent with this self-concept.

To get your life into greater balance, it’s essential that you examine your inner world in relation to your outer world; compare both worlds to find where there is incongruence or imbalance that might be causing you to perform poorly or, more importantly, to be unhappy and frustrated.

Your self-concept is made up of three parts. The first part is your self-ideal. This is the person you would most like to be. This is a description of the values that you feel are the highest you can have and live by. Your self-ideal is made up of a combination of all the qualities that you most admire in yourself and in other people. Sometimes, you can define your self-ideal by asking yourself what you would look like, and how you would be described by others, if you developed yourself into the finest human being you could ever become.

The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. Your self-image can be defined as the way you see yourself in the present moment. Your self-image is a combination of how you see yourself, how others see you and how you think others see you. All three may be different. That is, you may see yourself in a certain way, you may think others see you in a different way, and, then, others may see you differently from your perceptions.

You always perform on the outside consistent with the mental picture that you have of yourself on the inside. If you see yourself as positive and happy and confident, competent and capable in your personal life and your work, you’ll behave like that on the outside, toward other people. You can always tell what your self-image is, in any area of your life, by examining how you feel when you’re with people. A person with a positive self-image is relaxed and confident with others. A person with a negative self-image feels insecure and inferior with others, especially with people he feels are ahead of him or better than him in some way.

Now, here’s the interesting thing about your self-image. When your self-image is fully integrated, the way you see yourself, the way others see you and the way you think others see you all are the same. And the more you’re living your life consistent with your values and ideals, the more integrated your self-image is, and the better you perform at everything you attempt.
The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. Your self-esteem can be defined as how much you like yourself and respect yourself. it’s your reputation with yourself. it’s how you think about yourself relative to the world when you’re in the privacy of your room. it’s the emotional component of your self-concept and is more important than anything else.

Your level of self-esteem determines your personality, your level of stress, how much enthusiasm and excitement you have in life, how happy you are, how positive you are, and how well you get along with people. Psychologists today have come to the overwhelming conclusion that your self-esteem is the real measure and monitor of your personality and largely determines everything that happens to you in your interactions and relationships with others.

And what is the key to high self-esteem? The key is simply this: When your external behaviors and your highest values and ideals are consistent with each other, your self-esteem goes up. When your ideals and values are clear, and when the qualities and behaviors that you most admire are the same qualities and behaviors that you manifest in your interactions with others, you like yourself better. You respect yourself more. You feel happier.

Whenever your inner world and your outer world are in alignment, whenever your activities and your values are congruent, whenever your activities are in balance with the highest values that you hold, you feel terrific and perfectly centered in your life.

If you say and do one thing while you admire and respect another set of behaviors, you feel unhappy and dissatisfied. You feel out of balance. You feel a sense of incongruency.
it’s not easy to attain a sense of balance and equilibrium. It requires effort on your part. It requires that you think through who you are and who you want to be. It requires that you take the necessary steps to do more of the things that are consistent with the actions of the very best person that you can imagine yourself becoming, and that you simultaneously stop doing and saying the things that are inconsistent with your best ideals and aspirations.

You achieve a greater sense of balance by, first of all, determining your values in each area¾in regard to your health, your relationships, your work, and so on. Next, you examine your behaviors and identify the things that you’re doing and saying that are not consistent with those values. And then you resolve to change them, one by one. In bringing your behaviors into alignment with your innermost convictions, you start to feel wonderful about yourself; you start to feel more in balance; you start to feel happier and healthier.

Just as a car with perfectly aligned and balanced wheels runs more smoothly down the highway, you also will run more smoothly down the highway of your life when you’ve taken the time and made the effort to bring everything that you do and say into balance and alignment.

By: Brian Tracy.

A Guide for Creative Thinking

2009-10-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

Einstein once said, “Every child is born a genius.” But the reason why most people do not function at genius levels is because they are not aware of how creative and smart they really are.
I call it the “Schwarzenegger effect.” No one would look at a person such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and think how lucky he is to have been born with such tremendous muscles. Everyone knows that he, and people like him, have worked many thousands of hours to build up their bodies so they can compete and win in bodybuilding competitions. Your creative capabilities are just the same. They actually grow as they are used.

But you don’t need to spend thousands of hours to increase your creative-thinking abilities. By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you come up with.
Let’s start off with the definition of creativity. In my estimation, after years of research on this subject, the very best definition of creativity is, simply, “improvement.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an artist in order to be creative. All you have to do is develop the ability to improve your situation, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. All great fortunes were started with ideas for improving something in some way. In fact, an improvement needs to be only 10 percent new or different to launch you on the way to fame and riches.

It has been estimated that each year, driving to and from work, the average person has about four ideas for improvement, any one of which could make him or her a millionaire. The problem is not that you don’t have the ideas you need to accomplish anything you want but, rather, that you fail to act on those ideas. Most people dismiss their own ideas because they think that those ideas cannot be very valuable if they were the ones who thought of them.

Thomas Edison, arguably the most successful creative genius in human history, once said that creativity is 99 percent perspiration and only 1 percent inspiration. Extensive research on creativity tends to bear him out.

There are four generally accepted parts of the creative process: There is preparation, where much of the work is done. There is cerebration or rumination, where you turn the matter over to your subconscious mind. There is realization, where the idea or ideas come to you. And finally, there is application, where you work out the creative idea and turn it into something worthwhile. Of the four, preparation seems to be the most important, and it involves gathering the right data and asking the right questions.

Your success in life will be determined largely by the quantity of ideas that you generate. It seems that the quality of ideas is secondary to the quantity and that if you have enough ideas, one or more of them will turn out to be prizewinners.

You can begin building your creative muscles with focused questions. Some that you might think of are the following: What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? What are our assumptions? What if our assumptions are wrong?

All improvements begin with questioning the current, existing circumstances. If you are not making progress for any reason, stop and think, and begin asking yourself the hard questions that will stimulate your mind to consider other possibilities.

When they were doing the research to land a man on the moon, scientists were stumped for months and even years. They could not figure how to send a rocket to the moon with enough fuel to land on the moon, blast off, break the moon’s gravity and come back to earth. The problem was that if the rocket had that much fuel to start with, it would be too heavy to take off from the earth in the first place. Finally, they began to question the assumption that the lunar rocket ship had to land on the moon. When they questioned that assumption, the scientists concluded that a main rocket could orbit around the moon while a smaller module dropped to the surface of the moon and then rejoined the orbiting rocket for the trip back to earth. The mental logjam was broken, and the rest is history.

Asking focused questions—hard questions that penetrate to the core of the matter—is the real art of the creative person. The next step is to have the courage to deal with all the possible answers. Once you have come up with a possible solution, ask yourself, “What else could be the solution?” If your current method of operation were completely wrong, what would be your backup plan? What else would you or could you do? What if your current procedure or plan turned out to be a complete failure? Then what would you do? And what would you do after that? All of those questions will force you to think further and come up with better answers.
The second way to build your mental muscles is with intensely desired goals. The more you want something and the clearer you are about it, the more likely it is that you will generate ideas that will help you to move toward it. That is why the need for clearly written goals and plans for their accomplishment is repeated over and over. Any intense emotion, such as desire, stimulates creativity and ideas to fulfill that desire. And the more you write down your goals and plans, and review them, the more likely it is that you will see all kinds of possibilities for achieving those goals.

The third generator of creative-thinking muscles is pressing problems. A good question to ask is “What are the three biggest problems that I am facing in my life today?” Write the answer to this question quickly, in less than 30 seconds. When you write the answer to a question in less than 30 seconds, your subconscious mind will sort out all extraneous answers and give you the three most important ones.

When you have your three most pressing problems, ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen as a result of each of these problems?” Then ask yourself, “What are all the things that I can do, right now, to alleviate each problem?” If you have a problem that is worrying you for any reason, think about what you could do immediately to begin alleviating that concern. This is a prime use of your creative powers.

So a key to success in creative thinking is clarity. Take the time to think through, discuss and ask questions that help you to clarify exactly what you are trying to accomplish and exactly what problems you are facing at the present moment. Just as fuzzy thinking leads to fuzzy answers, clear thinking leads to clear answers.

A second key is concentration. Put everything else aside, and concentrate single-mindedly on focusing all your mental powers on solving one single problem, overcoming one particular obstacle or achieving one important goal. The ability to concentrate on a single subject without diversion or distraction is a hallmark of the superior thinker.

A third key is an open mind. The average person tends to be rigid and fixed in his thinking about getting from where he is to where he wants to go. The creative thinker, however, tends to remain very flexible and open to a variety of ways of approaching the problem. The average person has a tendency to leap to conclusions and determine that there is only one way to achieve a particular goal. The superior thinker, on the other hand, tends to be more patient and willing to consider a variety of options before moving toward a conclusion.

There is one other creative concept that can be very helpful when it is used in combination with what we have already discussed, and it is called the “limiting step.”

Between you and any goal that you want to achieve or any problem that you want to solve, there is almost invariably a limiting step or a “choke point” that determines the speed with which you move from where you are to your destination. This limiting step may be another person, a particular obstacle, a specific difficulty, or even a lack of some information or skill. Invariably, there is a particular factor that determines how fast you get there. Your job is to think about it and decide what it is, and then go to work to remove it.

For example, if you are in sales, your limiting step may be the number of prospects you have. If this is the case, then your job is to do everything possible and to use all your creative capacities to increase your number of prospects until it is no longer a problem. Then, of course, there will be another limiting step, and your job is to go to work on that.

If you have a business, your limiting step may be the number of qualified people who are responding to your advertising. If this is the choke point that hinders the amount you sell and the speed at which your company grows, it behooves you to concentrate your mental powers on relieving that bottleneck. You must concentrate the very best thinking abilities of yourself and others on increasing the number of qualified prospects that your advertising and promotional efforts attract.

In relationships and misunderstandings between people, there is almost invariably a sticking point or subject area that needs to be resolved in order to bring about harmony again. Your job is, first, to identify this limiting step and then, second, to find a way to alleviate the difficulty to the satisfaction of everyone involved.

You are a genius, and you were born with the potential for exceptional creativity. But creative abilities are latent. They are like muscles that grow with use. You can increase your creative powers by using them, over and over, in every situation, deliberately and specifically, until creativity and a creative response to life is as natural to you as breathing in and out is. There are very few things that you can do that can have a more powerful positive impact on your entire life than becoming excellent in creative thinking. And you can if you think you can.

By: Brian Tracy

A Balanced Life

2009-10-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

The following is an article I came across, written by Brian Tracy, which discusses the importance of balancing your professional life with your personal life.

Enjoy!

-Steve Thompson.

A Balanced Life

According to psychologist Sidney Jourard, fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from your personal relationships. Your interactions and the time that you spend with the people you care about will be the major source of the pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction that you derive daily. The other 15 percent of your happiness will come from your accomplishments. Unfortunately, many people lose sight of what is truly important, and they allow the tail to wag the dog. They sacrifice their relationships, their major source of happiness, to accomplish more in their careers. But one’s career, at best, can be only a minor source¾and a temporary one, at that¾of the happiness and satisfaction that everyone wants.

There is no perfect answer to the key question of how to achieve balance in our lives, but there are a number of ideas that can help you to be and have and do more in the areas that are important to you. These ideas often require changes and modifications in the way you think and use your time, but the price is well worth it. You will find that by reorganizing your life in little ways, you can create an existence that gives you the highest quality and quantity of satisfaction overall. And this must be your guiding purpose.

The ancient Greeks had two famous sayings: “Man, know thyself” and “Moderation in all things.” Taken together, those two ideas are a good starting point for achieving the balance that you desire. With regard to knowing thyself, it is very important to give some serious thought to what you really value in life. All trade-offs and choices are based on your values, and all stress and unhappiness come from believing and valuing one thing and, yet, finding yourself doing another. Only when your values and your activities are congruent do you feel happy and at peace with yourself.

So knowing yourself means knowing what you really value, knowing what is really important to you. The superior man or woman decides what is right before he or she decides what is possible. The advanced human being organizes his or her life to assure that everything that he or she is doing is consistent with his or her true values. It is essential for you to organize your life around yourself, rather than to organize yourself around the demands of your external world.

The second quote, “Moderation in all things,” is a wonderful and important dictate for successful living. But, at the same time, you know that you can’t really be successful in any area by being moderate in that area. Peter Drucker once wrote, “Wherever you find something getting done, you find a monomaniac with a mission.” You know that single-minded concentration on a goal or objective is absolutely necessary for achievement of any kind in a competitive society.

So what’s the solution? Over the years, I have worked with tens of thousands of men and women who have spent a lot of time and effort struggling to achieve balance in their lives. I have found that there is a simple formula; it is simple in that it is easy to explain, but you need tremendous self-discipline and persistence to implement it in your life.

The formula revolves around a concept of time management, or what you might want to call life management. Time management is really a form of personal management in which you organize your 24 hours a day in such a way that they give you the greatest possible return of happiness and contentment.

The key to time management, after you have determined your values and the goals that are in harmony with those values, is to set both priorities and posteriorities. The importance of setting priorities is obvious. You make a list of all the things that you can possibly do and then select from that list the things that are most important to you based on everything you know about yourself, about others and about your responsibilities. The setting of posteriorities is often overlooked. It is when you carefully decide which things you are going to stop doing so that you will have enough time to start doing something else.

The greatest single shortage we experience in America today is that of time. We suffer from what has been called “time poverty.” Men and women everywhere feel that their biggest single challenge is that they simply do not have enough time to do all the things that they have to do or want to do. People today feel pressured from all sides and are under an inordinate amount of stress. They feel overworked, fatigued and incapable of fulfilling all the responsibilities that they have taken on.

The starting point to alleviate this time poverty is to stop and think. Most people are so busy rushing back and forth that they seldom take the time to think seriously about who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. They engage in frantic activity, instead of thoughtful analysis. They get so busy climbing the ladder of success that they lose sight of the fact that the ladder may be leaning against the wrong building.

When my wife, Barbara, and I started our family, we were faced with a common dilemma: how can we balance the demands of work and home with the finite amount of time we are all given?
Here’s the answer I discovered: The key to success in a busy society is to devote your time to only two areas during the period of time when your family needs you, when your children are between the ages of birth to about 18 to 20 years. During this period of time, you need to curtail virtually all of your outside activities. You need to focus on two major areas¾your family and your career¾as I have done over the years. You need to place your family’s needs above all else and then organize your work schedule so that you can satisfy those needs on a regular basis. Then, when you work, you must concentrate single-mindedly on doing an excellent job.
Most people are time wasters. They waste their own time, and they waste your time as well. To be successful and happy, you must discipline yourself to work all the time you work. The average employee works at about 50 percent of capacity. Fully 80 percent of people working today are underemployed in that their jobs do not really demand their full capacities. Only 5 percent of workers surveyed recently felt that they were working at the outside limits of their potentials.

But this is not for you. You must resolve to work all the time you work. You must decide that from the time you start in the morning until the time you finish in the evening, you will work 100 percent of the time. Even if no one is watching you, you should be aware that everyone is watching you. Everybody knows everything. In every company, everyone knows who is working and who is not. Your job must be to work all the time you work. If people come by and want to chat, you simply smile at them and say, “Could we talk about this later?” Tell them that you have to get back to work.

Have a written list, and work on your list every day. Write down everything as it comes up, and add it to your list. Set priorities on your time, and be certain that you are working on the things that are most important to your boss and to your company. Refuse to get drawn into the time-wasting activities of the people around you. Work all the time you work.

Remember that to be successful, you must become a monomaniac with a mission. This is true today, and it has always been true in our competitive society. To be successful at your job, you must work fast and efficiently and nonstop all the time you are on the payroll. You must become an expert at time management. You must become so efficient and effective that you get twice as much done as anyone else. In this way, you will advance your career at the fastest rate possible, and you will also be on top of your job most of the time, and it will be unnecessary for you to take work home for the evenings and weekends.

Then, when you have finished your work, you can devote your full attention to your family and to the other important people in your life. The Bible says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” One of the meanings of this is that if you are thinking about your work while you are with your family, or if you are thinking about your family when you are at work, you end up accomplishing far less in each area. However, if you are on top of your work, when you come home you can devote yourself single-mindedly¾again, like a monomaniac¾to your relationships and to enhancing the quality of your interactions with the most important people in your life.

The key to a happy family life is communication. And it is not quality of time but quantity of time that counts. Quality moments¾those little moments that are precious and important¾come unbidden and, usually, unexpectedly. They arise during the process of spending a large quantity of uninterrupted time with one or more people. You cannot dictate those moments in advance. You cannot decide to have quality time. You do not go to it. It comes to you.

There are a variety of ways to extract the greatest amount of quality and happiness from your relationships with the members of your family. Perhaps the most important is to spend unbroken time with your spouse on a daily basis. Of course, you should spend time together talking after the children have gone to bed, but you should also seek out and utilize small segments of time during the morning and early evening during which you can communicate and interact. One of the most important things that couples can do is spend the first 30 to 60 minutes after work debriefing each other and discussing the day’s activities.

Your children also have a tremendous need to communicate with you. In fact, in my research on how to raise super kids, I found that the one factor that was more important than any other was the amount of one-on-one time that the parents spent with the children. When parents don’t spend a lot of time with their children individually, they send a message to their children that they are not very valuable or important. Children then react by experiencing feelings of inferiority, lowered self-esteem, and negative self-images, and this is expressed in poor grades and behavioral problems. But when the parents take the time to sit down with their children and ask questions and listen to what is going on in their minds, the children tend to feel a deep sense of value and importance that is manifested in self-confidence, happiness, and good relationships with others.

The key is learning to use your time better. You cannot get more hours out of each day, but you can put more of yourself into each of those hours. Turn off the television and spend time talking with the members of your family. Never read newspaper of books when a member of your family wants to communicate with you. Put the reading material aside. Concentrate single-mindedly on the most important people in your world. Everything else can wait.
In regard to your work and family, continually ask yourself, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Consider if what you are doing today will matter a week or a year from today. Sometimes, we become preoccupied with small things that are not really important in the long run. But what is important in the long run is the quality of our home life.

You don’t have to be a superman or superwoman to properly balance the demands of your work and the needs of your family. You must, however, be more thoughtful, be a better planner, use your time more effectively, and continually think of ways to enhance the quality of your life in both areas. If you set this as a goal and resolve to work toward it every day, you will gradually become far more efficient, far more effective, and a far happier human being. And that’s the most important thing of all.

-Brian Tracy.

FocalPoint Business Coaching comments on the US PResidential Election

2008-11-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

This is Democracy!

What a great voter turnout for the Presidential Election yesterday. 79% is outstanding.

At the next football game you go to , look around. 8 out of 10 people there stood up for what they believed in.

This news was reported widely, but it hit me while watching the live coverage and then reading this article....

By Craig Gustafson

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

November 6, 2008

County voters may have a set a new benchmark for casting ballots.

About 1.19 million voters took part in Tuesday's election, the most in at least the past two decades. It's likely the most ever, but county officials couldn't confirm that.

The turnout of registered voters was 79 percent, topping the 2004 general election but falling just shy of the percentage record. The modern turnout record is 81 percent, set in 1976 when Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated Republican Gerald Ford for president.

That fantastic, and a great show of how we value our strong democracy.

Regardless of who won, we stood up and voted, and that's great. The Election was followed by 2 strong candidate speeches.

John McCains speech is here, and is a wonderful example of classy statemanship.
President-Elect Barack Obama's is here. It is also a great example of leadership.

Onwards, America!

Steve Thompson,
President
FocalPoint Business Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy

Conference is Coming

2008-07-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hi, Just checking in to let you know some exciting news.

At this years annual conference we have no less than 4 major announcements.
1 has to do with "SYSTEMS". We're adding a new , deeper aspect of coaching to our offering. This new application and managment tool give us another huge advantage point.

Another announcement has to do with "CONTENT". We've just added another point of content to our already well known and robust "stack". This new and exciting series of coaching themes will give our coaches and our clients another structured tool to dig deeper into business improvement.

Next is a powerful and unique "STRATEGIC ALLIANCE". This one is exciting becuase it will deliver a truly passive income stream to our coaches.

Our 4th announcement is an "ANALYTICAL TOOL". This is a coaches tool that they can use in the field with their clients. It gives the coach a broad perspective and a laser focussed set of data that really helps our clients make the best decisions.

4 major announcements in one conference is a lot! We're excited, this year is gong to be jam packed, and we'll probably feel that 4 days just isnt enough!

Thanks for reading our blog! Email me if you have any questions.
Steve

Steve Thompson, President
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy

www.focalpointcoaching.com
www.stevethompsonfocalpointcoaching.blogspot.com
http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching
http://www.briantracy.com/coaching/coachingprograms.aspx

Business Coach Training Update June 25

2008-06-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

Hi, I just checked in with some of the coaches who went through the last training ( it was this week).

Both of them already had solid leads by the time they got off the flight home! One coach had a lead come in from us while he was in training. He called her right away and had a meeting set for the Wednesdays of his return.

Another one of the coaches was standing in line as we were getting lunch on day 4 of training. He was chatting with another lady who was on her break too. It turned out she owned the clothing store next door, but was selling it so she could move back to Hawaii to concentrate on running her 2 restaurants there!

Well, this FocalPoint coach now has a lead for coaching this business owner in Hawaii! That's how it works! Of course, having a client in Hawaii never hurts either...

We're already planning for our next training in July, and our conference in August. I wonder what stories will come from that?

Blog to you soon!
Steve Thompson,
President
FocalPoint Coaching
www.focalpointcoaching.com
http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching
http://www.briantracy.com/coaching/
http://askabusinesscoach.blogspot.com/

Business Coach Training is done for June

2008-06-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hi again,
It's Tuesday, June 4, and we've just waved goodbye to our latest group of Business Coaches.

Training was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, at an absolutely beautiful resort. Over 6 intense days, our coaches were introduced to the start of training.

"The start" you ask? Yes, live-in training is only one of three discrete parts of training. After a rigorous selection and qualification process, the coaches who we invite to join our team immediately begin Induction Training. This is part 1, and we've designed it so that a Business Coach is able to get their business up and running as soon as possible when they return home.

Part 2 , is , of course, the live - in part. Our next training is scheduled for July 21st to 26. We already have a number of Incoming Coaches and Area Developers waiting to attend.

Part 3 of training is very interesting. It's forever. Business Coaching is a very interesting and profitable business - especially for those coaches who can leverage solid brand recognition and a proven, repeatable system for business growth. It takes forever because that's how long our support and training lasts - forever. As a matter of fact, some of you may recognise "forever" as one of our culture statements.

Business Coaching is our passion - it's what we do. Brian Tracy has been in the business of business improvement for over 30 years. We think that's a pretty good start!

Training is a lot of fun and the amount of knowledge transfer is unbelievable. Our coaches learned not only how to "be a coach", but also what kind of marketing it takes to get clients, how to keep clients, how to get results and how to grow a profitable business they'll love.

Thanks for checking in, I'll post another update soon.

Steve Thompson
President,
FocalPoint Business Coaching
www.focalpointcoaching.com
http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching
http://www.briantracy.com/coaching/
http://askabusinesscoach.blogspot.com/

Business Coach Training update June 19 2008

2008-06-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, Just checking in quickly to let you know that our Business Coach training is going very well.
We've got a full and engaged class. Today we covered off some of the interesting elements of selling a business and how FocalPoint Business Coaches help with that.

It's a growing trend and we're certainly proud to lead the way.

How could I forget? We also have a major win, company wide! Our first National Account deal has come to fruition. One of our Texas coaches has brought on a new client as a direct result of this deal. Many more will soon follow!

We'll continue to develop National Accounts for the benefit of our coaches.

Thanks for checking in!
Steve Thompson,
President,
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy

www.focalpointcoaching.com
www.stevethompsonfocalpointcoaching.blogspot.com
http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching
http://www.briantracy.com/coaching/coachingprograms.aspx

Business Coaching and FocalPoint's Passionate Commitment

2008-06-15T22:44:00.001-07:00

Hello curious reader!,

Let’s keep on looking in more detail at what it means to be a Business Coach at FocalPoint Coaching.

We’re a group of elite Business Coaches who draw on the deep, proven experience and brand recognition of Brian Tracy. That’s why our full name is FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy.

We have a unique and manicured Culture here at FocalPoint, and over the past few weeks and months, I’ve been sharing the defining points of our Culture with you.

If you’re here, reading this blog you have some sort of interest in us. Thanks for visiting. I hope this gives you a better sense of who we are, what we do, and how we do it.

Passionate Commitment is our 5^th point of Culture.

Whatever we do, we do with full passionate commitment.

We thought long and hard about this one. Would you believe it started out as “a Passion for Fitness.” ?

During one of our retreats, we began to think differently about this. What if the perfect business coach was not into fitness, but rather, into Gardening, or Bird Watching? What if the perfect coach for our team was more fit than any of us? Perhaps a Triathelete ( we have a few already), or an Expedition Mountaineer? Was our definition too constrictive?

We felt it was. So we changed our perspective. ( welcome to thinking like a Business Coach!) What we really wanted to attract to ourselves, model ourselves towards and hold as our standard became “Passionate Commitment”

With that refocused viewpoint, even more possibilities came to light.

A FocalPoint Coach is a person who is Passionately Committed to:

Their own success
The success of others
Finding a way around, through, over or under “resistance”
Excellence
Their families
Their communities
Fitness
Hobbies
An Industry
Volunteering to help others ( one of our Coaches has 40 years of service to the Boy Scouts of America)
Being an excellent parent, spouse, son or daughter.

In short, our culture lasered in even more by changing our perspective. We embody excellence because that’s what we think about and move towards every day. Being "Passionately Committed" is the fuel that keeps us on that track.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog,

Steve Thompson, President,

FocalPoint Coaching

www.focalpointcoaching.com

http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching

http://askabusinesscoach.blogspot.com/

Steve Thompson, President
FocalPoint Business Coaching

FocalPoint Business Coaching and Fathers Day

2008-06-15T21:58:00.001-07:00

Happy Fathers Day!

As you might imagine, a lot of us at FocalPoint are Fathers - so happy Fathers Day to us!

But all of us also need to take some time today to thank our Dad's.

Our Dad's took us to football games, lent us their cars, and showed us how to go fishing. Maybe they gave your prom date a hard time, or walked you down the aisle. Whatever picture flashes through your mind when you think of your Dad, today is the day to reach back out to him and say thanks.

Some of our Fathers fought in World War 2. You may have missed it, but June 6 was the anniversary of D-Day. That was the day the Allied forces took the beach at Normandy in France. Here's a quote I pulled from the US Army web page dedicated to D-day....

"...June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.”

More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy.

The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded -- but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler...."

Source: http://www.army.mil/d-day/

Do you remember how you felt as a kid before the big game? Did you get nervous? How about speaking in public - does that make your stomach churn and lurch? I wonder how those 17, 18, ad 19 year old kids felt before they went into a battle as intense as that.

Those are our Dad's. Or, maybe their Dad's...

Whether our Dad's fought for us in the war, or showed us , by example, how to be who we need to be, we thank you.

Happy Fathers Day, Dad.

Steve Thompson,
President
FocalPoint Coaching.
http://www.focalpointcoaching.om/
http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching

FocalPoint Business Coaching Culture Update - Excellence

2008-06-14T14:24:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I started defining our corporate culture. Business Coach Training and a number of other tantalizing topics always loom, but let me pick up where we left off.......

When defining the FocalPoint Culture, I can't leave out Excellence.

We expect Excellence and we create Excellence.

Example:

§ If there is an opportunity to improve a process or system, we share it with the team.

§ We are all striving for constant improvement. We view excellence of an object or subject or body of work as part of a whole.

I'll be the first to admit; this is a tough one. To us it means that we can never be satisfied with ourselves. My partner, Dominic Rubino, likes to say that everything is written in sand (as opposed to stone) and it would be ignorant of us to think that every system was complete, and perfect. I agree. He's a pretty wise guy.

Excellence to us means "We expect Excellence and we create Excellence". At the end of the day, being a successful business coach is about getting client results. We have tons of formal testimonials, and far more internal stories and even legends about client results.

I heard one today from one of our top coaches, Brad Ness (go Columbus!). One of his clients is a Civil Engineer (he makes subdivisions have the proper elevations of land and use of space). When Brad started with him, things were tight. Annual profits were hovering around 30k. Since December (5 months) by working with Brad he now has the company posed to do a deal that will net him 300k in profit annually yes, 10 times more than he used to do.

Excellence! For the client, from Brad, for his industry. The hard part I referred to is that we can't really rest on our laurels much. Whatever we just did has to be topped next time.

I love this stuff! And so do our clients.....

Steve Thompson, FocalPoint Coaching

http://www.focalpointcoaching.com/

Proud of our Ranking in the Franchise50 Awards.

http://www.fbr50.com/profile/FocalPoint-Coaching

Business Coach Training at FocalPoint, powered by Brian Tracy

2008-06-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

FocalPoint Business Coach Training for June is fast approaching.

We're very excited, the whole training team is buzzing as we prepare for one of our most exciting internal events - the addition of Business Coaches to our growing team.

It's not easy to become a FocalPoint Business Coach, powered by Brian Tracy. The whole process is one of two way qualification through a series of increasingly difficult steps. Add to that the fact that just to start the process a candidate has to be a top notch business person in their own right.

We must be doing something right, because we've built an elite team of high performers, and this seems to attract even more high performers to begin the process.

This training features coaches from Canada! Business Coaching in Canada will never be the same. We have coaches joining us from Abbotsford, Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. We also have coaches joining us from Saskatchewan, Saskatoon and Regina.

Columbus and Cincinnati Ohio has an very exciting and interesting addition coming on board. Texas , of course, can't be left out, we'll have coaches in training who will be in Houston and Dallas. I'll post more on that later.

Not only is the process for joining us very detailed , but the training process is as well. We like to say that Business Coach training is actually only the START of training. Those who've been through it know what we mean.

Welcome to the team Coaches!
Steve Thompson,
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy.

Brian Tracy answers !

2008-06-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Again,

Brian was kind enough to send us a copy of the info with the proper credit to the author.

Here is his email.....
* * * *

The five parts of political power were first explained by Adolf Berle in 1935 in his book "Power." They are:

1. Power arises to fill a vacuum; there must be an unsatisfied need or demand.

2. Power is based on a philosophy or set of beliefs; it must be clear what that is, and people must support it.

3. Power is invariably personal; it is given to specific individuals who touch people emotionally.

4. Power arises only with the support of established institutions in society; this is an essential part of building credibility.

5. Power arises to confront a field of action; it is always "power to do." It must therefore be clear to those from whom you request support what you will do with their support (votes).

All of these aspects of political power can be applied to economic power and the ability to sell a product or service.

Brian
* * * *

Thank-you Brian!

Great lessons in business come from so many places. This is what can make it difficult to know where to start when "improving a business". That's the vacuum that FocalPoint Coaching fills...

Thanks for reading our Blog, we're proud to share this with you.

Steve Thompson, President,
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy

The 5 Principles of Power - with a Business twist

2008-06-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, I met with Brian Tracy at a meeting we call the San Diego Summit. This is a meeting that happens every 6 weeks and it is focused on 1 thing. How can FocalPoint coaches continue to be recognized as the elite Business Coaches we are?

Given the optics on the current political process, with Obama beating Hillary, and the next Election looming, our discussion took an interesting turn.

What is Power, how is it achieved and how can we apply that to Coaching? Ultimately, from what we know of "Power" how can we help business owners?

Brian outlined the 5 points of Political Power. I was writing fast and I missed the author he quoted. If you know who it was/ is, please let me know – we have to give him credit!

From my furious notes, the points were as follows:
1.Power rises to fill a vacuum. In Coaching, we look for he vacuum that’s been created by missing business systems, low profits or owner frustration

2.Power is personal. And so is Business. If you’re in business, its’ not for Business sake – it’s so that you can have something else in your life. As coaches, we hear that owners want freedom, time, and choice.What is your "WHY" for being in Business?

3.Power arises on the basis of a philosophy. That’s a big statement. Is your business philosophy to be excellent? To be the low cost provider? To dominate your market? We only work with high performers – is that a philosophy? We believe in the right of everyone to make a profit – that’s a good philosophy. What is yours?

4.Power arises with Institutional Support. It needs big, ingrained organizations to support it. In the case of the Democrats, they draw on the unions. As Business Coaches, we’re capitalists, so Unions don’t really line up with us. But Banks and Lenders do, Trade Associations do, Accountants and Lawyers do. Does the field of Business Coaching have institutional support? Judging from the amount of referrals we get from the industries mentioned above, I’d say we definitely have that support!

5.Power is always the power to do something – to enable someone to DO something. Business Coaching gives a new level of power to the Decision Maker. The Owner or Chief Executive gets the power that comes with a smooth running operation.

This conversation was an interesting part of our Summit, and a great warm up exercise to keep all 4 of us thinking like Entrepreneurs. Focused on the future – that’s’ where we’re going!

Thanks for checking in. If you have any thoughts or questions, or know the author of the 5 principles of power, let me know!

Thanks,
Steve Thompson, President,
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy.

an email regarding Business Coaching and the Economy from Dominic Rubino to a reporter/ researcher

2008-05-31T23:22:00.000-07:00

This is a copy of an email that Dominic Rubino, Our Executive Vice President sent off to a well known reporter who is looking for story ideas....In red is the original question...

Questions About Pricing and Wage Pressures -- please share your quick feedback. I'm getting called almost daily by the media asking what I'm hearing from the mid-market segment of the economy. With increased food and fuel costs they are asking two specific questions: 1) are you feeling the pressure to raise your own prices and by how much; and 2) are your employees asking for increased wages to offset their own increased costs of putting food on the table and commuting to work? I'll keep your responses anonymous unless I get your permission to share with the media that contact me.

Hi Vic,
Just saw your call for input. As you know, Business Coaches are in a bit of a different spot in this conversation, as we actively work to show business owners the roses in the thorns. In this case, opportunities among the threats.

Over the various cycles we've seen, we've noticed that companies who are aggressive in a downturn, really launch rapidly ( we call it boomeranging) at the first sign of an upturn.

A case in point is the Bosa Construction Group in Canada. At the start of the 80's downturn, they were just another construction company specialising in residential homes. Early to mid 80's - They went into acquisition mode, buying up "odd" parcels of land. Things like Blueberry Farms, Mountainside Farm land, and low- low-low rent apartment buildings etc.

Fast forward to now and they ( along with their numerous spin off company's) spent all of the 90's and the first part of the 00's building huge mega -high rises and town home complexes. The Vancouver boom is done , and Bosa has already leapt into other markets. Let me reiterate, in 1980, they built 2 story homes! ( their Sandbox changed)

Here's what our business coaches are seeing North America wide. Fear and Uncertainty

Business Owners are afraid to raise prices, or make the changes they know they need to make.
So compensating for fuel and wages is something they typically look internally for as opposed to being critical of their operations and making changes there.

One of our Coaches ( Dulcee Loehn, Florida) has a client who makes this point well. One of her clients is a Commercial Electrical Contractor. When she began the FocalPoint Coaching Process , the owners had a dim view of the future, but knew something had to change. In 9 weeks she's found them savings in how they run their business. One operational change will net them around 8k per year, and another of about 11k annually. Those savings will now continue annually.

She's only 2 1/2 months into coaching with them. A 7 million dollar company today and that's already a significant uptick in profitability. Coaching will really take them into a new level of business.

Brad Ness is another FocalPoint Business Coach in Columbus, Ohio. Brad is an excellent coach who delvers results. He works with a client who is a Civil Engineer. Aside from making a living from his company, profits were approximately 30 k annually.

With coaching, and quite a bit of strategic planning, this client is now looking at providing a contract that will net him 300k in profit annually. He simply started the coaching relationship hoping to "get a better handle on his business". The FocalPoint System is based on the work of Brian Tracy who has been the leader of Business Growth and Sales Growth of over 3o years.

I think the business public would be surprised to learn how few main street businesses ( 1 to 40 mill/yr) do job costing or profitability analysis. Or how many of them proactively approach hiring , training, or "topgrading" their people.

It seems that the last thing on a business owners mind is making a change in their business,. We all know these are all brilliant people. They just don't know where to start. Fair enough.

What do do first, what to ignore, and what to do last can be a significant challenge.

Vic, I know telling this to you is singing with the choir, but Coaching really works!
I hope these stories helped you out. If your magazine need a hand with a story, let me know, we have lots of them, and we're glad to help.
Talk to you soon,
Dom

*****
I've shared this with you as I think it gives a pretty good perspective on the Business of Business Coaching.

Your comments?
Thanks,
Steve Thompson, FocalPoint Coaching

FocalPoint Business Coach Anniversaries

2008-05-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hello World,

I was looking back over some files and I noticed that we have some FocalPoint Business Coaching Anniversaries out there!

Ron McNutt in Charleston
Ray Mead in New Jersey,
Charles Holland in Colorado,
Jim Masters in Nebraska,
Susan Spitz in St. Louis
Brad Ness in Columbus Ohio
Paul Gillman in Cincinnati
Tom Breitenbach in Cincinnati
John Peluso in Charlotte

All of these Business Coaches work hard at doing good things in their communities. That's what Business Coaches do. We work with Business Owners and Senior Corporate Executives who are high performers. In every case, improvements are made.

Congratulations to our coaches! Congratulations to their clients!

Steve Thompson, FocalPoint Coaching

Great People on FocalPoint Discovery Day

2008-05-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

What a day!

I just finished something called "Discovery Day." It's a part of the process someone goes through before they join us as a Business Coach.

We have a 2 party decision making process. The potential Business Coach has to decide to do this, and we want to make sure the right people join our team.

Today's call was great. The group was representative of the kind of people that look at FocalPoint Coaching. - Senior VP's, Serial Entrepreneurs, and High Performing Managers. I love it when we do our intro's and it becomes clear its a meeting of peers.

One of our guests said something I jotted down that really captures what many others have said. His reason for looking at joining us and becoming a coach was based on his question..." What can I do with the skills I've developed, and use them in my own business?..."

He's right. Business Coaching is the logical conclusion for someone who wants to get paid from the neck up. It only make sense to build on your existing skills.

You might be interested in an overview of the varied backgrounds of the people who were on our call. By way of summary...

A Business Professor, turned corporate, rising to very senior levels in Banking
A high performing Mortgage Broker
A CPA who also has an MBA
A Corporate Finance and Accounting Exec
A Real Estate Exec
A Senior Manager from Major Accounts in Telecom
A serial Entrepreneur in the Consumer goods industry
A Seasoned Professional Presenter with an very interesting entertainment angle !

I also want to give kudos to one of our top coaches, Brad Ness from Columbus, Ohio who joined us to share his perspective on being a FocalPoint Coach .

As I said, what a great day. Our team is growing at a perfect pace, with the perfect people!

Thanks for tuning in!
Steve Thompson, FocalPoint Coaching

Respect and FocalPoint Business Coaching

2008-05-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Hmm, where are we? We’ve talked about the Culture and Values that we uphold as part of being on the FocalPoint Coaching Team. As you might imagine, being part of an organization with Brian Tracy in it is bound to be a group that is laser focused on Excellence.

Above you’ll see my thoughts on Forever , and Integrity.
Now let’s discuss Respect.

Respect is something I almost touched on in my last post, in Integrity. We Respect the Intellectual Property of others and give credit where due. This is important in an industry where we draw on so many authors, writers, Biographies, and learning tools. Be very cautious if one person holds themselves up to the guru of everything.

We respect the people on our team and work hard to be respected by others. Respect isn’t to be confused with agreement on all fronts, but rather, the willingness to take a stand and defend it.

What about Respect for self? This could be a blog all unto itself. As a matter of fact, it is the root cause of a number of social ills we are surrounded by every day.

We also respect everyone's right to make a profit,- you, me ,and the guy over there. It ties in with Forever, it ties in with Profitability - another core value I’ll outline later. (Remember? I'm a Capitalist)

And as another example, we respect the right and the responsibility of being part of a high performing team. Everyone on our team is different. I love that, and I think they do too. Being part of FocalPoint is being a strong individual, who contributes to an even stronger team.

Thanks All! Have a great day!
Keep tuning in!
Steve Thompson, FocalPoint Coaching

More on what it means to be a FocalPoint Coach

2008-05-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, I started outlining our FocalPoint Culture Statements - what it takes to be on our team as a Coach , Area Developer, or Head Office Team.

In a previous post you'll see that I discussed what we mean by "Forever." Our actions, reactions and thoughts, strategy and planning reflect a long term view, with a Business timeline of “forever”.

Let me tell you about our next Cultural Value..."Integrity"

Integrity is an interesting one, because it encompasses a number of other values. Did you know that when we first set out to write down our Values, we came up with 23! Clearly too many, but also just enough. If you sat down to ponder your values with a professional, certified Business Coach, how would you feel if that Coach limited you to an arbitrary number?

Far better to start with too many, and then , like a nice box of chocolate, savor the list over time and select the ones that best represent your tastes. There is no need to rush - this list is an expression of us and what we strive to become ( see Forever, above!).

OK, I digress. Integrity. We act with Integrity at all times. I have a favorite saying. "If you ask me a question, I'll give you the answer - you may not always like the answer, but you'll get it straight. "

Integrity also shows itself in respect for I.P. - I'll discuss that in Respect, another Cultural Value - I'll save that for another Blog post.

Now, I feel that Integrity is something that is best measured by consistent action. Your integrity may be different than mine. That's OK...it makes the world go 'round.

If your Integrity is based on you being a Vegan, that's OK. Just because I enjoy a nice steak ( medium well, please) with some blue cheese on it doesn't mean I don't have integrity. We're just different. Thank God for that! ( and mouthwash)

For us Integrity means being the kind of person who lives by the values of Win-Win -Win. A FocalPoint coach is always looking for the 3-win. It means being honest and direct yet respectful of, with and for the people we deal with. Imagine the Executive or Business Owner who had just another Yes-Man ( or yes- woman???) across the table from them.

From years of coaching, I've found that our Integrity in dealing directly with high performing individuals, business owners, and executives comes as a breath of fresh air.

Perhaps you've see this yourself. Who will give YOU the straight goods? If you're the boss, will your team tell it to you like it is? You sign the check. Will your suppliers or salespeople come in and tell you , with Integrity whats best for you, or, as a coach would, lead you down a path based solely on your benefit. No - they want you to sign a check too.

As Professional, Certified Business Coaches, it's our Right and Responsibility to act with Integrity. It may make us unpopular some of the time, but I think that's OK, in light of Forever.

Thanks for tuning in!
Steve Thompson, President, Focalpoint Coaching, powered By Brian Tracy

Memorial Day - hey Stop for a second!

2008-05-26T14:23:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Thanks for checking in.
Today is Memorial Day . This is a day for all of us to remember why we have the freedoms that we do.
I am a capitalist. And that moniker comes at a price. Freedom will always require sacrifice. Whether it's the freedom to be your own boss, or the freedom to live in a free and democratic society, it comes at a price.

Memorial day isn't just another day off. Its a day to reflect and give thanks for all that we have, and to consider those who have given of themselves so that we may have it.

I found this neat link on the history of Memorial Day http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html take a few minutes and read it. Consider all of those who are fighting for us right now.

We coach Veteran Owned businesses and have a number of Veterans as our Business Coaches.
Today is our day to say Thank-you.

Slow Down! We have this day for a reason.

Steve Thompson

Business Coach Training is over. And it's really just begun

2008-05-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

Well, we've just completed another intensive training session for some Business Coaches who have just joined FocalPoint.

It's been an exciting 6 days. I'm always amazed at the amount of learning that gets packed into such a short time frame. What comes next for these coaches is just as exciting - because this is just the "start" of training.

Now things really get interesting. My partner, Dominic Rubino and I are committed to 2 things as we lead this elite group of Business Coaches. Coach Success and Client Success.

To that end, we'll continue to pour support and resources into these coaches so that when they get home they have all the tools they need to be hugely successful.

From myself, Dominic, Brian Tracy and Cam Fraser - welcome!

More on Focalpoint Business Coachign Culture- What does it mean to be an Elite Business Coach?

2008-05-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

In my last posting, I talked a bit about our Culture. What does it mean to be part of FocalPoint Business Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy?

We think our Culture Statement is pretty interesting, and we take it seriously. My job is to make sure we, at head office, walk the talk and lead by example. I also overlay our culture and values against any potential coaches who join our team.

I'd love to hear your comments.

Over the next few Blog posts, I’ll share our Culture points with you here. These form the foundation of who we are …

FocalPoint Culture Statements
· Forever. Our actions, reactions and thoughts, strategy and planning reflect a long term view, with a Business timeline of “forever”.

Well, that summary seems pretty straightforward, but I ask you to consider for a moment what we did during one of our retreats.

Why would we even consider the concept of "forever"? Because it colors our view of the kind of questions we ask when we make critical decisions. There is an interesting Asian quote I like tat says "... To plan for a year, plant wheat. To plan for a decade, plant trees. To Plan for a lifetime, educate people..." Its all perspective. We act and react based on the timeline we view for our business.

Forever + Business Coaching + Education= Success.

Thanks for reading,
Steve Thompson
FocalPoint Business Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy

By the way, if you know who actually coined that Chinese proverb, please let me know!

Looking forward to Business Coach Training

2008-05-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

I’m excited about our training class coming up. We’ll be adding some great coaches to our roster.

This training also sees us the addition of Abby Vega to our team. Abby will be the Area Developer for FocalPoint Business Coaching in Northern Florida.

We’re very lucky to attract strong people to our team and Abby is no exception. I look forward to great things from this territory.

We’ve also added FocalPoint Certified Business Coaches in Atlanta Georgia, Phoenix and Scottsdale Arizona ,Seattle and Tacoma Washington, Houston and Dallas Texas.

It takes a special kind of person to qualify for our team. Not only do they have to have strong business background but they have to fit our culture as well. Did you know that less than 1.5 % of people who we talk to ever qualify to join our team?

We've only just started with the training and these coaches already show what it takes to succeed!
Thanks for reading, have a great day!
Steve Thompson

Welcome to my Blog!

2008-05-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Steve Thompson FocalPoint Blog.

Welcome to my blog. I’d like to use this tool to tell you more about myself, Steve Thompson, and FocalPoint Business Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy.

I’m the President of FocalPoint Business Coaching. Myself and my partner Dominic Rubino operate globally as the Franchisor, seeking the elite few who qualify to join our team of Business Coaches.

If you’ve heard of Brian Tracy, you know that he’s invested 30 years as a top speaker , author , business coach and mentor. He’s published over 50 books, is a best selling audio guru and it’s all becase he deals in reality – not theory.

In this Blog you’ll find out more about me, and more about FocalPoint, so please bookmark us and check back often!