Continue reading...

Personal excellence is perhaps the most important of all invisible and intangible assets that you can acquire. Achieving personal excellence in your business or industry requires lifelong dedication. But once you get into the top 10 percent of your field, you will be one of the highest paid people in the country. You will enjoy the respect and esteem of the people around you. You will be able to live your life the way you want to live it. You will enjoy high levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride.

Build Your Intellectual Assets
Each person has or can acquire three forms of intellectual capital. These require an investment of study and hard work, but they pay off in higher income for the rest of your life. The first type of intellectual capital you can acquire consists of your core knowledge, skills, and abilities. These are the result of education, experience, and training. They determine how well you do your job and the value of your contribution to your business.

Build Your Internal Knowledge
The second form of intellectual capital that you posses is your knowledge of how your business operates internally, in comparison to that of your competitors or any other business. Each business develops a series or systems, procedures, methods, techniques, and strategies to market, sell, produce, deliver products and services, and satisfy customers. Each business has internal systems for accounting, administration, and financial controls. These systems take many years to develop and considerable time for a new person to learn. A person who knows and understands these systems intimately has a form of intellectual capital that is difficult for the company to replace.

Build Your Ability to Get Results
The third form of intellectual capital that you possess, and that is perhaps the key determinant of your earning ability, is your knowledge and understanding of how you can get financial results in a competitive market. This includes your knowledge of your products and services and how to sell them. It includes your knowledge of customers and suppliers and how to deal with them. It embraces your familiarity with bankers, lawyers, accountants, and government officials and how to interact with them effectively. This form of intellectual capital may take years to build, and it is extremely valuable to your organization. You first responsibility to yourself is to develop your earning ability to a high level. You do this by continually increasing your intellectual capital, by upgrading your ability to do your job, by becoming a valuable part of your organization, and by getting more and better financial results for your organization.

Action Exercise
Take time to get to know every component of your business. Get to know your customers and learn everything there is to know about your products and services.

by:Brian Tracy

Continue reading...

Here are some simple ways to set goals so that we achieve them! After all, what good is a goal if it isn’t something you achieve? Follow these simple steps to make sure that you see change in your life this year.

Narrow your focus. That’s right, start small. Pick two or three areas, tops, that you want to work on. Too many people say to themselves, “I want to do this, and this, and this, and this...” and they end up doing nothing! Most of what you do throughout your day can be done without a lot of mental or emotional exertion, but change isn’t one of them. So focus on a couple. This way you can win some victories in those areas. Here are some areas to think about: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Spiritual, Financial and Relational. What areas need some work? Now, what one thing should be the first item on the change list? The others will come later, but for now, you should focus on two or three.

Keep the long term in mind, but set your sights on achieving your goals in the short term. Do you want to lose 75 pounds? Good. Long term you will. But for now, think short term. Don’t think about losing 75 pound by summer; think about losing 5 pounds by next month. This does two things. First, it makes it urgent. Instead of blowing it and saying, “Oh well, I still have 17 months to lose the 75 pounds” (because eventually that becomes 2 months to lose 75 pounds) your goal is only a few weeks out. This is better in terms of reaching your goal. Secondly, as you reach these shorter-term goals, it gives you regular victories instead of regular progress. Progress feels good, but achieving a goal is awesome!

Reward yourself when you achieve the goal. When you lose the 5 pounds, go get yourself a grande whole-milk mocha. But just one! Then get back to your goal for the next month, and the next. This puts a little fun back into the process of self-control and self-discipline. You will look forward to the reward, and when the going gets tough, you will say, “two more weeks, two more pounds, then...”

That’s it. I truly believe that it can be that simple for you.

This adds some ideas to the above article.
1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Instead of saying, “I am going to quit my three-pack a day habit cold turkey,” say “I am going to drop to a pack and a half a day.” You can always make new resolutions when you have achieved the first ones. Give yourself small victories a little at a time.

2. Be specific in your timeline. Don’t just say, “I am going to lose 20 pounds.” Say, “I am going to lose 20 pounds by April 1st.” This way, when you’re tempted in the ice cream aisle, you can say, “Nope, only 10 more pounds to go in a month and a half, and I am not going to blow it.”

3. Post your goals where you will see them every day. This will keep it at the forefront of your mind. Instead of forgetting that you are trying to lose weight and ordering a big, thick porterhouse, you will have been reminded earlier that day that you need to go with something a little more on the lighter side. It will help your will beat your desire.

4. Find an encouraging person, who you respect, to keep you accountable. This person should ask you, at an interval established by the both of you, how it is going. They must be the encouraging type, though. If you are blowing it, they can say, “Well, that’s okay, get back to it tomorrow.” If you are doing well, they can say, “Awesome job. I’ll talk to you next week.” You will look forward to their weekly encouragement.

5. Find a partner. That’s right, someone who is trying to accomplish the same thing (or something different if need be). Just make sure that they really want to change, or they will end up just bellyaching about how hard it is and you will both fall into the abyss.

6. Write down a list of all of the benefits that will come if you accomplish this. If it is losing weight, it might be something like this: Feel better, better self-esteem, longer life, clothes are more comfortable, no more time spent sewing on popped buttons, wife says you look 22 again, etc. If it is quitting smoking, it may look like this: Better breath, no more brown fingers, no more wrinkles on my face, no more red eyes, no more smelly clothes, longer life, wife doesn't make me spend two hours a day on the back porch, etc. This will help you see what you will get from accomplishing your goal.

7. Plan a reward if you accomplish your goal. It can be anything from small to large. If you drop the 20 pounds, go out for dinner and dessert. Then get back to losing the next 20. If it is quitting smoking, go on a mini-vacation. Whatever you do, reward yourself. Or let a spouse or a friend pick the reward. Then splurge and enjoy!

Continue reading...

Your success in life is determined, to a large extent by your ability to think, plan, decide, and take action. The stronger your skills are in each of these areas, the faster you will achieve your goals and the happier you will be with your life and career. Personal strategic planning is the tool that takes you from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.

Difference between Train and Plane
The difference between people who use strategic planning to organize and direct their lives and those who do not is like the difference between taking a train and taking a plane. Both will get you from point A to point B, but the plane—personal strategic planning—will get you there much faster and without frequent stops.

Systematic Way of Thinking
Skill in personal strategic planning is not something you are born with, like eye color or perfect pitch. It is a systematic way of thinking and acting and is, therefore, something you can learn, like riding a bike or changing a tire. With practice, you can master the many different elements that make up this key skill, and you will get into the rhythm of thinking and acting strategically for the rest of your life. When you do acquire rhythm, you will realize extraordinary results. Your life and career will take off, and the sky is truly the limit.

Save Time and Money
Why is strategic planning and thinking so helpful? The answer is simple: it saves you an enormous amount of time and money. When you review and analyze key strategic questions of concepts of your career or business, you find yourself focusing on the critical tasks necessary to achieve your goals. At the same time, you stop doing those things that keep you from achieving success. You do more of the right things and fewer things that get and keep you off track. You set performance goals for people and projects. You become skilled at measuring and tracking results. You move into the express lane in both work and life.

Design Your Life and Career
Your goals in personal strategic planning are similar. The key difference is that rather than improving your return on equity, your planning efforts will allow you to realize a greater return on energy. You might say that personal strategic planning will increase your return on life. A business measures its equity in terms of financial capital. On the other hand, you measure your personal equity in terms of your own human capital. Your personal equity consists of the physical, emotional, and mental energies you are able to invest in your career. Set a goal of achieving the very highest return possible on the investment of your energies.

Critical Question
Ask yourself this critical question: What is it that I do especially well? Examine the areas where you excel or are clearly superior to others in your field. You need to know what you can claim as your personal competitive advantage. This is the lifeblood of personal strategic planning. Your success is tied directly to how excellent you become at the most important part of your work.

Action Exercise
Clarify your career or business vision. What could your ideal career or business look like? What could you be doing most of the time? How much would you be earning? What kind of people would you be working with? What level of responsibility would you have? What kind of industry would you be in?

by : Brian Tracy

Continue reading...

The Law of Correspondence says that your outer life tends to be a mirror image of your inner life. Everywhere you look, there you are. Everywhere you look, you see yourself reflected back. You do not see the world as it is, but as you are—inside. If you want to change what is going on in the world around you—your relationships, results, and rewards—you have to change what in going on in the world inside you. Fortunately, this is the only part of your life over which you have complete control.

The Starting Point of Success
The starting point of excelling in time management is desire. Almost everyone feels that their time management skills could be vastly better than they are. The key to motivation is "motive." For you to develop sufficient desire to develop Time Power, you must be intensely motivated by the benefits you feel you will enjoy.


Gaining Two Extra Hours Each Day
Your productivity can dramatically change if you add to extra hours to your day. Two extra hours per day, multiplies by five days per week, equals ten extra hours a week. Ten extra hours a week multiplied by fifty weeks a year would give you 500 extra productive hours each year. And 500 hours translates into more that twelve, forty-hour weeks, or the equivalent of three extra months of productive working time each year. By gaining two productive hours each day, you can transform your personal and working life.

Improving Your Productivity Performance
Your productivity, performance, and income will increase by at least 25 percent over the next year. Two more productive hours, out of the eight hours that you spend at work each day, is the equivalent of at least a 25 percent increase.

Increasing Your Sense of Control
When you leverage the power of time, you will have a greater sense of control over your work and your personal life. You will feel like the master of your own destiny, and a power in your own life. You will feel more positive and powerful in every part of your life.

Take Control of your Time and Your Life
One of the keys to developing a stronger internal focus of control is to manage your time and your life better. The more skilled you become at managing your time, the happier and more confident you will feel. You will have a stronger sense of personal power. You will feel in charge of your own destiny. You will have a greater sense of well-being. You will be more positive and personable.

Having More Time for Your Family
You will have more time for your family and your personal life as you get your time and your life under control. You will have more time for your friends, for relaxation, for personal and professional development, and for anything else you want to do. When you become a master of your own time, and recapture two hours per day, you can use that extra time to chase your dreams.

Action Exercise
Figure out how you can add two hours of productivity to your day. Make a schedule of your day and find where you can squeeze two hours of time out for maximum efficiency.

Continue reading...

One of the most desirable attitudes of a leader is an ability to view problems as opportunities and setbacks as temporary inconveniences. This positive attitude also welcomes change as friendly and is not upset by surprises, even negative ones. How we approach challenges and problems is a crucial aspect of our decision making process, whether in business or in our personal lives. In companies and environments in which criticism, pessimism, cynicism and motivation by fear prevail, an attitude develops that leads to avoiding failure at all costs. The trouble with failure avoidance is that it’s simultaneously avoidance of success, which depends on big risks.

Innovation and creativity are impossible when people are in fear of being penalized for failure.

Early experience often teaches that failure is to be avoided at all costs. This begins in childhood, when we encounter the first “No!!” It grows like a weed when we are criticized by our parents, other family members, our teachers and our peers. It leads to associating ourselves with our mistakes, and to a self-image of clumsiness and awkwardness. Not wanting to be criticized or rejected, many adults also seek security rather than risk looking foolish or appearing awkward. They quietly ride with the system, not rocking the boat.

All lasting success in life is laced with problems and misfortunes which require creativity and innovation. Winners turn stumbling blocks into steppingstones.

In the 1920s, when Ernest Hemingway was working hard to perfect his craft, he lost a suitcase containing all his manuscripts. The devastated Hemingway couldn’t conceive of redoing his work. He could think only of the months he’d devoted to his arduous writing—and for nothing, he was now convinced.

But when he lamented his loss to poet Ezra Pound, Pound called it a stroke of luck. Pound assured Hemingway that when he rewrote the stories, he would forget the weak parts and only the best material would reappear. Instead of framing the event in disappointment, Pound cast it in the light of opportunity. Hemingway did rewrite the stories, and the rest, as they say, is history.

This week, concentrate on framing your challenges as “opportunities to grow” rather than “disappointments and problems.”
—Denis Waitley

Continue reading...

Quite frankly, I wish personal growth would just happen! I wish I would just get better and money would fall out of the sky. I wish my waist would get smaller even as I sit on the couch in front of a warm fire eating Breyer's Vanilla Bean ice cream. Oh, how I wish it was easy!

Okay, enough whining, enough dreaming, enough lack of reality. I have it out of my system! The reality is that it is work to grow personally. The sooner we realize that, even lovingly embrace that, the sooner we jump on the highway of success! The fact is that we "have to" do some things!

As my uncle the truck driver use to say to me when I was a kid, "Wish in one hand and spit in the other – then see which one fills first." (Remember, he was a trucker, and somebody else may have been a bit more elegant, but I still remember it today, 25 years later. I recommend however that you take it at face value. It isn't a fun experiment to actually carry out.

Without any further ado, here are the seven "have-to's" to achieve personal growth for yourself. Don't wish anymore! Get on the ball and start reaping the rewards!

1. You have to know what it is that you want. Wanting personal growth isn't enough. Do you want more money? How much? Do you want to lose weight? How much? Do you want a spouse? Who? Do you want to travel? Where? Do you want more freedom in your professional life? What would that look like? Clearly define in your mind what it is that you want! Once you do…

2. You have to decide that you really want it. Do you really want it? That is the place to start, really, because I have realized working with people that many of them really don't want what they think they want once I talk them through all of the issues. Is this what you really want or is it a dream you have to escape something else? For example, do you really want to quit your job and start your own company? Do you want the risk of reputation? The risk of capital loss? Do you want to work from six in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week for the next two to three years? Do you really want it? Yes? Proceed…

3. You have to be willing to sacrifice to get it. What will you give up to get personal growth? I know what I have to give up to be able to fit into size 32 pants – mud pie! Now, you may not think that is so bad, but you don't know how bad I love mud pie! I know that it is a sacrifice for me to get to the gym every day of the week (okay, I usually take two Sunday afternoon's a month off). I know how much I write the check out for each month to belong to the gym – it would feed a small army. This is sacrifice, all of it. What are you willing to sacrifice to get personal growth in your life? Are you willing? Then proceed…

4. You have to be willing to be criticized. Surprisingly, the average person doesn't like the average achiever. Why? Because they make the average person feel, well, average. They resent that the achiever makes choices they don't make, even though they could too. And they secretly resent that the achiever benefits from rewards that they don't. It seems odd, but working with thousands of people over the years I have seen enough jealousy and envy to fill every seat in the Rose Bowl. Can you handle that to various degrees? Then see number five…

5. You have to decide you want it more than other pleasures. What is more pleasurable: Ice cream every night or a proper weight? What is more pleasurable: Sitting on the couch or pounding away on a treadmill? What is more pleasurable: Spending your money on the things you want right now or saving for later? What is more pleasurable: Getting off at five every night or working endlessly on the weekends? What is more pleasurable: Reading a favorite novel or a technical book? What is more pleasurable: Four weeks of vacation or one? You get the point. In order to grow personally or professionally, there will have to be a desire to work hard in spite of the pleasures that call your name. And if you work it right, in the end there will be plenty of time to reward yourself with the pleasures of accomplishment. Do you want it more that other pleasures? Really? Then let's move on…

6. You have to take a long-term approach. Why do most people fail to accomplish their personal growth goals? Because they take a short-term approach. They know what to do. They do it for a week or a month, then they quit. Every January the gym gets so busy. Then February rolls around and I have no problem getting on the machines! In order to accomplish your personal growth goals, you absolutely, positively must view it as a long-term goal. For example, when most people want to lose weight, what do they do? They change their diet until they lose it. Then what? They change it back and gain the weight back. Instead, they ought to say, I am changing the way I eat for the rest of my life and slowly but surely my weight will take care of itself. And it does! Are you capable of seeing your personal goals in the log-term? Well then you are ready for number seven…

7. You have to diligently, methodically, and relentlessly work at it. Every day, every week, every year. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I was on a conference call with Zig Ziglar last night and he made an incredible revelation. For 25 years he has read for three hours a day! No wonder he oozes information! That is diligence. That is methodical. That is relentless! Can you do the same for yourself in the area you want to grow in? Certainly! But will you, that is the question. If you do, you will achieve any dream you set forth for yourself!

You can achieve personal growth! It is entirely possible for you to live your dreams! Put the above to work and you will see them unfold before your very eyes! Just remember, it won't just happen to you, you "have-to" do some things!

Continue reading...