Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged small business consulting
Planning for Success Part Four
Feb 7th
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says, “I am coming.” ~Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Minor Poems, Copa
Greetings! How have you been since my last entry? Hopefully great! Last time we looked at my list of 20 reasons why I was going to do what it takes to get back into great shape in 2009. I also talked briefly about towards motivation and away from motivation. For many goals, for many of my clients, I will have them only look at towards (positive) motivations. I do this for good reason, negative motivators are by nature stress inducing and one thing most of my clients tend to already have enough of is stress. When you focus just on moving away from something, then you will feel stress.
Is negative motivation always bad then? No. Negative motivation is often, even commonly, more powerful than positive motivation. Given that, when you really need to get something done, and especially if you have tried to make a change in the past and it did not happen, then it becomes a good idea to use negative and positive motivation.
For me, I have been trying to get back into shape since I became a non-smoker. I have gotten most of the way there and gotten out of shape again. I have lost weight again and again only to gain it back. I have lost, conservatively, 500 pounds in the past 12 years and yet here I am, still virtually the same weight. I could be depressed about this; I could even give up, but I am not going to. This time things will be very different and you will see why as this series of articles progresses and the year goes on!
My Vision for Optimal Health
(Here is the first draft of my personal vision that I will use to help me get back in shape. It is a work in progress, I will update it whenever I find a way to make it feel even better, work even better, motivate me even more fully.)
I wake up in the morning feeling great – feeling completely rested and energized. More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Eight
Jan 29th
“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” ~David Brinkley
Did you get a chance to read through my personal vision for this next year? If not, take a few minutes and read it over; you will find it as part of yesterday’s entry. I want to point out a few of the special features of my vision statement for the coming year that you might consider incorporating into yours.
- Everything in my vision assumes that I have already been successful. I mentally want to be in the place where I expect to succeed. Sure, something could happen that prevents me from achieving one or more of my goals, but every day, as I read my vision, I am going to put myself in the mental frame of mind that I succeeded – that I found a way and made it happen.
- I talk in my vision about how it feels when I have made my goal into my reality. I talk about how great it feels to have achieved this. I am creating an anchor of feeling great that I am attaching to thinking about each of my goals and to taking action on each of my goals. More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Four
Jan 22nd
“Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” ~Grandma Moses
Did you balance out your goals so that you have a nice mix of short, medium and long-term things written down? Great! Now here is your next task: I want you to go thru all of your goals for the next twelve months and choose five of them to focus on. Choose the five most exciting and compelling and empowering goals. Many of my seminar attendees have a problem making this decision at first. “But I want all of my goals!” – I hear this all of the time. And I understand! I want you to have all of your goals, but you cannot focus on all of them at one time and be successful. It just doesn’t work.
What you can do is choose the five goals, spread across the categories of your life, that by accomplishing in the next year, you will almost as a side effect accomplish your other goals. I call these goals the drivers. As an example, here is a recap of my Top Five Commitments for 2009:
- Health: I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009
- Family: My wife and I will take our family to New York for a great vacation to celebrate my elder daughter’s completion of her graduate program
- Business: I will blog 5 days per week – every week of 2009
- Finances: I will earn more in 2009 than I ever have before – at least 25% more
- Fun: I will run in the USA’s largest cross-country race: The Living History Farms Seven Miler.
Are these all of my goals for 2009? Not even close! But by focusing on these, by putting my concentration here, I can virtually guarantee that I will succeed in manifesting these goals and along the way, most if not all of my other goals for 2009 will also happen.
So, go ahead, choose your “Top Five” for 2009. Make sure that they are not all in one category and make sure that they are exciting. If they aren’t exciting, then rewrite them until they are. Next time we will take these goals and put them into a workable vision – something that you can use and enjoy and benefit from every day.
Till next time…Jack
“My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
Your Vision of the Future Part Three
Jan 21st
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” ~Mark Twain
How did you do with the inventory of your dreams? Was it fun to write them down? How were the timelines? Did you find that most of your goals were many years away? If so, then go back now and add some shorter term goals – goals that you can create in the next year or two. Perhaps you found that most of your goals were things that you intended to complete in the near future – in this case go back and add some long term goals. These long term goals are in some ways your mission – what you are really here to accomplish in your lifetime.
That is all that you need to do today – just go and make sure that you a good mix of short term goals (things that you intend to accomplish in the next year or so), medium term goals (three to five years for completion) and finally long term goals (five years to twenty years or more). One last comment, if you aren’t excited by your goals, go back and rewrite them. Your goals should excite you when you read them. If they aren’t exciting, then you are not being honest with yourself about what you really want.
Till next time…Jack
“What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.” ~Mark Twain
Your Vision of the Future Part Two
Jan 15th
“Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.” ~Martin H. Fischer
Hey. Did you answer the question from the last entry? Let me repeat it: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt to become or achieve or do, if you knew that it was impossible to fail? How did you do with that question? For me, I can still remember the first time that I heard this question, more than 20 years ago now, and how frightened I was by it. Yes, frightened.
It was frightening to me to put down on paper what I really wanted – the secret dreams of my heart, without knowing how I would accomplish them. Somehow it was safer if I kept these dreams locked up in my mind without even a piece of paper to incriminate me. Funny reaction I know, but some of you might also be finding some resistance to this question. The question does not ask you to formulate a plan, or be logical, or be reasonable – all of those things come later. What it does is presuppose that you will find a way and that the best way to proceed is to come from a place of certainty: I don’t know how I am going to get there, but I know that I will.
So, what was your answer? Write it down and let’s move on to the next question. Actually, before that, let’s do the “priming” that I had mentioned in the last entry. I have written about this before and any of you that have attended one of my live seminars have experienced priming first hand. As a recap, priming is a very powerful technique designed to help you to enter optimal, peak states. I’m not going to go over how it works today. Just follow these instructions – read these words:
Destiny Destined for Greatness Explorer Achievement Powerful Self Confident Successful Unstoppable Grateful Deeply Fulfilled Excited Adventure Satisfaction Playful Delight Ready to learn Fun Ready for new experiences Dreams Heart’s Desire Marvelous Gifts What Matters Most to Me What I truly want My Dreams My Passions My Loves
Great. Now let’s move on to question two. Question 2) Let’s create an inventory of your dreams. I want you to pretend that it is Christmas Eve and you have been very good indeed – Santa is going to bring you whatever you wish. This should be a comprehensive list that looks from today all the way forward to 20 or more years from now. I don’t want you to worry at all about how you will accomplish any of these goals. I don’t want you to put any limits on these goals. I just want you to dream, across all categories of your life, and write these things down.
I’ll give you some categories to help your creativity. Try to end up with at least a dozen notes in each of the following categories of goals. Spend anywhere from a minimum of 5 minutes to whatever amount of time feels right to you.
Goal Setting Categories:
- Your Physical Body Goals
- Personal Development Goals
- Family Goals
- Relationship Goals
- Business Goals
- Spiritual Goals
- Financial Goals
- Fun / Delight Goals
- Possessions
- Emotional Goals
Have fun! It is impossible to do this wrong and we will debrief the results next time.
Jack
“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I am with you kid. Let’s go.”" ~Maya Angelou
What’s Your Vision Like?
Jan 13th
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ~Audre Lorde
So, what is your vision like? I don’t mean the eye doctor kind of vision. (Although since I brought it up, how come “they” decided to make print smaller and fuzzier a few years ago? I had to go get these things called reading glasses – most inconvenient for an avid reader!) What I do mean is how is your vision – your picture of how your life is going to be? So, how is it?
I think having a clear and exciting and compelling vision of your future is a critical element for success. With the right vision, you can become fearless. With the right vision, you are naturally focused. With the right vision, stress disappears and you are pulled towards your dreams by great positive feeling of anticipation.
So how do you create an effective vision if you don’t already have one? The answer is in using questions and self analysis. Over the next few entries I am going to go over how I coach my clients towards creating effective visions for themselves and for their companies. You won’t want to miss it.
Till next time…Jack
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” ~Carl Jung
Goals Part 3
Sep 15th
“Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.” ~Wayne Dyer (born 1940) a popular American self-help advocate, author and lecturer. His 1976 book Your Erroneous Zones has sold over 30 million copies and is one of the best selling books of all time.
Books and more books! I love them! So, what does that personal admission have to do with goals and how you can achieve them more consistently and rapidly and have more fun along the way? Simple. I bought a bunch more great books, at least highly rated books, about goals and I am going to be giving you the best of these over the next few weeks as I absorb them.
Here is the exciting list of my newest purchases:
Get the Life You Want by Richard Bandler (I started here – Richard is a genius!)
The 29% Solution by Ivan Misner
The Magic Lamp by Keith Ellis
Goals! by Brian Tracy
Write it Down, Make it Happen by Henriette Klauser
Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins (Goals with a medical twist)
I can’t wait to incorporate the best of these into my knowledge base and share it with you! Come back soon!
Till next time…Jack
“To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.” ~William James (1842 – 1910) a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology and mysticism, among others.
You Only Have 19 Weeks Left!
Sep 2nd
“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” ~James Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) – a two-time Oscar-nominated American film actor
That right. You have just a bit over 19 weeks left to achieve your goals for this year. How are you doing? Are you on track to achieve your top five goals for this year? If you are – great! If not, what are you going to do to get yourself on track to achieving your top five goals for this year? Wait. Hold on. You say that you don’t even have your top 5 goals for the year selected, never mind a plan to achieve them? Well, the next series of entries will change all of that. I am going to focus on goal selection, and most importantly, goal achievement – so come back tomorrow.
Till next time…Jack
“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” ~Stephen Vincent Benét – (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) – an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist; best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown’s Body
Labor Day Jack Style
Sep 1st
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” ~Ovid – Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC – 17 AD) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid
I have celebrated, observed, enjoyed and sometimes received holiday pay for Labor Day most of my life. I assume that even when I was a young sprite that I did something on Labor Day – I just have no memory of it.
Until today, I had no idea what this holiday was really about – although I certainly was able to guess that it had something to do with work based on the title. For those of you in the USA that are similarly lacking in knowledge, and others outside the USA that have interest, here is some information gleaned from the internet: More >
Modern Day Flying Carpets
Aug 11th
“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I love flying airplanes. One of my uncles took me flying in his private plane when I was 6 or 7 years old and I can still see the way the ground looked from up high, and this more than 40 years later. The entire experience was wonderful.
When I was 18, I considered joining the Air Force to get my wings, but I worn glasses, then as now, and I was told that I could not fly jets with glasses. This made me sad. My father had flown for the Army Air Corp in World War II and I had hoped to follow in his footsteps – it was not meant to be. I would need to wait awhile longer for my “magic carpet”. More >