Many people believe they cannot change. "I yam what I yam," the cartoon character Popeye habitually explains. Before any change can happen in your life, you have to believe that a transformation is possible. There comes a time when we must say: "I am willing to change."
Beware of mental locks. In A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech offers a list of what he calls "mental locks." To break free of a life of procrastination and mediocrity, we must guard our minds against thoughts that destroy our expectations of success. This quiz will help you identify areas where you can take concrete action to change your attitude. Answer "yes" if you have ever thought or said the following:
- I've never been a creative person.
- Stay where you are until you have perfect visibility.
- Follow the rules.
- Please be logical!
- That doesn't sound like the right answer.
- Please be practical about this!
- Avoid making mistakes at all costs.
- If this doesn't work, I'll look like a fool.
- That's out of my area of expertise.
Choose one of your "yes" items and reflect on the last time you said or thought it. Did thinking or saying it cause you to procrastinate or give up? Our thoughts and words influence the outcome of our efforts-what you say is what you get.
Even a simple quiz like the one you just took can be a great opportunity to improve your ability to make things happen and get things done. Don't expect to change your attitude by rushing through all the points at once. Work on one thing every day until people ask you what happened. When others start to see a change in your attitude, you'll know that you're winning the war against procrastination.
It starts in your mind. When you have a total determination to get things done, you tap into unused capabilities you never knew you had-abilities most human beings never use. When you expect to be successful, you jump at the opportunity to do the very things that used to cause you to procrastinate.
Never lose your sense of humor. The great nineteenth-century Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, was told by his superiors at Cambridge University that he would be expected to attend a compulsory church service at 6:00 a.m. "Aye," Maxwell said, "I suppose I could stay up that late."
Always remember to beware of the mental locks that threaten to keep us in a vicious circle of procrastination and defeat. Make up your mind to rise above the level of mediocrity-give yourself a whack on the side of the head and do it.
February 3, 2013
3 Keys to Lasting Happiness
It’s a tremendous feeling! You know the one – that moment when you feel like you’re on top of the world and completely and utterly blessed. We’ve all experienced moments of pure joy and elation in our lives. Now, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sustain that feeling throughout the year - throughout your life?
You can.
Here’s how.
- Look inside yourself. We’ve all been misled by the whole “pursuit of happiness” agenda. To say there is a pursuit implies that you are actively looking for something outside of yourself – that you have not yet attained the valuable prize. The truth is, happiness resides within your own mind. It’s a feeling you have, not an event. It’s not based on what you have or where you are, it’s based on your perceptions.
This has been proven with lottery winners who suddenly found themselves wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations. Researchers tracked them for a year and found that they were no happier than they had been before winning the money. It’s not the external events that determine your happiness, it’s your mindset.
- Choose happiness. Everything in life boils down to choices. Nowhere is this more evident than in your state of mind. It is impossible for anyone or anything to make you feel a certain way. You alone control your emotional state. You decide how you react to events and life circumstances.
You can choose to be upset, for example, that you spilled ketchup all over yourself before a big presentation, or you can laugh it off. You can choose to be upset that your car battery died, or you can be happy that it’s not something more expensive that needs repair. You can choose to let someone yelling at you affect your day, or you can refuse to let it color your emotions and be happy that you are not that miserable yourself!
- Refuse to be a victim. Just as you choose your happiness level, you choose how you are affected by events. As Maya Angelou so eloquently stated, “I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it.” If you look at people who have been through traumatic and life altering events, the ones who persevered and were able to overcome the tragedies were those who defined the event on their terms. They refused to let the event define them.
Happiness is not some elusive feeling that comes and goes in our life. It’s an emotion that we can create at any time. So, embrace your power and choose to be happy!
September 17, 2012
Massive Corporate Layoffs...
In 2009, AT&T had 294,600 employees (down from 1,099,000 in 1984) about $120 billion in revenues, and a net worth of $142 billion.
The core business of AT&T has been around for about 130 years and still, in many respects, clings to the model that Ron Coase established in "The Nature of the Firm."
In that same year, Google, a brand-new company, built on new technologies and, in many ways, a new business model, had 20,222 employees, about $21 billion in sales, and a net worth of $131 billion
But consider the difference in revenues and net worth generated per employee:
- AT&T = $420,909 annual revenues and $482,009 total net worth per employee
- Google = $1,077,813 annual revenues and $6.478 million total net worth per employee
What are we seeing here? We are seeing a drastic difference in revenues, transaction costs, and fundamental business model differences.
Again, what does any of this have to do with you?
As you’re reading this... someone is out to eliminate your job. Another hopeful employee, an inventor, the business owner. All want to reduce overhead and increase profits.
Despite what the media is telling you, many large companies are not laying off people because of the bad economic times... people are being let go because of the technology shift.
That’s unemployment caused by what economists call structural unemployment.
A newer, better method comes along and people get pink slips. But companies still keep the output of their labor... either in a better method... a better organization chart... or a better machine.
If it’s not already happened to you, it’s not a question of IF... it’s only a question of WHEN your pink slip will be hand-delivered.
For you, the entrepreneur, it can actually be good news... if you understand how to start your own small business and rapidly take it to a profitable level.
Did you know that nine out of 10 successful entrepreneurs leave their company when things are good? They don’t wait until times are tough. They don’t wait for the boss to drop the pink-slip bomb on them. They don’t wait for others to control their life.
They take action. They stay in control. They move when the opportunity is right, not when things are desperate.
Because of this, I’m encouraging you to plan your escape today, right now.
Remember, it’s only a matter of time before you’re forced out. Why? Because virtually every corporate job in America today is being constantly eliminated in favor of an easier, better, faster way of getting things done, using technology.
You really have no choice but to become an entrepreneur.
September 8, 2012
The Best Gift You Can Give To Yourself And Others
I'm often asked the question, "How can I best help my children, spouse, family member, staff member, friend, etc., improve/change?" In fact that might be the most frequently asked question I receive, "How can I help change someone else?"
My answer often comes as a surprise and here it is. The key to helping others is to help yourself first. In other words, the best contribution I can make to someone else is my own personal development. If I become 10 times wiser, 10 times stronger, think of what that will do for my adventure as a father... as a grandfather... as a business colleague.
The best gift I can give to you, really, is my ongoing personal development. Getting better, getting stronger, becoming wiser. I think parents should pick this valuable philosophy up. If the parents are okay, the kids have an excellent chance of being okay. Work on your personal development as parents; that's the best gift you can give to your children.
If you have ever ridden in an airplane, then you might have noticed the oxygen compartment located above every seat. There are explicit instructions that say "In case of an emergency, first secure your own oxygen mask and then if you have children with you then secure their masks." Take care of yourself first... then assist your children. If we use that same philosophy throughout our whole parental life, it would be so valuable.
If I learn to create happiness for myself, my children now have an excellent chance to be happy. If I create a unique lifestyle for myself and my spouse, that will be a great example to serve my children.
Self-development enables you to serve, to be more valuable to those around you; for your child... your business... your colleague... your community... your church.
That's why I teach development skills. If you keep refining all the parts of your character, yourself, your health, etc., so that you become an attractive person to the marketplace, you'll attract opportunity. Opportunity will then begin to seek you out. Your reputation will begin to precede you and people will want to do business with you. All of that possibility is created by adopting and applying the philosophy that success is something you attract by continually working on your own personal development.
By Jim Rohn
My answer often comes as a surprise and here it is. The key to helping others is to help yourself first. In other words, the best contribution I can make to someone else is my own personal development. If I become 10 times wiser, 10 times stronger, think of what that will do for my adventure as a father... as a grandfather... as a business colleague.
The best gift I can give to you, really, is my ongoing personal development. Getting better, getting stronger, becoming wiser. I think parents should pick this valuable philosophy up. If the parents are okay, the kids have an excellent chance of being okay. Work on your personal development as parents; that's the best gift you can give to your children.
If you have ever ridden in an airplane, then you might have noticed the oxygen compartment located above every seat. There are explicit instructions that say "In case of an emergency, first secure your own oxygen mask and then if you have children with you then secure their masks." Take care of yourself first... then assist your children. If we use that same philosophy throughout our whole parental life, it would be so valuable.
If I learn to create happiness for myself, my children now have an excellent chance to be happy. If I create a unique lifestyle for myself and my spouse, that will be a great example to serve my children.
Self-development enables you to serve, to be more valuable to those around you; for your child... your business... your colleague... your community... your church.
That's why I teach development skills. If you keep refining all the parts of your character, yourself, your health, etc., so that you become an attractive person to the marketplace, you'll attract opportunity. Opportunity will then begin to seek you out. Your reputation will begin to precede you and people will want to do business with you. All of that possibility is created by adopting and applying the philosophy that success is something you attract by continually working on your own personal development.
By Jim Rohn
September 5, 2012
Maintaining Honesty and Integrity by Jim Rohn
For a leader, honesty and integrity are absolutely essential to survival. A lot of businesspeople don’t realize how closely they’re being watched by their subordinates. Remember when you were a kid in grammar school, how you used to sit there staring at your teacher all day? By the end of the school year, you could do a perfect imitation of all your teacher’s mannerisms. You were aware of the slightest nuances in your teacher’s voice—all the little clues that distinguished levels of meaning that told you the difference between bluff and “now I mean business.”
In any case, the employee was desperate. He approached the company CEO and asked him to talk to the insurance people. The CEO agreed, and the next thing the employee knew, the bill was gone and the charges were rescinded.
When he told some colleagues about the way the CEO had so readily used his influence with the insurance company, they just shook their heads and smiled. The CEO had paid the bill out of his own pocket, and everybody knew it, no matter how quietly it had been done.
One of the most challenging areas of leadership is your family. Leadership of a family demands even higher standards of honesty and integrity, and the stakes are higher too. You can replace disgruntled employees and start over. You can even get a new job for yourself, if it comes to that. But your family can’t be shuffled like a deck of cards. If you haven’t noticed, kids are great moral philosophers, especially as they get into adolescence. They’re determined to discover and expose any kind of hypocrisy, phoniness, or lack of integrity on the part of authority figures, and if we’re parents, that means us. It’s frightening how unforgiving kids can be about this, but it really isn’t a conscious decision on their part; it’s just a necessary phase of growing up.
They’re testing everything, especially their parents.
As a person of integrity yourself, you’ll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This is a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth: to mean what they say and to say what they mean.
“Hope of dishonest gain is the beginning of loss.” I don’t think that old saying refers to loss of money. I think it actually means loss of self-respect. You can have all the material things in the world, but if you’ve lost respect for yourself, what do you really have? The only way to ever attain success and enjoy it is to achieve it honestly with pride in what you’ve done.
This isn’t just a sermon, it’s very practical advice. Not only can you take it to heart, you can take it to the bank.
And you were able to do that after eight or nine months of observation. Suppose you had five or 10 years. Do you think there would have been anything about your teacher you didn’t know?
Now fast-forward and use that analogy as a manager. Do you think there’s anything your people don’t know about you right this minute? If you haven’t been totally aboveboard and honest with them, do you really think you’ve gotten away with it? Not too likely. But if you’ve been led to believe that you’ve gotten away with it, there might be a good probability that people are afraid of you, and that’s a problem in its own right.
Now fast-forward and use that analogy as a manager. Do you think there’s anything your people don’t know about you right this minute? If you haven’t been totally aboveboard and honest with them, do you really think you’ve gotten away with it? Not too likely. But if you’ve been led to believe that you’ve gotten away with it, there might be a good probability that people are afraid of you, and that’s a problem in its own right.
But there is another side of this coin. In any organization, people want to believe in their leaders. If you give them reason to trust you, they’re not going to go looking for reasons to think otherwise, and they’ll be just as perceptive about your positive qualities as they are about the negative ones.
A situation that happened some years ago at a company in the Midwest illustrates this perfectly. The wife of a new employee experienced complications in the delivery of a baby. There was a medical bill of more than $10,000, and the health insurance company didn’t want to cover it. The employee hadn’t been on the payroll long enough, the pregnancy was a preexisting condition, etc., etc.
A situation that happened some years ago at a company in the Midwest illustrates this perfectly. The wife of a new employee experienced complications in the delivery of a baby. There was a medical bill of more than $10,000, and the health insurance company didn’t want to cover it. The employee hadn’t been on the payroll long enough, the pregnancy was a preexisting condition, etc., etc.
When he told some colleagues about the way the CEO had so readily used his influence with the insurance company, they just shook their heads and smiled. The CEO had paid the bill out of his own pocket, and everybody knew it, no matter how quietly it had been done.
Now an act of dishonesty can’t be hidden either, and it will instantly undermine the authority of a leader. But an act of integrity and kindness like the example above is just as obvious to all concerned. When you’re in a leadership position, you have the choice of how you will be seen, but you will be seen one way or the other, make no mistake about it.
One of the most challenging areas of leadership is your family. Leadership of a family demands even higher standards of honesty and integrity, and the stakes are higher too. You can replace disgruntled employees and start over. You can even get a new job for yourself, if it comes to that. But your family can’t be shuffled like a deck of cards. If you haven’t noticed, kids are great moral philosophers, especially as they get into adolescence. They’re determined to discover and expose any kind of hypocrisy, phoniness, or lack of integrity on the part of authority figures, and if we’re parents, that means us. It’s frightening how unforgiving kids can be about this, but it really isn’t a conscious decision on their part; it’s just a necessary phase of growing up.
They’re testing everything, especially their parents.
As a person of integrity yourself, you’ll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This is a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth: to mean what they say and to say what they mean.
Praise is one of the world’s most effective teaching and leadership tools. Criticism and blame, even if deserved, are counterproductive unless all other approaches have failed.
Now for the other side of the equation, we all know people who have gotten ahead as a result of dishonest or unethical behavior. When you’re a kid, you might naively think that never happens, but when you get older, you realize that it does. Then you think you’ve really wised up. But that’s not the real end of it. When you get older, you see the long-term consequences of dishonest gain, and you realize that in the end it doesn’t pay.
Now for the other side of the equation, we all know people who have gotten ahead as a result of dishonest or unethical behavior. When you’re a kid, you might naively think that never happens, but when you get older, you realize that it does. Then you think you’ve really wised up. But that’s not the real end of it. When you get older, you see the long-term consequences of dishonest gain, and you realize that in the end it doesn’t pay.
“Hope of dishonest gain is the beginning of loss.” I don’t think that old saying refers to loss of money. I think it actually means loss of self-respect. You can have all the material things in the world, but if you’ve lost respect for yourself, what do you really have? The only way to ever attain success and enjoy it is to achieve it honestly with pride in what you’ve done.
This isn’t just a sermon, it’s very practical advice. Not only can you take it to heart, you can take it to the bank.
August 1, 2012
Got Google?
I can name over 20 people right now that are not on board with me and my mindset of how Google is the best thing going when it comes flexibility, time saver, effortless most of time and always improving. What more can I ask for. 
July 4, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)