Monthly Archives: January 2017

Six things I hate and try to eliminate daily in my life.

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What we hate says a lot about who we are, what we value, and what we care about. Most people look at the word hate, and say the word is too harsh. It has a negative tone and we shouldn’t use it.

I believe just the opposite.  I believe hate can motivate us more than love does.  Hate can create more inspiration and motivation for an individual than love. People don’t end world hunger by loving people only.  No, these people hate the fact that people are starving and we live in a day and age where this shouldn’t be the case.

You can sum up all of human motivation into two areas:  We are either excited to pursue pleasure or avoid pain.  And the avoidance of pain has proven over and over and over again, to be a stronger desire than pursuing pleasure.

I was thinking about some of the basic things that really drive me crazy and things I hate more than anything else.  The words that kept popping up in my head, are actions or adjectives that no matter what position I have been in life and in my career, they have always drove me crazy and I have always hated them.

These six words are the words that kept popping up.

Complacency: definition: a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.

I have watched this disease set in on many people over the years. And I do believe it is a disease. I would go as far as saying that this is probably the number one reason many of us don’t achieve everything in life we could have.  I honesty believe everybody wants to do better.  I sincerely believe that.  However, what happens is that most people don’t seek to find the information first, and then take that information and implement it.  Even if you are a person who seeks the knowledge. The action part, which is the harder part of the success equation, is where most people don’t put in the work or discipline.

Where can you take immediate action today? 

Blame: definition: place responsibility on something, or someone else, instead of taking personal responsibility.

We all have had that person we know personally; it could be a friend, family member, and we all have definitely worked with someone who refuses to take responsibility and own something.  There are times when things can be taken out of our control. However, most of the good things and the bad things that happen in life to us, are because of us. They are a product of our decisions, or lack of decisions. Bad things happen to good people.  People get sick, or get an illness.  I am not talking about that kind of stuff.  I am talking about the other 99.9% of the things in life that you can control.

Be the person who doesn’t place blame today. I won’t either. 

Inconsideration: definition: lacking in care or thought for others.

Lets not get this messed up here. Inconsideration can mean a lot of different things. I am not talking about lacking care or thought of others that are in need, sick, live in a country where they are oppressed or under constant war.  I think we can all agree that we all care about those things.  However those are things that are not in our control.

I am talking more personal here.  Things such as being late for a meeting. Not responding to a person that you said you would follow-up with.  Someone having a responsibility to follow through on something and they do not.  The person who takes a personal call during a meeting.  The person who is having a conversation on a speaker phone at Starbucks for everyone to hear.  The person who refuses to put their phone down while they are checking out at the store or restaurant.  These little things that come up in daily life that demonstrate an inconsideration for others.

Be the person who is considerate of others when conducting business today. 

Insincerity: not expressing or showing true feelings

Lets call this what it is.  Insincerity is lying.  That is what it is.  If you are not showing or expressing your true feelings, you are a liar.  We all have been guilty of this at some point in our life.  And all it does is hurt ourselves and hurt others as well.  One of my favorite quotes of all time: “To be unclear is to be unkind.”  This means that when we are not expressing our true feelings to others than we are actually hurting them.

I apply this and teach this in my leadership courses.  Managers that are unclear about the expectations are bad managers first of all.  But the managers who try to sugarcoat a persons shortcomings, is unclear in explaining a persons shortcomings in areas they need to improve, they actually hurt the employee and the company.  When you are unclear the person who is falling short doesn’t know and doesn’t have an opportunity to improve.  Which means they will continue to perform unsatisfactory until they are told clearly what it is they need to improve.

Other areas include business deals where the parties aren’t interested in moving forward, but wont tell the other side that this is how they feel. All of these things take time and do more harm than good.  When we are sincere with others, everything moves forward because everyone knows where they stand.

Who do you need to be more truthful to today? 

Uncommitted: definition: This is my own definition: Not “all in” on any particular thing, belief, activity, goal.

I see a lot of people who are committed when they want to be committed.  Meaning when things are easy, they are committed.  When things get difficult they bail out.  I see people who say they want to save money, but spend like they always have. I see people who want to live a healthier lifestyle, but can’t keep the discipline required long enough to get the result they want, and in many cases, any result.  Most people either set on the fence and never take a stand, or they make a half-hearted commitment. Which means as long as it doesn’t require too much from them, they will do it.  We all know anything worthwhile requires commitment and discipline, especially if it is a new venture for them.

What is an area where you have lacked a full commitment? Go “all in” today. 

Arrogance: definition: an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from ignorance. This definition is more specific to what I believe.

When a person who is overweight preaches their version of health and fitness to you, you immediately think to yourself, “really, you haven’t earned the right.”  When a person who has been married three times and divorced, wants to give you marriage advice.  We all think to ourselves that they may not be the right person to take advice from, regardless if they have learned lessons or not.

Now more than ever we have a culture who believes their opinion and thoughts are better than another persons opinions or thoughts.  While I believe we should all have opinion and thoughts on things, and we should express those thoughts. What I strongly hate is when a person believes that their thought or opinion is any more factual than the others.

Secondly, when a person who has an air of arrogance in their opinion when they themselves are not buttoned up in areas of their own life. Like I said above. You have had to earn the right in my opinion.  The person who judges someones charitable giving and they themselves aren’t charitable. The leader that thinks they are a great leader when their people can’t stand them. The person who knows it all, but has every little experience in anything at all.  All of this is arrogance that hasn’t been earned.

What areas of life have you earned the right to be arrogant in? Areas you haven’t?

As you can see from my short list of things I hate, it is really a values list.  Which means, I value the opposite of the above things. However, if you call me uncommitted, I am more driven to prove that you are wrong.  If you call me committed, I am thankful, but it is doesn’t push me any harder necessarily.  Sometimes we have to look at things from the opposite viewpoint to push us to do things that we want to do.

As I start my day, I am going to look at areas of my life that I may have become a little complacent in.  If I look to blame, I am going to take ownership. If I find myself being inconsiderate, I am going to be sure I correct it in the moment. If I am insincere in anything today, I am going to quickly ensure I tell the truth, even if the truth could potentially upset the other person.  I know there are areas in my life that I have not gone “all in” and I am going to make sure the areas that are most important to me, I am fully committed in my time, my money, and my focus.  And lastly, I am going to be an expert in the areas that I know I am an expert in.  I am not going to be arrogant about something that I am not fully educated in, nor experienced in.

To your success and your future.

 

 

 

 

5 Reasons you aren’t as successful as you want to be

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It is what it is.  I am sitting here after my third or fourth rejection of the day.  And that is okay, because I am in sales, and when you are sales, you get rejected a lot.

I am not equipped at this point in my life and my career to tell you how to make a million dollars, because I haven’t been able to do that myself.  If you add up my income over the last few years, I easily would have had a million dollars come through my hands, however, I am not consistently making a million dollars.

Here is what I am equipped to tell you about though, because I have done it. I have successfully made $175,000 dollars a year for several years.  Now, maybe that is not enough for you.  Maybe, you want to go with the 10X theory, which means you should take all of your goals and multiply them by ten.  All of that is good stuff. However, if you haven’t made $100,000 dollars a year, why would anybody think they could go from five figures to seven figures without a few steps along the way.

I could easily get in to the steps I used to create a $175,000 a year in revenue generation for myself.  But I will save that for another day.  I instead want to talk about what I set out to discuss in this post. That is, why you aren’t as successful as you want to be.  My goal was to make $175,000 a year at one time, and it was important for me to determine that number.  However, what was more important than that number, was what I had to do to ensure I hit that number.  And that is what this blog is about.

As I stated at the beginning of the blog.  I literally have been rejected three or four times, maybe more, since the morning started.  I am not upset with the rejection.  No, I am more upset with the fact that the people who rejected me told me that they were actually interested in improving their life, because they told me so. Or the lives of the people they either support or manage within their company.

Let me take a little personal ownership here.  I am quite confident I could have done something differently in the initial sales process that could have made the outcome different at this point.  Meaning I would not have been told no this many times already today.

However, I know that the sales process has just begun and I will eventually change my initial errors into wins and I will eventually make the sale.  I know this because, I deliver with excellence and give more value to people than they actually pay for.  So I may have lost the battle, but I will win the war.  I digress.

Why is it that people say they are interested in making a change that could impact their life?  They have the opportunity right in front of them.  They agree, that it could change their life, but for whatever reason they fail to take the next steps? Thus they don’t create the success they want?

Here are my five reasons we aren’t successful as we want to be:

We lack commitment: You aren’t fully committed to what it is. Be honest with yourself here.  Have you ever done one of the following:

  • Purchased the book, but you didn’t read it
  • Bought the workout program, but never used it.
  • Bought the fitness equipment, and then used to hang your clothes on.
  • Went to the seminar, took the notes, but never followed up on them.
  • Requested more information. Got it. And then did nothing with it.
  • Downloaded the app. Put it on your last screen on your phone. Or deleted it totally.
  • Went to the website, but never made the call.
  • Cleaned out the kitchen to make way for the healthy stuff, it stayed that way for a month before it went back the old way.
  • Created a savings account, put the required money in it, and that is all the money you ever saved.
  • Took the job. Kept your resume out and your phone line open to other positions.

All of the examples above are what I call half-commitments. Or you were committed for about an hour.  Then the desire wore off, or the change was just too hard, and you weren’t committed to the goal you thought you were committed to.

Commitment means that you are all in on whatever it is you are looking to achieve.  Meaning you will spend whatever the amount is that needs to be spent.  You will make the time for however much time is necessary. You will make the sacrifices that will be required to make to get where you want to go.  Until you are ready to do these things, your aren’t ready and your aren’t fully committed.  I was committed to the $175,000 a year and that is why I was able to achieve it.

We don’t take action:   My mentor said it this way.  He called it the Law Of Diminishing Intent. Which meant the “The longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds that you will never actually do it.”  He also said that when the desire is the strongest, is the best time to take action.

For every second that goes by that we don’t take action on something that we like, and know that it could be beneficial to us, our desire to take action will lessen and lessen until we are no longer excited about the possibility anymore.  The key is to take action as quickly as possible. When you buy the book take action and start reading it now. When you buy the fitness equipment, make a plan to use it. When you download the app, start using it this second. When you download the budgeting document, put your budget in it now. When you decide to workout, start today.  When you attend the seminar and the information is great and you see how it could benefit you, pay for it today. Lock yourself in that commitment.

I believe sometimes for us to get the change we truly want, we have to trick ourselves into thinking we have no way out.  If I put all of my money in a savings account that I can access, but it is more difficult to get. If I want to save more money, I just put it in there. The trick is that it is more difficult to get out.  And sometimes that little bit of difficultness will, and has kept me from withdrawing the money, which means I saved more. Some other ways I have tricked myself is around eating less, getting up earlier and getting things done faster.  If you are interested in learning more about that, hit me up at bwillett555@gmail.com and I can share that with you.

Create a plan for your success:   The old saying is true and has been validated for over 6,000 years. If you want a different result, but you keep doing the same things, you are insane. That is as eloquent as I can put it.

The plan is important part of the equation here.  You have to be committed and you have to take action.  These are crucial, especially at the beginning. As you get further into this new way of life, the plan or the process becomes increasingly as important.

There are all kinds of programs out there around managing food portions so you only eat the right amount of food and don’t over eat. There are budgeting programs out there for managing your finances. There are development programs on how to become a better sales person.  If you are seeking to have success in anything in life, the chances are there is a program, or a plan out there that you can find.  And my advice is to look at them all. Over the years I have looked at different plans in all facets of my life when it comes to health and fitness, money, career development, dating, creating a business, etc. What I have found is that when I look at several different programs and plans, I can usually pull pieces from them all that I like, and I create my own plan.

The main thing to remember though is this.  We all are much better and more successful when we have a plan or a process that we can follow that is easy to do.  It can’t be too difficult, it is has to fit us, meaning we can and will do it as long as we are committed and taking action.

We think we got it all:  I was a business major in college.  Because of the system my school was on, I had to take three accounting courses at the undergraduate level to get my degree. Accounting 101, 102, and 103.  I can remember taking these three courses and saying to myself.  “I know everything there is to know about accounting.”  I obviously realize now, and even then, that this wasn’t the case, I didn’t know it all. Because there were several other accounting courses accounting majors had to take to learn about accounting.

At that time, I thought I knew enough to be able to go out and start doing accounting.  I felt like I had enough information that I could start doing accounting and be successful at it and I would learn more as I started doing it.

All of this to say.  Most of us download the information, go to the website and look around, read the table of contents of the book, watch the YouTube video, and think we have all the information or knowledge we need about a particular subject.   If you take and google search the title of this blog, you will find 45 million responses around this topic.  It is obviously an important topic that everyone talks about.

However, with as much information we all have access to, via internet, YouTube, groups, etc., still a majority of the population are looking for the answer, “to what it takes to be successful.”  I am one of those people.

And what I have found is no matter how much I study success, no matter how much success I have through experience, no matter how many books I read, people I listen to around this topic. I still don’t have all of the information, because it is an ongoing pursuit to find success and what it takes to be successful.

The four ideas I suggest here are a good start, but even if you do the first four well, if you don’t have the fifth you will never get the success you want.

Someone holding you accountable:  You made the commitment, you took immediate action, you found and created a process that you can consistently do and you have some good information about the topic.  Now who is going to make sure you do it?

You don’t like the word accountable.  You say you do, but you really don’t.  If you did, you would ask for feedback more often, you would seek out discomfort, you would do something different, and you would fulfill all of your commitments and achieve success in everything you pursue.

I’ll use myself as an example here.  I am committed to working out.  I have no problems taking action, I do it everyday.  I have a plan and a process that works for me. I have made a pretty good effort to go out and get information to help me live a healthy lifestyle that includes both working out as well as eating well. Where do I lose and fall short?  In accountability and growth potential?

From time to time I will visit a gym or workout with someone who is into fitness at a higher level than me. Lets start with visiting a gym.

I have visited several gyms over the last few years.  When I have visited the gyms, I have taken no less than five-ten takeaways from the gyms and the people in the gym, on how to get a better workout.  They pushed me outside my comfort zone.  I use the techniques and the information and implement them in my own workout routines.  Secondly, when I workout with someone with a higher level of fitness than me. Again, these people push me and challenge me in my workout that I don’t get on my own.

My point with all of this is this:  Even though I am committed at all four of the ideas around being more successful at health and fitness, and I am pretty damn good at the first four, but I don’t utilize the fifth idea of someone holding me accountable and pushing me. I have not met all of my goals in the area of health and fitness because I have yet to invest enough money and time in the last and most important idea, which is having someone hold me accountable to my goals in the area of health and fitness.

In the area of health and fitness, I have fallen into the same idea that many of you have as well.  “I am good here.”  Which means I have met a level of performance that I am satisfied with. This is why we aren’t as successful as we want to be.  Because we all in some areas of our life have determined mentally, and in our actions, that we are satisfied with where we are today.

Which means we have quit making new commitments. We take enough action to keep us where we are. We like and know our current processes help keep us where we are, so we refuse to change them.  We are open to new information, but we don’t do anything with it.  And we havent invested time or money into any kind of accountability tool or an individual that could hold us accountable, because we are satisfied and we don’t want that level of accountability.

Let me ask you this.  Why aren’t you as successful as you want to be in…?  Whatever that is.

Which of the five ideas above are you lacking in?  And what are you going to do about it?

To your success and your future.

Brian Willett is a published author, trainer, speaker. Brian seeks to provide information and knowledge to others that can help them achieve the success they want in their life. Brian works with companies and individuals to create sustained changed behaviors that lead to sustained and changed performance results. If you are interested in learning more check out brianwillettgroup.com or email him at bwillett555@gmail.com

 

 

Three myths you have about your potential

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The definition of potential is having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.  Which means we all can become something we are not currently.  We all have the ability to work on a particular skill and become better at that skill tomorrow than we are today.

Unfortunately, many people go through life thinking that they are getting better at something by just doing it, when all research and evidence says other wise.  Yes we can develop potential. And yes we can become better at something when we work hard at it, but there is a certain way this must be done.  It can’t only be done by performing the skill or activity over and over.

Here are the three myths about your potential that you most likely have been told:

1st myth:  We are limited to what we are given.  A lot of people believe that we are born with certain innate abilities and skills that allow us to be successful in certain endeavors.  Although there are certain attributes that can help you be more successful when utilized, those attributes by themselves alone will not make you successful.

 

2nd myth: If you do something long enough you will get better at it.  Lets be honest here.  How many people do you know who have been driving for thirty or even fifty years, and you wouldn’t get in a car with them driving to go around the block?   Extreme case here, but true.

3rd myth: If you try harder you will get better.  Unfortunately, this is a common response we give people to encourage them.  But it is actually bad advice.  Sure, if we feel that a person lacks a certain work ethic and they are not putting in the effort, we may suggest that they try harder.  However, if you are in a professional position such as sales, management, etc., if you are not practicing techniques designed to specifically improve in these areas, trying harder will not get you very far.

So how do we realize our potential:

Anders Ericsson in his book Peak, Secrets from the new Science of Expertise, 2016.  Tells us the only way to become better at something and maximize our potential in an area is by utilizing the concept of purposeful practice and deliberate practice.

If you have not heard of Anders Ericsson he is the person who conducted the research that has now become known has the 10,000 hour rule.  The 10,o00 hour rule is what Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, The Story of Success brought to life.  In Gladwell’s book, he discusses the research conducted by Ericsson on what elite performers did to become elite in their chosen field or specialization.

In Gladwell’s book, he references Ericsson’s research that all studies showed that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in a chosen field to become an expert in it.  Although, some of this is correct, Ericsson points on in his book Peak, that 10,000 hours is important, but what it is in those 10,000 hours is what is more important.  And depending on how you practice, you can speed up the 10,000 hours.

Ericsson uses the term deliberate practice to explain the process of how someone can develop a chosen skill.  For deliberate practice to occur the practice must include these traits:

  • Deliberate practice must be overseen by a teacher, mentor, or coach.
  • Deliberate practice must take someone outside their comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough to stretch their current performance. Which means it will require the maximum effort from the individual.
  • Deliberate practice must have well-defined goals and often involves improving one targeted area.
  • Deliberate practice requires total focus and effort by the individual.
  • Deliberate practice must include some kind of feedback from the coach, manager, teacher on how the person did on the specific task.

The three things we have always been told or may have even said ourselves are myths, because they don’t include the traits of deliberate practice.

1st myth: We are limited to what we are given.  This is incorrect because we all start out as novices in a chosen field or skill and we have developed those skills over time and we are now better.  We might not be experts, because we have gotten to the point of good enough, which is where most people stop.  We all have the ability to continue to develop our skills as far as we want to go with them.

2nd myth: If we do something long enough you will get better at it.  Again, if we look at the traits of deliberate practice this is not true.  If we are performing good enough, we never stretch ourselves to see if we can actually do better. We never seek feedback from other people to see how we may be able to do something a little bit better.  If we do both of these things; seek feedback and stretch ourselves, we can actually get better at it, but just doing it doesn’t make us better at it.

3rd myth:  If you try harder you will get better.  If we are trying harder, but we are not actually changing how we are doing the activity, then more effort is not going to produce better results.  We have to get feedback on how we are doing something and use a different technique or process to get a better result, which we all can do.

The question I have for you is this:  When is the last time you worked on a skill or technique by using all of the traits of deliberate practice?  Your answer is most likely, “it has been a long time.” Probably since you started in whatever it is you are currently doing.

Something we use to always say in leadership is this: Some people say that have ten years of experience, when they really have one year of experience, ten times.  Meaning that they have been doing whatever it is for ten years, but they have yet to get past the first year of knowledge in their abilities.  They haven’t increased their skills past the first years development. It’s like a toddler learns how to walk, but never learns how to run.

What are you going to do to ensure you continue to develop your skills in your chosen profession?  What are you going to do to implement the traits of deliberate practice into your daily life, so you can continue to develop your skills to become better and increase your potential in your chosen field?

To your success and your future.

References:

Peak; Secrets from the new Science of Expertise; author: Anders Ericsson, 2016

Purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp/0544456238/

 

Two behaviors that will make you more successful

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I have studied people for the last ten years or so.  When I say study, I mean deliberately and frequently observe and evaluate people and their behaviors.  Sure, we all have done a study of people for as many years as we have been on this earth.  But when it is your job to manage and encourage people to change their behaviors, and then evaluate them on whether they actually did, you are looking at it differently than just casual observations of other people in our daily lives.

I have studied people from a management perspective.  Overseeing a large number of people in an organization provides a real unique opportunity to see and be around people. It allows you to get a bird’s eye view of people and how they go about their daily lives.  You see habits and behaviors, good and bad, that either help people on the job and in their personal life or hurt them in both of these.

In management one of my jobs, and all managers jobs, is to provide knowledge, ie. training, to people who foster behavior changes that increase performance.  Training and development sessions also provide a unique opportunity to look at behaviors of people and gives you insight that you might not get otherwise.  When you spend hours and days with people, it provides the chance to see how someone learns and applies what they learn in real-time.

After managing and leading for ten years I then started training and development full-time. And this is what I have done the last four years. Moving from training within one company to provide training and development to many companies and the public at large, you get the opportunity to see people at their best and their worst.

Out of all the behaviors I have coached and trained on from listening better, to speaking less, to developing processes, to time management strategies, and any other behavior that can allow for a person to have success, I have come up with two that I believe and know can make the biggest difference for people.  They are living with intentionality and being self-aware. 

Living with intentionality means: the fact of being deliberate or purposive.  Now I know you are thinking that you already do this.  And maybe you are, but most people don’t. Most people instead get up every day and live their life as it happens.  For example:  If you are reading this right now, today is January 12, 2017. Which means it is a new year. All of the studies and facts say that since we are now two weeks into the new year, that most people who have set new years goals, also called resolutions, have already gotten off track and are no longer pursuing these goals and resolutions they have.

Some of you are thinking that you get up every single day and go to work, do your job, take care of your family, and all of the other daily activities that life requires of us.  And you think that is living with intentionality.  Certain aspects of it is. However, the chances are you have been doing those some things for years and maybe even decades. Which means you are most likely doing these activities on autopilot, which requires very little thought or different approaches from you to get these things accomplished.  It is not being intentional, it is just living.

They are habits and because they are habitual you don’t have to think about them. It’s like brushing your teeth.  You don’t have to think about brushing your teeth, you just do it.  You pick up the brush, put the toothpaste on it, brush, rinse, and your off to the next thing.

Living with intentionality means setting up a plan whether it is certain goals, milestones, or how you will go about your day and do things differently so you can get a different result. If you are reading this, and don’t care to have different results, then this blog is not for you. However, my guess is you are seeking to get a different result at work, or at home, maybe it is your bank account, your health, etc.

The other behavior that I have observed that makes people more successful is self-awareness. I believe when you start living with more intentionality you also become more self-aware.

Self awareness can be described as a conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Once you are aware of these attributes within yourself, you can then see how your interactions with the world around you impacts those attributes within you.

Lets look at each one of the attributes that make up self-awareness.

If you don’t understand yourself, it means you can’t understand someone else.  So when we use the word feelings.  It could be sadness, anger, excitement, enthusiasm, etc. or any other feeling humans have at any given time.  To be effective in life it requires us to have successful and sustainable relationships with other people. In almost any successful endeavor in life and especially in business, it will require a person to have successful interactions with other people.

The word motive is thrown around a lot. A motive is simply: something within that drives you to do something.  Motives are hidden under the surface and requires a person to really understand themselves, to be able to understand what is that motivates them to do something.

Again, as I stated earlier, when people are aware of their own motives, they can the help other people identify their motives.  Leadership, innovation, sales, are all positions within the marketplace that require people to understand other people. In leadership, you have to understand what the motives are of the people you lead may have to keep them within your company and excited to do their job.  In sales, you have to understand someones motives to purchase a product. And innovation requires people to understand what someone else may be willing to buy to solve a problem or appeal to a motive they have.  All three of these positions require a person to be self-aware of what they like, and to have impact with other people, to understand what it is that other people may like.

I believe motives are usually under the surface driving people, while desires are more surface.  I may have a desire to own a Ferrari because it looks pretty and is a fast car.  But the motive for me to own the car, would be deeper. It could be something like having a sense of “I made it” or more ego focused, like “I own a very exclusive car”.  These motives are deeper and more under the surface and people usually wouldn’t admit them, but a successful sales person or leader can identify these motives and then create an environment to appeal to those motives .

Self-awareness; understanding what it is that makes you tick and then how your interactions impact those around you.  I always say that a person must be able to read a room.  Meaning they should be able to go in and understand what the feelings are of the people in the room. which would allow that person to understand how they need to interact with the people in that room.

When you are aware of your own strengths and weaknesses you can develop strategies and methods to enhance your strengths.  Doing what you do best.  And minimizing your weaknesses.  Getting others to do what you don’t want to do, or aren’t very good at doing.

Self-awareness and living with intentionality are two behaviors that can change everything for you and your success.  It can change how the world receives you and how you receive the world.  Since none of us live in a vacuum, it will always require us to interact with the world around us.  In life there are positions that are more valuable, meaning they pay better, because it requires the people in those positions to understand other people.  The only way to be able to understand other people, is to first be able to understand yourself. And when you become more self-aware, and you start living your life with intentionality in everything you do, you can have the impact you want to have, and the success you want.

To your success and your future.

 

The one book on thinking you must read

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Years ago, my mentor turned me on to a little gem of a book. This little book had such an impact on my life, that since then I have read it no less than three to four times a year, because of the words that the author brilliantly put together in this masterpiece.

Like many of us, as you start out the new year, you have big goals and desires to make changes in your life.  These changes are all being driven by one thing, your thoughts.  What you think about is what controls you.  This books lays out how powerful your thoughts are.

The book itself is barely one hundred pages, but with words and concepts as powerful as they are, anything longer would have been just taking up space.

If I haven’t convinced you by now to read the book.  Maybe reading the following quotes and excerpts from the book may encourage to read the book.

Another one of my favorite authors and best-selling authors Napoleon Hill said “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”  This quote says a lot in a few words.  However, the book by James Allen tells you exactly how and what to think.

James Allen: Born November 28, 1864 – January 24, 1912 was an author and philosopher. His philosophy on writing was very simple and it is one that I live by myself today.

“He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing; but he wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it out in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.”

As a Man Thinketh can be purchased online or at any bookstore.  There are usually several copies of the classic on the shelves.  You can also go online and type in the title and a free PDF will usually pop up.  I would encourage you to get the hard copy of the book.  The words are too powerful to read only online.  You will want a copy of this book in front of you that you can constantly go back to and highlight different words and concepts that strike you every time you read it.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from the book.

There can be no progress nor achievement without sacrifice, and a man’s worldly success will be by the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance. The higher he lifts his thoughts, the greater will be his success, the more blessed and enduring will be his achievements.

In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results. The strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort. They are thoughts completed, objectives accomplished, visions realized.

Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.

The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. At the bidding of unlawful thoughts the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and beautiful thoughts it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty.

If you would perfect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.

My hope is that one of these excerpts provoke a strong desire in your mind that you have more ability than you ever thought.  These words hopefully inspire you to take action towards your goals and make the changes you need to make to have the year you have always wanted to have.

To your success and your future.

James Allen: As a Man Thinketh, 1903