SELF IMPROVEMENT AND MOTIVATION

All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often called a multitask job. This type of job requires the coordination of efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for a part of the job, with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your ability to handle these multitask jobs is a critical skill for success. All achievements of consequence are complex, and they involve the cooperation of many people. The Key Management Skill A study by Stanford University of the qualities that companies look for in promoting people into the position of chief executive officer concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the single most important identifiable quality of an executive who was destined for the fast track in his/her career. Your ability to put together teams to do multitask jobs or complete complex projects will determine the course of your career as much as any other factor. It will enable you to ...

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. Bui...

On a flight, when your plane takes off, the pilot tells all the passengers to stay in their seats with their seatbelts buckled. In many cases, the pilot will say, “We expect a certain amount of turbulence for the first part of the flight, so please stay buckled up.” When you start any new business or job, you will experience turbulence as well. Control Your Responses Strong people expect to experience problems on their journey toward their goals and destinations. Weak people are surprised and dismayed when things don't work out the way they had expected. They become angry and lash out. They blame other people for their problems. Often they become depressed or irrational. Your success is largely determined by your ability to respond effectively to problems as they come up. Fortunately, you can learn a number of effective strategies practiced by successful people to deal with problems. Problems Go with the Territory First of all, expect to have problems, disappointments, and temporar...

When you're well prepared for the challenges, you can actually enjoy working through them. When you enjoy the challenges, you'll be able to create great value. What can you do today that will make your work tomorrow go more smoothly? Though you may not know exactly what the challenges will be, there is still much you can do to prepare. Preparation boosts your confidence. Good, solid, thoughtful preparation makes your efforts more effective. Be well prepared, and your time will be spent moving forward instead of struggling to catch up. Be prepared, and you can effectively deal with small issues before they become big obstacles. Imagine the possibilities and then prepare yourself for them. That puts you in position to make the best of whatever may happen. Good preparation magnifies the positive influence of your efforts. Be prepared and everything becomes an opportunity.

All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often called a multitask job. This type of job requires the coordination of efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for a part of the job, with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your ability to handle these multitask jobs is a critical skill for success. All achievements of consequence are complex, and they involve the cooperation of many people. The Key Management Skill A study by Stanford University of the qualities that companies look for in promoting people into the position of chief executive officer concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the single most important identifiable quality of an executive who was destined for the fast track in his/her career. Your ability to put together teams to do multitask jobs or complete complex projects will determine the course of your career as much as any other factor. It will enable you to ...

The best salespeople prepare thoroughly before every call. This principle is so simple that it is often overlooked. The hallmark of the true professional is thorough preparation, reviewing every detail, before every sales meeting. The very best salespeople are those who review their presentations and study the details of their products and their sales materials repeatedly prior to every new sales contact. The Customer's Situation The salesperson with the best knowledge of the customer's real situation will be the one most likely to make the sale. The more time you take to thoroughly understand your prospective customer and your prospective customer's situation, the more likely you will be in a position to sell at the critical moment. Sales Professionals Plan their questions in AdvanceThere is a direct relationship between the quality of the problem focused questions that you ask a customer and the likelihood of a sale taking place. The only way of assuring that your questio...

The Laws of Negotiating are closely related to economics. They are part and parcel of the same process. Both economics and negotiating are based on the fact that each person places different values on different things. Everyone behaves economically in the sense that they always strive to negotiate the very best situation or result for themselves in each situation. The Universal Law of Negotiating Everything is negotiable. All prices and terms are set by someone. They can therefore be changed by someone. Prices are a best-guess estimate of what the customer will pay. The cost of manufacturing and marketing a particular product or service often has very little to do with the price that is put on it. Don't be intimidated by written prices, assume that they are written in pencil and can be easily erased and replaced with something more favorable to you. The key is to ask. The Law of Futurity The purpose of negotiation is to enter into an agreement such that both parties have their need...

The time is right, right now. Stop waiting and start doing.When you have the thought to make a difference, act on it. Live out your dreams by putting your ideas quickly into action.When you are truly and fully committed to a specific outcome, it will happen. Taking action is what authenticates and locks in your commitment.Once you begin to take action, you've made an investment. The more of your time and energy and focus you invest, the more you'll be motivated to see it through no matter what.Momentum is essential to any achievement. Taking action is your way to create that momentum.As soon as you decide to do it, begin to do it. Take the first step now, and you're well on your way to whatever destination you choose.

Distractions only have the power that you give them. To avoid being overpowered by distractions, see them for what they are.What is it that resonates with your passion and fires up your positive enthusiasm? Whatever it is, that's the thing to focus upon.When something interrupts your focus, don't fight it. Simply notice it, quickly decide whether it is worth any more of your precious attention, and if not, peacefully let it go.Don't get angry or resentful that the distraction happened, and don't become obsessed with something that really doesn't matter. Just take a deep breath, smile as you remember your purpose, and move on.You don't have to be dragged this way and that by random events and circumstances. You can easily stay clearly focused on your dreams, your goals and your intentions.Your thoughts are yours to choose, and your attention is yours to allocate. Decide to give your attention to those things that matter most, and move purposefully ahead no matter...

Perhaps the greatest challenge you will ever face in life is the conquest of fear and the development of courage. Fear is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of mankind. When Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was saying that the emotion of fear, rather than the realty of what we fear, is what causes us anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. When you develop the habit of courage and unshakeable self-confidence, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for you. Just imagine-what would you dare to dream or be or do if you weren't afraid of anything in the whole world? Develop the Habit of Courage Fortunately, the habit of courage can be learned just as any other habit is learned, through repetition. We need to constantly face and overcome our fears to build up the kind of courage that will enable us to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life unafraid. The starting point in overcoming fear and developing courage is to look at the ...

In 1928, the magazine Sales and Marketing Management surveyed American Businesses to determine how efficiently salespeople were using their time. They discovered that the average salesperson in America was only working 20 percent of the time, approximately one and one-half hours per day. This finding caused bells to go off throughout the sales industry. The idea that salespeople were only working ninety minutes per day became the emphasis for improved training, better time management skills, better supervision, and better control of the activities of salespeople. Double Your Sales In my sales programs, I teach what I call my minutes theory. It is based on a simple equation. If you are in sales today, 100 percent of your sales and your income are generated by the number of minutes hat you spend face-to-face with prospects and customers. If you want to increase the number of sales or the amount of money you make, you must increase the number of minutes that you spend in actual selling ac...

Possibility of success You can make your life a triumph in spite of every adversity. Or you could make your life a mess in spite of every advantage.Success does not depend on where you start. If it did, no one would have ever been successful.Success comes from what you choose to do with whatever you have. It is fully available to anyone who decides to make the effort and the commitment.Whatever the day holds, it also holds the possibility of success and achievement. Whatever the situation may be, there is a way to create real value from it.Choose to see the positive possibilities, and you will. Choose to follow those possibilities, and success takes root.The opportunity for success is always yours, and so is the responsibility. Decide to do what it takes, and create the success that is your own special destiny.

Each setback provides an opportunity to recover. And each time you recover, you grow stronger.The route to your goal is not a straight line. There will be many times along the way when you find yourself off course.When that happens, it can seem like your destination is unreachable. Doubt, fear and apathy will take hold if you let them.The key is not to let them. For as hopeless as the situation may feel, there are actions you can take that will enable you to quickly get back on track.Much of the substance of achievement is in becoming skilled at making a quick and solid recovery. Each setback gives you the chance to practice and strengthen and refine that valuable skill.Know that whatever has slowed you down can provide you with a way to move more effectively forward. Quickly get back up, and feel the new strength you've gained.

The reality of your life is driven by your concept of what is possible. Whatever you are certain of, is certain to be for you.You cannot change the laws of reality, and there is no reason to do so. For reality can accommodate whatever possibility you dare to imagine.Know that it can be done, and there is most definitely a way. Commit the whole of your true self, and it will be.Dream big, wonderful, meaningful dreams and purge them of every trace of doubt. Your own unique dreams are yours precisely because you are the person who can fulfill and experience them.Pay no attention to those who claim that the best days have passed and the best opportunities have all been taken. Life's abundance has no limit, and grows to whatever proportion you choose to imagine.Give your time, thoughts, efforts and commitment to express that abundance in your own special way. Know without a doubt that it is possible, and it is.

When you decide to do it, begin to do it. Give substance to your commitment by acting on it right away.Intention is powerful, and yet there's something your intention must have in order to survive. That something is real, solid action.Make your choice, and then immediately give power to it by taking the first step toward it. There is always something you can do right away.When you act, you seal the commitment. When you act, you create momentum.The way to make sure you stay in motion is to get yourself in motion right away. When the reason for your decision is still fresh in your mind, give power to that decision by acting on it.Accomplishment occurs when you go beyond merely thinking about it. Get up, get going, get moving and you will indeed get it done.

Can you define easy? What makes one task easy and another task difficult?What one person considers difficult another person finds to be easy. In fact, difficult and easy are largely what you define them to be.Do you see certain accomplishments as out of reach because you assume that they're too difficult? Perhaps it's worth looking again, knowing that you have the power to decide what is difficult and what is easy.When you take it easy, then you have the power to make it easy. When you make it easy, then you can get it done.Though the job may be complicated and challenging and demanding, you can choose to make it easy by the way you think of it. Instead of avoiding what you assume to be difficult, you can dive right in to what you decide is easy.Choose with your own thoughts to make it easy. And you'll choose to make it happen.

If you are really serious about becoming wealthy, there are five primary ways that fortunes are made. Become an Entrepreneur The number one road to riches, at the head of the list and on the top of the hit parade throughout U.S. history or nay part in the world (except in some countries its worth being a minister), is entrepreneurship, starting and building a successful business. Entrepreneurship includes every kind of business, from farming and trucking to real estate and computers. Seventy-four percent of self made millionaires in the United States, going back 200 years, come from self-owned businesses. An individual starts with an idea for a product or service, turns it into a business, builds it up from the ground floor, and as a result becomes wealthy. Work Your Way Up Another way to become rich is as a highly paid executive of a successful company, or as an employee of a company that awards stock options that become valuable. Ten percent of self-made millionaires in the United St...

Preparation is the mark of a professional. Preparation is also the mark of a successful person in any field. As you move upward in any occupation, you will find that the top people spend far more time in preparation than the average person does. The top 10 percent in any field are always more thoroughly prepared in every detail than those who struggle for a living in the same occupation. Guard Against the Worst For me, as a professional speaker and seminar leader, the worst thing that could happen would be for my luggage to be lost and for me to arrive without the clothes and seminar materials that I need for my speaking engagement. To guard against this situation, I carry all my essentials on board with me, never out of my sight. Because of this habit of advance planning, I have never had an insurmountable problem because of baggage delays or losses. On the way to your destination, in the achievement of your most important goal, continually ask yourself, What are the worst possible t...

Leadership makes the critical difference in every organization. Dozens of chief executive officers are fired from top companies every year. In every case, the ultimate reason given for the firing was “failure to perform.” And the major reason these senior executives have failed to perform is because they appointed weak managers and executives under them and then they did not have the courage to replace them when they did a poor job and failed to get the results expected of them. There is nothing that brings about a more rapid change in the fortunes of business than to change the key people in charge of getting results. Staff Well at All Levels The best companies have the best people. The second-best companies have the second-best people. The third-best companies are on their way out of business. Your ability to select good people and then to manage them well is the critical determinant of the success of your business. People are everything. 95 percent of your success will be determine...

There are two things which nature discourages and severely penalizes: (a) a vacuum (emptiness) and (b) idleness (lack of action). Remove any muscle of the body from active use, and it will atrophy (waste away) and become useless. Tie an arm to your side and remove it from action and in time it, too, will wither and become useless. The same law which governs other portions of the body governs the brain, where the vibrations of thought are organized and released.A positive mind finds a way it can be done, a negativemind looks for all the ways it can’t be done. You either use your brain for controlled thinking in connection with things you want, or nature steps in and uses it to grow a crop of negative circumstances you do not want. You have a choice in this situation: You can take possession of your thought power, or you can let it be influenced by the stray winds of chance and circumstances you do not desire. But you cannot sit idly by and thus free yourself from the influence of these ...

A good story, just for you from a friend to a friend as I also got it from a friend Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of Passage? His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man! Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.. He had been at watch the entire nig...

This is one of the very best times in all of human history to be alive. There are more opportunities for you to get paid more and promoted faster today than have ever before existed. By practicing these great ideas for the rest of your career, you are surely going to be a financial success. Decide Exactly What You Want You can't hit a target you can't see. Define your ideal job and never stop striving until you get it. Cr eate a Successful Image Take the time to dress, groom, and look like a winner in all of your work activities. Start Earlier, Work Harder, and Stay Later Always look for ways to go the extra mile, and to do more than you're paid for. Ask for What You Want Speak out clearly and ask for more responsibility, more opportunities, and more money. Guard Your Integrity as a Sacred Thing Be honest, straightforward, and truthful in all your interactions with others. Thing about the Future Continually look for ways to improve your company and your work in the weeks an...

We have passed from a world based on material limitations into a world that is determined by mental concepts. We have moved from the age of things into the "Psychozoic Age," the age of the mind. Wealth and opportunities are contained more in the person you are and the way you think than in the assets you have acquired in life so far. Your future lies more in your ability to apply your mind and intelligence to your work and your life than it does in your current job situation. Change Creates Opportunity The forces of change impact everything you do. The rate of change is accelerating week by week and month by month. The speed and variety of change is something over which you have no control, and about which you have no choice. The only decision you have to make is whether you are going to be a "master of change" or a "victim of change." Are you going to be a creator of circumstance or a creature of circumstances? It will be one of the other, but the impact ...

The Foremost of the ValuesWinston Churchill once said, "Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend." The systematic development of the deep down quality of unflinching courage is one of the fundamental requirements for leadership in any field. Fear, or the lack of courage is more responsible for failure in management, and in life, than any other factor. It is always fear that causes people to hold back, to sell themselves short, to settle for far less than they are capable of! Eliminate Fear and Doubt I firmly believe that you can do, have or be far more than you now know if only you could eliminate the fear, doubts and misgivings that consciously and unconsciously interfere with your realizing your full potential. Unlearn Your Fears If there is anything positive about fear, it is that all fears are learned, that no one is born with fears, and that having been learned, they can be unlearned. If you want to understand the role of f...

The Complex Sale Today The Sale is More Complex Today The entire process of selling today is more complex than it has ever been before. It used to be that we would make a single call on a single buyer who would make a single decision on our product or offering. In this simple form of selling, we used the attention/interest/ desire/action (AIDA) model of sales presentation and focused intensely on numerous different ways of closing the sale. Then, once we had made the sale, in many cases we never saw the customer again. Everything Has Changed Today, however, everything is different. Today we must make multiple calls, an average of five or six, in order to make the sale. We deal with multiple decision makers in an organization, each of whom can influence the purchase. Much of the sale takes place when we are not present. Sometimes we never even meet the final decision maker who signs the check. And it is not unusual for a sale to be derailed at the last minute by something completely une...

By Changing Your Thinking,You change your beliefs; When you change your beliefs,You change your expectations; When you change your expectations,You change your attitude; When you change your attitude,You change your behavior; When you change your behavior,You change your performance; Whe n you change your performance;You Change Your Life!

I guarantee you will remember the tale of the Wooden Bowl tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. Please read on, it’s a lesson you and I should learn. The Wooden Bowl A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year old grandson. The old man's hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered. The family ate together at the table. But the elderly grandfather's shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor. When he grasped the glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth. The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess. 'We must do something about father,' said the son. 'I've had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the floor.' So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. There, Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in a woode...

The very worst use of your time is to do well what need not be done at all. The Pareto Principle says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of the value of your activities. This means that, if you have a list of ten items to accomplish, two of those items will be worth more than the other eight items altogether. To achieve great things, you must always be concentrating on the small number of activities that contribute the greatest value to your life and your work. Determine the Consequences The value of anything in your order of priorities can be measured by assessing the potential consequences of doing it or not doing it. Something that is important has significant consequences to your life and your career. Something that is unimportant has few or no consequences of significance to your life or career. The mark of the superior thinker is your ability to consider possible consequences before you begin. Ask the Key Question Continually ask yourself, "What is the most val...