H.L. Hunt, a man who rose from a bankrupt cotton farmer in the 1930s to a multi-billionaire when he died in 1974, was once asked during a TV interview what advice he could give to others who wanted to be financially successful. He said only two things are required. First, you must decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Most people never do that in their entire lives. And secondly, you must determine what price you’ll have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price.

Clear Goals Are Essential

Clear goals and objectives are essential to the success of any business, and this is no less true of building your own career. If you don’t take the time to get really clear about exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re forever doomed to spend your life achieving the goals of those who do. In the absence of a clear direction for your life, you will either meander aimlessly or you will build a career that you don’t feel good about. You may make some money, and you may do some interesting work, but the end result will not resemble anything you ever made a conscious decision to build, and ultimately you will be left with the sinking feeling that maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Do you ever look at your career and think to yourself, “How on earth did I get here?”

Second Place Is Not An Option

If setting goals is so critically important, then why is it that so few people take the time to define exactly where they want to go? Part of the reason is a lack of knowledge about how to set clear goals. You can go through years of schooling and never receive any instruction on goal setting at all. A failure to understand the immense importance of establishing clear goals is also common. But those who truly know what they want often outperform everyone else by an enormous degree.

A frequent deterrent to goal setting is the fear of making a mistake. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Setting virtually any goal at all is better than drifting aimlessly with no clear direction. The best way I know to guarantee failure is to avoid making clear, committed decisions. Every day is already a mistake if you don’t know where you’re going. You’re probably spending most of your time working to achieve other people’s goals. The local fast food restaurant, TV advertisers, and the stockholders of the businesses you patronize are all very happy for that. If you don’t decide what you really want, then you’ve decided to hand your future over to the whims of others, and that’s always a mistake. By taking hold of the reins yourself and deciding where you’d like to go, you gain a tremendous sense of control that most people never experience in their entire lives.

Many people assume that because they have a direction, they must therefore have goals, but this is not the case and merely creates the illusion of progress. “Making more money” and “building a business” are not goals. A goal is a specific, clearly defined, measurable state. An example of the difference between a direction and a goal is the difference between the compass direction of northeast and the top of the Eiffel Tower in France. One is merely a direction; the other is a definite location.

Define Goals in Binary Terms

One critical aspect of goals is that they must be defined in binary terms. At any point in time, if I were to ask you if you had achieved your goal yet, you must be able to give me a definitive “yes” or “no” answer; “maybe” is not an option. You cannot say with absolute certainty if you’ve fully completed the outcome of “making more money,” but you can give me a definitive binary answer as to whether or not you are currently standing on top of the Eiffel Tower. An example of a clear business goal would be that your gross income for the month of April this year is $5000 or more. That is something you can calculate precisely, and at the end of the month, you can give a definitive answer as to whether or not your goal has been achieved. That is the level of clarity you need in order to form a goal that your mind can lock onto and move towards rapidly.

Be Detailed
Be as detailed as possible when setting goals. Give specific numbers, dates, and times. Make sure that each of your goals is measurable. Either you achieved it, or you didn’t. Define your goals as if you already know what’s going to happen. It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Commit Goals to Writing

Goals must be in writing in the form of positive, present-tense, personal affirmations. A goal that is not committed to writing is just a fantasy. Set goals for what you want, not for what you don’t want. Your subconscious mind can lock onto a clearly defined goal only if the goal is defined in positive terms. If you put your focus on what you don’t want instead of what you do, you’re likely to attract exactly what it is you’re trying to avoid. Phrase your goals as if they are already achieved. Instead of saying, “I will earn $30,000 this year,” phrase it in the present tense: “I earn $30,000 this year.” If you phrase your goals in future terms, you are sending a message to your subconscious mind to forever keep that outcome in the future, just beyond your grasp. Avoid wishy-washy words like “probably,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “might,” or “may” when forming your goals. Such words foster doubt as to whether you can really achieve what you are after. And finally, make your goals personal. You cannot set goals for other people, such as, “A publisher will publish my software by the end of the year.” Phrase it like this instead: “I sign a North American retail publishing contract this year that earns me at least $50,000 by the end of the year.”

Objectify Subjective Goals

What if you need to set subjective goals, such as improving your own level of self-discipline? How do you phrase such goals in binary terms? To solve this problem, I use a rating scale of 1 to 10. For instance, if you want to improve your self-discipline, ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate your current level of self-discipline? Then set a goal to achieve a certain specific rating by a certain date. This allows you to measure your progress and know with a high degree of certainty whether or not you’ve actually achieved your goal.

Goal Setting Is an Activity

Setting clear goals is not a passive act. It doesn’t happen automatically. You must take direct conscious action in order to make it so. Everything counts, and nothing is neutral. You are either moving towards your goals, or you’re moving away from them. If you do nothing or if you act without clarity, then you are almost certainly a victim of “being outgoaled.” In other words you are spending your time working on other people’s goals without even knowing it. You are happily working to enrich your landlord, other businesses, advertisers, stockholders, etc. Each day you spend working without a sense of clarity about where you’re headed is a step backwards for you. If you don’t actively tend your garden, then weeds will grow automatically. Weeds don’t need to be watered or fertilized. They just grow by themselves in the absence of an attentive gardener. Similarly, in the absence of conscious and directed action on your part, your work and your life will automatically become full of weeds. You don’t need to do anything at all to make this happen. And when you finally get around to taking a serious look at where you are and where you want to go, the first thing you’ll have to do is pull out all those weeds.

Reading this article will do absolutely nothing for you unless you turn it into some form of physical action. The best thinking unfortunately gives you zero results. In reality, you won’t even be paid a penny for your thoughts. You can have the most creative idea in the world, but ideas themselves are utterly worthless. You only get results from the physical actions you take, never for the ideas you have. In order to get any kind of tangible results at all, you must act on an idea. You must communicate it, build it, implement it, and make it real.

Clarity Is a Choice
If you’ve been running your career in an unfocused manner, just waking up each morning and seeing what happens, then it is absolutely crucial that you take the time to decide and write down exactly where it is you want to go. How much longer will you continue to climb the ladder of success, only to realize too late that it was leaning against the wrong building? Just pick a point in the future, whether it’s six months from now or five years from now, and spend a few hours writing out a clear description of where you want to be at that time. I know many people who aren’t sure where they want to go, so they avoid committing anything to writing in order to “keep their options open.” What would happen if you pursued that attitude to its logical conclusion? If you always kept your options open and never made any firm commitments, then you’d never get promoted, start your own business, get married, have a family, move to that new home, etc. except to the degree that someone else made that decision for you.

I used to have a friend like this, who still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with his life. He yields control of his life to others without even realizing it, simply because he’s unwilling to take the time to define a vision for his own life out of fear of making the wrong choice. His life is ruled by others who push their goals onto him, which he accepts by default. Ask yourself if you’re in the same boat. If a friend of yours became totally committed to getting you to change something in your life at random — your career, your living situation, your relationship, etc. — could s/he do it just by being absolutely certain and committed that it’s the right thing for you? Could a business associate come along and radically alter your plans for the week without you ever deciding consciously that such a change is consistent with your goals? We all suffer from problems like these to the degree that we fail to set clear goals for ourselves. There is a big difference between recognizing and acting on a true opportunity and being knocked off course without making a conscious decision to shift gears.

Waiting for something to inspire you and hoping that the perfect outcome will just fall into your lap is nothing but a fantasy. Clear decision making doesn’t happen passively; you actually have to physically put in the time to make it happen. If you don’t have clear goals simply because you don’t know what you want, then sit down and actively decide what you want. That sense of knowing what you want isn’t going to just come to you in a form of divine inspiration. Clarity is a choice, not an accident or a gift. Clarity doesn’t come to you — you have to go to it. Not setting goals is the same thing as deciding to be a slave to the goals of others.

Clear Goals Sharpen Present-Moment Decisions

Your reality will not match your vision exactly. That’s not the point. The point is for your vision to allow you to make clear daily decisions that keep you moving in the direction of your goals. When a commercial airliner flies from one city to another, it is off course over 90% of the time, but it keeps measuring its progress and adjusting its heading again and again. Goal setting works the same way. Maintain a clear list of goals not because that’s actually where you’ll end up but because it will give with tremendous certainty in deciding what you need to do today. When someone contacts you with an “opportunity” out of the blue, you’ll know whether it’s a real opportunity or a waste of time. The long view sharpens the short view.

As you begin moving towards your goals, you’ll gain new knowledge along the way, and you’ll have to adapt your plans as you go. You may also change your vision if you get partway there and decide it’s not quite what you really want. Ill-formed goals are still far superior to no goals at all.

I was once told by someone that I should end each day by crossing it off my calendar and saying out loud, “There goes another day of my life, never to return again.” Try this for yourself, and notice how much it sharpens your focus. When you end a day with the feeling that you would have lived it the same if you had the chance to repeat it, you gain a sense of gratitude that helps you focus on what’s really important to you. When you end the day with a feeling of regret or loss, you gain the awareness to try a different approach the next day.

You’ll see a measurable difference in your life the very first day you establish clear, committed goals, even if your first few attempts aren’t perfect. You’ll be able to make decisions much more rapidly because you’ll see how they’ll either move you towards or away from your goals.On the eve of his death, Walt Disney had a reporter crawl into bed with him so he could share his vision for Disney World, six years before its completion. When Disney World finally opened, another reporter commented to Walt’s brother, Roy, “It’s too bad Walt did not live to see this.” Roy replied, “Walt saw it first. That’s why we are seeing it now.”

Association can be used to force Initial Awareness, and you have the answer to the problem. As Initial Awareness is the same as having something register in your mind in the first place, then forming an instant association when you perform an action must solve the problem of absentmindedness.

An example will make this much clearer. Suppose you are one of those people who freqeuently writes an important letter and then forgets to take it out and post it. What is the last action you perform before leaving your home ? Probably pulling the front door shut. So, after writing a letter, instead of saying to yourself ‘I must remember to post this…’ and then forgetting about it completely, do the following – associate letter to the action of closing your front door.

As ever, the association should be as ludicrous as possible. Visualise yourself closing the front door, when millions of letters come flooding through the door, pulling the door off its hinges and knocking you over. If you make that crazy association, the next time you go to close your front door you will think of letter, and if you have left one inside then you will go back and get it.

Of course, this will help you remember to take the letter, but you may still forget to post it and leave it in your pocket for a few days ! One way to avoid this is to associate the addressee of the letter to a post box. If it is addressed to someone you can visualise, picture that person’s head popping out of a post box and rolling down the street.

The next time you notice a post box – which you inevitably will – you’ll be reminded to take that letter out of your pocket and mail it. If the letter is addressed to a company or organisation, use a Substitute thought and associate that to a post box. If it’s your football pools coupon, picture billions of footballs flying out of a mailbox.

This simple idea can be applied to any action or item you wish to remember. Why spoil an evening out because you spend most of it worrying about whether you unplugged the iron, or switched off the oven ? Form the habit of making a quick association at the time you do these things. For example, as you unplug the iron, picture your fingers being sucked into the socket, giving you a violent electric shock. You might perhaps see your hair standing on end to make the picture vivid.

Every time you switch off the oven, picture your head inside the oven, being slowly roasted ! Later, when you think about the oven, you will >know\ that you have switched it off.

Don’t worry about the image you formed yesterday coming to mind when you think about whether you switched off the oven today. ‘True’ memory and Initial Awareness will tell you the truth. If you haven’t formed the silly picture of your head in the oven on any particular day, then you will know that you haven’t switched the oven off.

Perhaps you are one of those people who frequently goes outside the house to the garage or garden shed, only to stand there wondering what you came out for ? Simply make an association the moment you decide that you need to get something from the garage. If it’s a hammer, picture yourself opening the garage door and millions of hammers tumbling out. Try this idea – it really does work !

If you wear spectacles and are frequently forgetting where you put them down, try forming an association at the moment you put them down. If you place them on the dining table, picture them on a serving dish in the middle of the table, surrounded by a large salad. If you place them on top of the television set, picture the television wearing a large pair of spectacles. The next time you think of your spectacles, you are sure to know where they are.

Always form the association at the moment you are performing the action. If you put off doing it you’ll forget to form the association and you’ll forget where you put your glasses !

You may feel that forming these associations is a waste of time. But, after trying the idea a few times you will find that the pictures are formed in next to no time. Even more important is that time and effort that you will be saving.

The solution to the problem of absentmindedness is equally straightforward and obvious – you simply have to think of what you are doing at the time you are doing it. Of course, this is easier said than done – how can you be sure to force yourself to concentrate on a simple, everyday action at the time you are doing it ?

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And, how many times have you put something “in a safe place”, so that you won’t forget where it is, only to later spend hours searching for it ?

Just think for a moment how often you have seen people searching for their front door key, or their spectacles, or wallet, or umbrella, or calculator, or cheque book, or a pen they had “just a moment ago”.

These instances can range from being mildly irritating to completely and utterly devastating. If you put down a newpaper, or a pen, and subsequently “forget” where you placed them, then you may feel slightly irritated. But, consider the case of someone who checks his football pools coupon on a Saturday, and discovers that he has 24 points, with a jackpot dividend forecast. Imagine his devastation when he finds his entry coupon in his jacket pocket, and realises that he has forgotten to post it. There have been several reported cases of this actually happening !

There are many other situations where absentmindedness can be costly or embarrassing. If you have a credit card, and settle the balance each month so that you avoid paying interest, it can be very costly if you forget to pay that balance one month, and the interest is added !

To take another example, consider a hostess who has invited a dozen guests around for a dinner party. She spends hours preparing a casserole, places it in the oven, and waits two and a half hours for it to cook. But, she forgets to turn the oven on, and doesn’t realise it until the guests have arrived. Result – one red-faced hostess dashing round to the nearest Take-Away Restaurant.

To some people, absentmindedness may seem a trivial problem. They probably don’t realise just how much time and effort they spend hunting for items they’ve “just put down for a second”, or on retreiving items they have left in cars, taxis, buses, trains, and friends’ houses, or worrying about whether they have locked the front door, or fed the cat, or switched off the iron, or set the video recorder to record their favourite television program…

Many people have their own methods of trying to deal with absentmindedness. These include tying a knot in a handkerchief when they want to remember something, or scrawling messages in ink across the back of their hands. The trouble with such methods is that they frequently don’t work – you spend ages staring at your knotted handkerchief trying to recall what it was you needed to remember, or trying to decipher the messages on your hand, which have now become smudged and illegible.

This is Part 1 of Overcoming Absentmindedness.
Overcoming Absentmindedness PART 2

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RELAXATION EXERCISES

What follows is not a specific Hypnotic technique but merely a very simple relaxation exercise. It is very very simple but extremely effective atcalming you down and relieving tension. Don’t be fooled by its apparentsimplicity. Without going into all the physical details this little exercise alonecan greatly help you reduce much muscular tension in the shoulders and neckand will help relax you ready for going into a trance.

Step 1: Sit comfortably on a stool or low backed chair. Now take ten slow deepbreaths to calm down your system and put more oxygen into your blood. Ifpossible try to breath from the abdomen. When you expel the stale air fromyour lungs bring you stomach in. When inhaling count in your mind up to six,but if that seems too long hold it for about five or whatever you feelcomfortable with,and hold for a maximum count of twenty. Then exhaleslowly counting up to ten.

Step 2: 1).Gently hold your head up in an upright and central position.   Now slowly tipyour head forward towards your chest as far as it will comfortably go and holdfor a count of ten. 2). Now gently tip your head back slightly and hold for a count of ten. 3). Now you will tip your head forward again like you did before but this timeslightly move it to your right and hold for ten and then return to the centralposition. 4). Once you have done this repeat part 1,2, and 3 but this time tilt your headslightly to the left.

Step 3: 1). Repeat step one. Take ten slow deep breaths. While you inhale count upto six,or whatever you are comfortable with,and hold for a maximum count oftwenty. 2). Again with your head in an upright position tip your head slowly to the leftso that your left ear moves towards your left shoulder and hold for a count of18 ten. 3). Now repeat this process but move your head down to the right.

Step 4: 1). Repeat step one. 2). From your central position turn your head slowly to the left as far as youcan without discomfort so that you can see over your shoulder. Now hold for acount of ten. 3). Now return to the centre. 4). Repeat the exercise but this time move the head to the right. 5). Repeat part 1,2,3 &4.6). Repeat step one. 7). Finally now Relax.Hopefully by now you will feel a bit more relaxed.Try to do these exercises twice a day once in the morning after yourshower or bath and once in the evening or afternoon.After a few days go on to the next section which will teach you how togo into a relaxed and beautiful trance.

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• Inspiring and Motivational Videos

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• How to manage your precious time !

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If you are a hard worker but at the end of the week you end up realising that you have not worked as much as you  wanted and you are lagging behind in your to do list then read down.Following are the broad points that need to be considered by anyone who wishes to multiply his personal productivity many times. This is particularly useful for those whose income depends directly on the time spent on work,since time is fixed and it can not be stopped,so the best solution is to get organised and start monitoring yourself.

Keep a detailed time log.

The first step to better managing your time is to find out how you’re currently spending your time. Keeping a time log is a very effective way to do this, and after trying it for just one day, you’ll immediately gain tremendous insight into where your time is actually going. The very act of measuring is often enough to raise your unconscious habits into your consciousness, where you then have a chance to scrutinize and change them.

Here’s how to keep a time log. Throughout your day record the time whenever you start or stop any activity. Consider using a stopwatch to just record time intervals for each activity. You can do this during only your working time or throughout your entire day. At the end of the day, sort all the time chunks into general categories, and find out what percentage of your time is being spent on each type of activity. If you want to be thorough, do this for a week, and calculate the percentage of your total time that you spent on each type of activity. Be as detailed as possible. Note how much time you spend on email, reading newsgroups, web surfing, phone calls, eating, going to the bathroom, etc. If you get up out of your chair, it probably means you need to make an entry in your time log. I typically end up with 50-100 log entries per day.

You may be surprised to discover you’re spending only a small fraction of your working time doing what you’d consider to be actual work. Studies have shown that the average office worker does only 1.5 hours of actual work per day. The rest of the time is spent socializing, taking coffee breaks, eating, engaging in non-business communication, shuffling papers, and doing lots of other non-work tasks.

Analyze your results.

Go through the time log you’ve made and just find out how much are you actually using in work which you aimed for. This will give you a clear view of what you actually want to do and where you are heading to in reality.

To make it happen in your favor you must try to eliminate those time slots and at least minimize them to use it in a productive work.

And then after a week or two compare your current results to the previous ones. To your amazement you’ll see how much have you improved . But since nobody is perfect,there must still be some drawbacks in your time management, so try and try until you get what you really want out of you.

Calculate your personal efficiency ratio.

There’s always a scope of improvement in everyone . So keep working.

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If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived !!

The harder I work, the luckier I get. – Samuel Goldwyn

Much struggle is the result of hard work resisted, but hard work is more than just putting in the time. To ensure that hard work pays off, an intelligent effort is required.

Justifying Laziness
Laziness is an emotional impulse — a common desire to enjoy the pleasures of life before we’ve earned them — but it’s not a very effective or sustainable approach.

Do you need to earn the pleasures of life? That depends on what you want. If you want something that’s free or freely offered — by nature or by people — you can simply claim it. If you’re walking through a field and want to eat some of the wild plants, go ahead and enjoy nature’s bounty.

If, however, you desire something that was created by human hands (especially hands that expect to be fairly compensated for their efforts) such as a nice home or a speedy piece of technology, then laziness is largely a path to scarcity. Get used to being denied many of life’s benefits if your attitude is entrenched in laziness.

If you resist the emotion of laziness when you experience it, then the emotional feeling of laziness combined with your beliefs about what it means to be lazy will signal your brain to come up with plenty of logical-sounding justifications for your laziness-induced episodes, such as:

Everything should be free without requiring effort.
It’s okay to mooch off of others, just this one time.
I can manifest whatever I want, even if I’m not willing to work for it.
Laziness is more spiritual than hard work.
The problem with these justifications is that they don’t mesh well with reality. Laziness is an emotional impulse, not a logical choice. Justifying laziness with logic is like breaking your dishes in anger and then claiming that you did it because you needed new dishes. You broke your dishes because you were pissed and lost control. You slacked off because you felt lazy and unmotivated. Don’t overcomplicate this.

Regardless of your personal “shoulds,” there are lots of items and experiences in life that aren’t free but which can easily be attained by earning and spending money. A full wallet can do a lot of manifesting with grace and ease.

You can try manifesting your desires without lifting a finger. This can work for small things, and sometimes you’ll get lucky, but if you resist working towards your desires directly, it’s delusional to claim that you’re a vibrational match for receiving them.

If you want to improve your manifesting, at least meet the universe halfway. It’s hard to say you’re committed to experiencing a result if you aren’t actively moving towards it. Rest in the space of allowing when you get stuck and need inspiration, but when the next action is staring you in the face, taunting you to get moving, then release the parking brake and go, go, go!

Push Yourself To Beyond The Limit !

Laziness isn’t spiritual — unless your intent is to cultivate an unrefined and slothful spirit. If that’s the case though, you should have incarnated as a rock… perhaps below the tree in my backyard where the birds like to poop.

It’s possible to work hard and not get much done if your standards for work are too low. These standards include:

what kinds of work you’re willing to do
how well you maintain focus and avoid distractions
how well you’re leveraging your skills and talents
what levels of quality you consider to be acceptable output
favoring work you enjoy
If your standards for the kinds of work you do are low, you’ll get caught up doing a lot of pointless busywork that you don’t need to be doing and which doesn’t provide much social value. Doing work that’s beneath you can be a mild diversion for a while, but if you do too much of it, it’s just another time waster.

If you work with poor focus and succumb to distractions, you’re not working hard, and your results will suffer for it. Working for 3 hours with good purpose and focus is often much more productive than putting in 8 hours of distraction-laden half-work.

If you do too much work you’re not very good at, and you aren’t improving much, shift your work around to align more closely with your skills and talents. You’ll get more done in less time, and you’ll be able to take on bigger challenges as well. Regardless of whether you believe you work for yourself or for someone else, you ultimately choose the work that lands on your plate, either by direct consent or through silent approval.

Maintain high standards for the quality of your output. When you’re working on something important to you, do your best work. If you aren’t willing to do your best, then switch to work that demands the best of you.

Keep shifting your work in the direction of what you love to do. This week do more of what you love than you did last week. The more you enjoy your work, the easier it is to feel motivated. This kind of hard work feels good.

Think improvement, not perfection. Keep raising your standards over time. Strive to become more dedicated to your work this year than you were last year.

High standards require commitment. You cannot maintain high standards while simultaneously tolerating low standards. Start noticing where your standards are out of alignment with your best efforts, and make some real changes. Disconnect from those who are constantly dragging you down. Dump the uninspired work that makes you feel like procrastinating instead of contributing. Brainstorm a list of 20 things you can do to increase the quality of your work output; then implement one of those items immediately.

Fulfillment
If you maintain high standards for your work, the work provides its own intrinsic rewards. Nevertheless, it’s well and good to be fairly compensated for your work.

A tremendous amount of neurological and psychological experimentation has shown that, barring abnormal conditions such as being a sociopath, our brains are hard-wired with a sense of social fairness. We typically reject approaches to life that are either too selfish or too selfless. People will even reject certain forms of personal gain if they perceive that those gains are unfair. Somewhere between thievery and sacrifice, we seek to find the right balance that keeps us feeling good about our exchanges with others.

These behaviors are normally subconscious. We don’t even think about them most of the time, but we often notice when such standards are violated, either by ourselves or by others.

I ask you to look within for a moment. Are you living up to your own standards of social fairness? How much value are you receiving from others, and what are you contributing in return? Are you too much of a moocher, taking more than you’re giving? Are you too much of a martyr, draining yourself to keeping giving even as you decline the best that life is willing to provide you?

Earn It!
Fulfillment is earned, not bestowed. I know many people would like to convince themselves that this isn’t true, and I wish them the best of luck, but I still consider it a lazy and slothful mindset to expect the universe to open the floodgates of abundance in such cases. I’m privy to the results such people consistently achieve. Year after year they struggle to pay their bills. They deny themselves wonderful experiences due to lack of funds — funds that they could be earning if they’d finally devote themselves to intelligent hard work. I share from direct experience as well. I can look to my own past and see how weak my results were when I subscribed to this mindset.

It’s a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won’t commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange. In fact, it’s a safe bet that you’ll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won’t allow yourself to receive what you don’t feel you’ve earned. To receive life’s bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it.

I do believe it’s well and good to adopt an abundance mindset. But this mindset isn’t to be found behind Door #1: Laziness, Hope, and Wishful Thinking. It’s only behind Door #2: Intelligent Hard Work, Doing Your Best, and Making a Meaningful Social Contribution.

Do Your Best
Are you doing your BEST? Not just working hard… Not just putting in the time… Not just showing up…

Are you doing your personal best to grow and improve today? Are you besting what you did last week? Are you working on the best project you can be working on to make a meaningful social contribution?

If you aren’t doing your best, how can you shamelessly expect the best in return? If you output mediocrity, expect to receive that. That’s only fair, isn’t it?

If you truly do your best, then you have good cause to expect the best in return. Time and again you’ll see that when you really do your best, the universe will back you up. Social support will come to you. Resources will arrive. Obstacles will be overcome. Encouraging signs will appear. Life will flow with grace and ease.

Arbeit Macht Frei contains another level of irony. On the surface it may appear that hard work is in conflict with freedom. But the truth is that in order to extract real value from your freedom, you must make a serious effort. Freedom is a blank canvas. Hard work makes it a masterpiece.

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Trust Yourself !

No man with a man’s heart in him, gets far on his way without some bitter, soul searching disappointment. Happy he who is brave enough to push on another stage of the journey, and rest where there are living springs of water, and three score and ten palms.
- Brown

Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are “just right” before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait.
- The William Feather Magazine

If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, “Here comes number seventy-one!”
- Richard M. DeVos

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
- Newt Gingrich

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.
- Horace

To bring one’s self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.
- Thomas A. Buckner

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
- Eric Hoffer

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
- Benjamin Franklin

 
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]]> http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/inspirational-quotes-on-persistence/feed/ 49 http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/excuses/ http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/excuses/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:04:04 +0000 admin http://developmentsecret.com/?p=521

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In simple words excuses are lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths.  But as long as we buy into those excuses, we can never move past them.  Instead of addressing the underlying problem, we merely hide the symptoms.  One of the most important steps in personal growth is to uproot excuse-making and confront the real issues behind the excuses with consciousness and courage.

Never Underestimate Yourself

Here are some of the most common excuses and their underlying truths:

I don’t have enough time.

Whenever you hear yourself making this statement, you know deep down it isn’t the truth.  The real truth is that you haven’t made that which you supposedly lack time for important enough.  You’re really saying, “That just isn’t important enough to me.”  I don’t have time to exercise.  I don’t have time for a relationship.  I don’t have time to start my own business.  Of course you have time.  You have as much time as anyone else does, and other people are already doing these same things.  The difference is that they make it more of a priority in their lives than you do.  You aren’t a victim of circumstances.  If you don’t like your circumstances, change them.

It’s amazing that people who say they don’t have time somehow find plenty of time for marginal activities like watching TV.  If you don’t have time to exercise, then surely you don’t have time to watch any TV at all.  Such people are really saying that exercise simply isn’t important enough to them. It’s easier to blame the problem on a lack of time, but the real problem is a lack of will.

I don’t know how.

This is one of the feeblest excuses of all.  I don’t know how to make a web site.  I don’t know how to write well.  I don’t know how to get a better job.  Are you capable of learning?  Did you stop after learning to crawl, complaining, “I don’t know how to walk?”  The truth behind “I don’t know how” is “I’m unwilling to learn.”  In other words, you have to admit that you’re lazy.

I don’t have the money.

If there’s something you want, “I don’t have the money” is no excuse for not getting it.  You can always earn the money or find a way to get the item at reduced cost.  The truth behind “I don’t have the money” is “I don’t want it badly enough.”  Earning the money you need is only a matter of time, and we already know that not having enough time is no valid reason for giving up, nor is not knowing how to earn the money.  If you want to buy something out of your price range, you’re fully capable of setting it as a top priority and then putting in the time to learn how to earn enough to acquire the item.

Don’t let excuses run your life.  If you catch yourself using one of these lines, immediately replace it with a statement of the real truth.  At first that truth may seem uncomfortable.  It’s easier to say, “I don’t know how” than it is to say, “I’m unwilling to learn.”  But when you admit your unwillingness, laziness, or lack of motivation, then you’re finally facing the truth, and from that point you’ll have the opportunity to grow.  For example, if you face your unwillingness to learn, you may decide that even though it would be a lot of work to learn a new skill, you could do it if you wanted it badly enough and really applied yourself.

It’s easier on our egos to blame failure on external, uncontrollable factors such as lack of time, information, or resources.  But as long as we use such excuses, we can never solve the underlying problems because those factors aren’t under our direct control.  We need to invert our excuses and look beneath them to find the internal causes that we can control.  What we can control, we can improve.

We can’t control time, but we can control how we prioritize the actions that fill that time.  We can’t control information, but we can control what we choose to learn as well as how much effort we devote to learning.  We can’t control money, but we can choose to undertake more effective income-producing activities.  So by controlling the factors that are within our control, we can create as much time, information, and resources as we desire.


Don’t let your ego get in the way of your growth.  Muster the courage to face the truth instead of making excuses.  Only when you admit the truth do you gain the power to do something about it.  If you admit your laziness, you can work on that.  If you admit your lack of motivation or skill, you can work on those too.  But you’re powerless to work on time, information, or money directly.  Don’t give away this power and doom yourself to perpetual mediocrity.  Shoot down your excuses, face the bitter truth, and start taking the steps necessary to change in the direction you want to go.

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• Inspirational Quotes On Persistence

• Excuses

• Forming Intentions For Faster Goal Achievement

• Motivation – Will Smith’s Way

• The Most Direct Solution to Any Problem

• Concentration Tips

• Understanding Family Relationship Problems

• Be The Best

• How to Beat the Competition

• The Value of Confidence

• How to Have a More Focused Day

• Patience

• Time Management For Students

• Manage your time

• How to Become More Successful

• Making Time for the Important

• Achieve Goals by Improving Your Character

• Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Motivating Speech

• 30 Days to Success

• 20 Ways to Improve

• 11 Ways to Gain Clarity

• 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output

• How to Make Smart Decisions in Less Than 60 Seconds

• DO IT NOW !!

• How To Improve Listening Skills

• How to manage your precious time !

• Inspirational Quotes

• Motivation-The Albert Einstein Way

• Motivational Videos

• Master the Basics

• Why Not You?

• Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

• Self-Discipline: Hard Work

• Extreme Thinking

• Discover Your Strengths

• Completion versus Perfection

• Do Love Your Work or Don’t Work at All

• Self-Discipline: Willpower

• Don’t Die With Your Music Still In You

]]> http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/excuses/feed/ 34 http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/intentions-for-faster-goal/ http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/intentions-for-faster-goal/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:59:24 +0000 admin http://developmentsecret.com/?p=519

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Never Quit !

This article teaches about how to achieve your goal faster by simply forming intentions.

Hold your breath and put your head underwater. Notice that a clear intention begins to form within a matter of seconds.

Now take a nice big bite of a habanero pepper and begin chewing it. Again, notice that a clear intention forms within seconds.

When you are sick, notice that you gain clarity in your health intentions. When you lose your job, notice that your financial intentions become clearer.

If you want to bring more clarity to your intentions, get off the sidelines of life, and get onto the field. The field is scarier. The sidelines are safer.

Go immerse yourself in something you fear. A new intention will quickly form.

A low-contrast life has very little power to form intentions. Such lives maintain that safety is a higher priority than growth. However, those who subscribe to such a philosophy eventually find themselves locked within their safes.

The quickest way out of that safe is to follow the path of courage. Fear is its signpost.

Turn toward your fears, and powerful intentions will form automatically.

Share it using the button below…

Related Articles:

• Inspirational Quotes On Persistence

• Excuses

• Forming Intentions For Faster Goal Achievement

• Motivation – Will Smith’s Way

• The Most Direct Solution to Any Problem

• Concentration Tips

• Understanding Family Relationship Problems

• Be The Best

• How to Beat the Competition

• The Value of Confidence

• How to Have a More Focused Day

• Patience

• Time Management For Students

• Manage your time

• How to Become More Successful

• Making Time for the Important

• Achieve Goals by Improving Your Character

• Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Motivating Speech

• 30 Days to Success

• 20 Ways to Improve

• 11 Ways to Gain Clarity

• 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output

• How to Make Smart Decisions in Less Than 60 Seconds

• DO IT NOW !!

• How To Improve Listening Skills

• How to manage your precious time !

• Inspirational Quotes

• Motivation-The Albert Einstein Way

• Motivational Videos

• Master the Basics

• Why Not You?

• Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

• Self-Discipline: Hard Work

• Extreme Thinking

• Discover Your Strengths

• Completion versus Perfection

• Do Love Your Work or Don’t Work at All

• Self-Discipline: Willpower

• Don’t Die With Your Music Still In You

]]> http://developmentsecret.com/2011/11/intentions-for-faster-goal/feed/ 32 nonadult