Posts tagged 'motivation'

How many times have you heard no? According to Forbes, 92% of people fail to reach their goals. This means that at some point, we all try and fail. However, rather than accept defeat, you can make your dreams a reality by pushing forward through rejection. Doing this requires transforming your mindset and igniting your passion. Don’t wait for your dreams to come true – make them happen!

The 12-steps from Create Your Yes! can lead you to the path of success. Here are four of them to help get you started:

1. Make Progress Your Primary Target
A Columbia Business School study showed that people tend to work harder when they are closer to their goals. This means that in order to accomplish the big wins, you need daily wins to help push you towards your goal.

Action: Write down daily or weekly goals that are within your control to accomplish. Focus on making progress and you will reach your milestones.

2. Determine Cheetah Goals vs. Gazelle Goals
As you work on making your goals a reality, there generally comes a time when you find yourself making no progress, no matter how hard you try. When you make it to this point, you need to stop and rethink your strategy by determining whether you need speed, like a cheetah, or stamina, like a gazelle.

Action: Ask yourself what your ultimate objective is and what is required to make it happen. Creating a new blog post each week is a cheetah goal, requiring speed, while making a business plan from scratch is a gazelle goal that needs time and persistence.

3. Create the Way to Make It Happen
Following the status quo keeps things comfortable, but prevents growth and change. So to make things happen, you need to push past "business as usual".

Action: When taking on a rejected goal or unfinished task, erase what you know and instead focus on your instincts. What direction is your gut telling you to take? Then, explore and pursue innovation solutions - that includes giving yourself permission to try the impossible.

4. Bulletproof Your Mind
According to the Mayo Clinic, there are many benefits to thinking positively, including greater achievement, higher persistence, better psychological and physical well-being and lower stress levels. Changing your mindset from a scarcity mindset ("it's never enough") to an abundance mindset ("there are possibilities everywhere") will allow you to see meaning in both your life goals and everyday tasks.

Action: Think about a current goal. Is it built on integrity, creativity and enthusiasm? If not, what can you do to change this?

For the rest of the 12 steps to success, check out Create Your Yes!>>

National Be a Millionaire Day (observed May 20th) is about taking steps to turn dreams into reality by making plans for your future. And what better way to get into the success mindset than with the modern-day bestselling classic, Think and Grow Rich! Author Napoleon Hill draws on stories from Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and more than 500 other wealthy people to teach simple and practical techniques for achieving great and lasting success with nothing but thoughts, ideas, and organized plans.

Hill delves into a method for changing your desire for riches into its financial equivalent with these six steps:

FIRST. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount.

SECOND. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”)

THIRD. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.

FOURTH. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.

FIFTH. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.

SIXTH. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night and once after arising in the morning.

To delve deeper into these principals, download the FREE Discussion Guide>>

For more on transforming your desires into riches, read The Five Essential Principals of Think and Grow Rich>>

As Earth Day approaches, it’s time to get honest with ourselves; it’s time to HUG OUR MOTHERS — Earth and Nature, that is. We know enough and we know better, so the fact that we are still not doing enough is no longer a problem of pollution but a more personal problem. Our planet doesn’t pollute itself. That’s on us. And it’s time for us to choose kindness. Hugging Mother Earth and Mother Nature matters. So now it’s time to take action.

Action 1 – Participate in or organize a community cleanup day. Find ways to get local companies, schools, churches, friends, and family members to join in. Make it fun and a day for everyone to show kindness to our mothers.

Action 2 – Reduce! Of all the R’s—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—reduce is the best option. Take shorter showers, print on both sides, carpool, change your sprinkler timers, etc. You know these ideas already. Now you just have to do them.

Action 3 – Be kind to animals.Take time to research how humans are impacting the different species from around the world—from dolphins to elephants to orang­utans to factory farm animals. Brace yourself. You won’t see a ton of kindness in your searches, but this is the very reason to get involved.

Matthew Emerzian

For more ways to live a life that matters, check out Every Monday Matters>>

There is a lot we can learn from history when it comes to leadership, including the different types of leaders and the lessons both their successes and failures can teach. The Founders of the United States will go down in history as having changed the rules of leadership and redefined what it means to spark change in people. One of the most influential leaders of the American Revolution was Alexander Hamilton. Through his example, and the lessons learned from other Founders, we can understand the principals of revolutionary leadership. Here are three key insights:

1. Recognize Your Challenges

In a recent Interact/Harris Poll, 91% of employees said their leaders lack good communication skills. What weaknesses have you identified in yourself as a leader? What about your strengths? As Alexander Hamilton would have realized, the ancient Greek aphorism, “know thyself,” is an excellent place to start in the study of leadership.

There are many practical ways to assess your particular skills and challenges. Read about strong leaders and compare yourself to them. Take online personality tests and skills assessments. Consider part-time work in fields that are related to what you are interested in. Additionally, ask your boss, mentors, coworkers and friends what they think your challenges are—and don't take offense at their responses!

2. Set Personal Goals

Did you know that you are ten times more likely to succeed if you have a stated goal? To start, take some time to determine what your long-term goal is. From there, start setting short-term goals that will help you attain them. You can decide how short the short-term goals are, but a common duration is five years. After five-year goals are established, set up smaller and smaller goals that will help you reach your five-year goals. Remember that each goal should always support achievement of the higher goal.

3. Never Give Up

Failure is scary, but it is inevitable: 90% of all startups fail; 50%–60% of executives fail within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired; and 92% of people fail to meet their goals. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up. No one has ever succeeded by giving up after failure. So, even if everyone else abandons you, it is imperative that you never give up on yourself. So what if you miss that promotion or aren't appointed to that leadership position you thought was so important? There is always another promotion to pursue, another team you can join, or another company you can switch to.

Get more insights from The Leadership Secrets of Hamilton >>

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Decision-making, no matter how big or small, takes a toll on your brain – with each decision, it becomes harder for you to weigh the consequences. Once decision fatigue sets in, your brain looks for shortcuts and settles for the path of least resistance. So what can you do to combat decision fatigue? Simplify your decision-making process! Author Joe Calloway shares a story about an effective way you can do this:

Sir Peter Blake led Team New Zealand to successive victories in the America's Cup yacht competition in 1995 and 2000. The key to this success was that Blake focused the team on one question, which they asked about everything they did: "Will it make the boat go faster”?

Everything they did and every decision they made had to go through the filter of "Will it make the boat go faster”? This applied to equipment, training, nutrition, crew composition— and more.

We can all simplify and focus using our version of that question. Look at your daily choices and ask yourself your own version of "Will this make the boat go faster”?

• Will this get me where I want to go?
• Will this help me to create positive relationships?
• Will this assist me in reaching my goal?

We all have a "boat" we want to go faster. Be sure you are focused on doing things that will help you accomplish your goals. In the process, you will prevent decision fatigue by knowing exactly what you are aiming for.

From Joe Calloway

Learn more ways to Keep It Simple>>

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