• Rewriting one ebook
• Creating a new sales funnel for another
• Updating the website for yet another ebook
• Converting one series of email lessons to all video
• Changing all my autoresponders over to a new mailing service
• Writing for this Blog
• Starting the BullsEye Club
• Two new products that I need to begin outlining
• Three new teleseminar series to work on
• Running the website for my late Mom’s poetry
• Webmastering websites for two NGOs and a restaurant
• And about a dozen other small projects in the early stages

That, my friend, is not focus. It’s behaving like the hound dog I’ve mentioned before, who’s dropped down in the middle of a field of rabbits, and he’s trying to run in all directions at once. My granddaddy used to say, “The dog that chases two rabbits will go hungry.” Although I’m not going hungry, I could be getting a lot more results from the things I’m doing.

Last year, in late November, I announced publicly that the new BullsEye Club would be opening by mid-January. As you know, that deadline slipped. So what’s up with this thing, then?

Well, when my big epiphany about focus hit me, I simply laid everything down except the one thing closest to completion. I swore I’d – as much as possible – work on one main project at a time from now on. Naturally, some things, like blog posts and webmastering continue to need regular attention. That’s okay… it doesn’t take all week to do these handful of tasks.

Sometimes things change. It may be – as in my case – that you suddenly realize you’ve over-committed. In other cases, you may have moved on and become an entirely different person, like Elizabeth Potts Weinstein did. In her recent blog video “Why I’m Letting Go of Things That Make Money,” she explains her experience very well.

Change… that’s why the BullsEye Club got moved a little closer to the horizon. The Club is still on, and it’s going to be lots of fun, but it’ll wait its turn. I’ve stopped trying to do everything first. But I’ve been getting a stream of questions about the Club – when it’ll be ready, what it’ll include, how expensive will it be, and so forth.

A few facts about the Club: my intention is to avoid the typical model where you go and download a bunch of content. Instead, it’ll be an activity place where members can discover how to DO things, can build new skills by actually practicing them, can actively swap information with others on what does and doesn’t work, and other practical-type learning. In other words, it’ll be a combination of coaching group and mastermind group.

Will it be a monthly membership arrangement? Yes. And I intend to make it so affordable that anybody with Internet access can get in and stay in for as long as they’d like. This won’t be an old-boys’ club exclusively for the well-heeled.

On the other hand, it won’t be a place where you’ll encounter a bunch of idlers sitting around griping and sniping, either. You’ll find regular on-going assignments to accomplish. Do them and you’ll gain a bunch of useful new skills. Don’t bother with them, and you’ll stay stuck in the same old rut. Guaranteed.

And before you ask if today’s article is my interrupted piece on focus, no it’s not. That also is coming later.

For now I just wanted to answer some of your questions about the Club and what you’ll be getting from it.

Got more questions? Observations? Suggestions? Post ‘em in the comment box below because I’d love to hear ‘em.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

What is hard – what gets in the way for most people – is a reluctance to see oneself having those skills (sounds quirky, I know, but we’re going to look at how to get around this too-common trait).

You’ve probably heard me say before that skills and habits are essentially the same thing. They’re semi-automatic behavior patterns that are built up through repetition. But many of these skills are learned by imitating the behavior of others, so at the time, we may never have even realized what we were learning. This is especially true of the skills we call habits.

Let’s say you’ve got a “bad” habit (such as procrastination). Maybe you’ve struggled against it for years, with little success, and you’d like to get rid of it. If so, then I have some good news for you. You can stop trying to get rid of that habit. You’re about to learn an entirely different strategy that’s based on the psychology of how minds work in the real world.

To give you an idea of what you’re going to see, let’s take an example. Little Joanie is 12 years old and she’s very good at talking. She’s had several years’ experience talking, so she can do it at a moment’s notice – and without having to consciously think about it: she has an idea, she opens her mouth, she speaks.

Remember, Skills and Habits are Basically the Same

So what would you think if someone said, “Joanie has a habit of talking, and since you can’t have two conflicting habits, she’ll never learn how to type.” … Hanh?

I don’t know about you, but I figure just about anybody can learn both. Some of my best friends can do both. And yet, aren’t we doing the same thing when we say, “I’m an awful procrastinator, so I’ll never learn to be a fast starter.”

Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that the two “skills” of procrastination and fast-starting are not opposites, that they are completely independent skills and could actually exist side-by-side in the same person, so that they could choose to do either one or the other, depending on the situation.

After all, talking and typing can co-exist. When it’s appropriate to talk, you do, and when it’s appropriate to type, you do that. You can choose between them.

Or let’s say you can fluently speak both English and Italian. When in Rome, you speak as the Romans do, and when in New York, you keep your mouth shut and don’t antagonize anybody. Again, it’s your choice.

So what if you could choose between jumping on that new project right away… or you could alternatively choose to put it off. The problem with most procrastinators is that they don’t get a choice. They have built only one skill, and that’s the one they’re stuck with, whether it’s appropriate to the situation or not.

Learning new skills is always about having more choices available.

What kind of skills (habits) are you currently using? Answering that one is easy. Just look at your behavior patterns. Do you…
……… * put things off a lot?
……… * feel powerless or hopeless much of the time?
……… * avoid any challenging new experiences?
……… * get jealous at others’ successes?
……… * often wave your bird finger when driving?
……… * put others down?
……… * grow angry when someone offers a suggestion?
……… * reject offers of promotion at work?
……… * assume successful people got it dishonestly?

All of these are habits. But you don’t need to “get rid of” any of them.

What’s far, far easier is to create some new habits to co-exist alongside these old patterns. This way, you’re not having to fight yourself. Instead, you’re simply expanding the choices you have available for meeting any given situation.

So what kind of new skills would you benefit from acquiring?

I’ve come up with a list of seven. There are many more possibilities, but these seven hit the main pressure points in a success personality.

The 7 Skills You Will Build

In the BullsEye Club, we’ll concentrate on these:

Skill 1. Raise Your Average Vibration Rate

Norman Vincent Peale called it positive thinking, and Napoleon Hill termed it a positive mental attitude. One commonly used way to raise your frequency is affirmations. They’ve worked for many, many people. And they’ve failed to work for many millions more.

Where there have been failures (and they have almost always outnumbered the successes), it’s because a person’s basic personality is still founded on negative expectations. Until this is remedied, no successes CAN come. But once expectations are lifted and overall mental processes are turned more positive, success becomes simple, almost trivial.

Today exciting new techniques have been developed that can affect psychological change (change in vibration rate) with breathtaking speed, sometimes literally within minutes.

So changing the basic frequency of your mental processes is the first task. It’s not hard to do, but most people, in their eagerness to get on to the “good stuff,” like money and romance and health, skip over this first essential step. We won’t do that.

Skill 2. Raise Your Sights

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
~ Maureen Dowd

The other day, a few friends were talking about their latest vacation trips. One lady said she’d gone to a “snake” zoo and even petted a big constrictor. A man in the group nearly went into convulsions of loathing, just hearing her talk about it. This is a classic phobia reaction.

When I offered to show him how to get rid of that phobic reaction, he refused. “Why would I want to stop hating snakes?” he asked, almost indignantly.

When you’re sunk into low-level thinking, you can’t even imagine wanting to raise your sights to something more empowered. Have you ever caught yourself thinking any of these?
……… * That’s just too hard
……… * I’d never want to own a business
……… * Managing people would be a nightmare
……… * I don’t want to do the things marketers have to do
……… * Talking with all those people would be too stressful
……… * What if I write a book and then somebody hates it
……… * Learning all that stuff would be too boring

If there’s something in you that drags its feet at the very thought of raising your sights, then you’re a prime candidate for this process. There is nothing inherently wrong or terrible or scary about expanding your abilities… the fear is something you’re supplying on your own, out of habit.

This too can be adjusted.

Skill 3. Learn to Choose and Shape Your Beliefs and Desires at Will

Beliefs – those are the things you think are bedrock truths about your self, your life, your universe and your entire reality.

Let me say that again. Beliefs are the things you believe are truths.

Oh yeah, Burke? Is the earth flat? Well, a few hundred years ago, an awful lot of very smart people just KNEW this fact was true. And it IS true if you take a small enough sample of data (which is what the ancients were doing… judging the entire world by what little they could see locally).

What’s exciting is, there are now rapid-change techniques we can use to change the things you believe about yourself.
……… * I’m too shy for that
……… * I’m not a salesy type
……… * I’m not smart enough
……… * I wouldn’t really like _____
……… * I have fat (or skinny) genes
……… * I could never learn to…

Changing some of these could greatly expand the life you live. A very good friend of mine was painfully shy when he was young. He was smart as all get-out, but when it came time to meet new people or to speak up in a group, he’d freeze.

But with some effort (and some of the new techniques available) he became a star salesman in every company he worked for. Now he thinks nothing of picking up the phone and calling anybody at anytime. He’s lost all fear of public speaking. And he’s running a successful Internet business that lets him live anywhere in the world he’d like – and this changes every few months.

So what are the things you can’t do? And how are they limiting the life you should be living right now?

In the BullsEye Club, we’ll work on these beliefs of yours, and end up giving you a whole range of new choices.

Skill 4. Eliminate Indecision

“Oh what should I do? Is this choice better, or is that one?”

Ever been there? Ever waffled and wavered over the simplest of decisions. Even when you knew deep down inside that you wanted to just move forward?

Well, you’re going to learn some new ways to look at decisions. And you’ll lose the fear of making the wrong choice.

This skill comes after number three, learning to control your own beliefs, because one of the main causes of indecision is the belief that you’re going to screw things up and get it all wrong. Once you start believing that you can make good, strong, accurate decisions – and make them quickly – the waffling evaporates.

You become so eager to reach what’s on the other side of the next impending decision, that you leap forward eagerly to get at it. The decision stops looking like a huge, towering test to “pass” and changes into just a minor little detail between you and what you want to do. Soon, you won’t even break stride when it’s time to decide something.

Skill 5. Learn to MAKE Your Decisions Work

This skill is a twin to decisiveness. Once you lose your fear of making decisions, you tend also to lose your fear of doing whatever it takes to make that decision come out all right.

Lingering over options and choices until you’re not sure what to do about them – that behavior is directly caused by a morbid fear of failure. Lose that fear, and everything becomes an opportunity. Here’s how you do that.

Let’s say you’ve been trying to invent an electric light bulb, and the first two or three hundred substances you’ve tried didn’t work. So what? This trial and error process gives you more ideas even while it’s removing other ideas from your list of possible options to try. When Edison decided to invent an electric light, all those failures were NOT failures – they were just tests along the way.

When Henry Ford decided that he wanted his engineers to design a V8 engine all cast in one block, it took those engineers months and months. They were convinced that his decision was a bad one – that it’d all end in failure. Not Ford. He pushed them on and on, well past their own limits of belief. And eventually they did what they’d proclaimed was impossible. And Ford gave the world a single-block V8 engine.

Both Edison and Ford MADE their decisions work.

To put it another way, success and failure are not really either success or failure. They are simply steps in the process of exploration and discovery. No single experience will ever again look like a failure to you as long as there is another step you can take.

This skill – doesn’t it seem like a useful one to develop?

Skill 6. Swear Off Excuses Forever

Success requires no excuses; failure permits no alibis.
~ Anonymous

I’ve written about excuses before (The Real Magic Behind Achievement, as well as several others.

In How to End Addiction to Stinkin’ Thinkin’, I wrote in part:

A few years back, I ran an article on gratitude, and challenged readers to find ten things each day to be thankful for. Many readers sent wonderful responses, telling how, overnight, their lives had become much happier and more fulfilling. But I still remember Gladys (not her real name).

Gladys wrote me back an email enumerating a long, long list of complaints and problems she was NOT thankful for, so therefore, she couldn’t be happy. I responded that she’d gotten the assignment quite backwards and should try again. I even suggested a few ways to look at her situation differently.

Back came more complaints – this time more forceful, more insistent, more angry. Without saying it in so many words, Gladys was insisting on her RIGHT to be pissed off at the world. It was treating her roughly, and she by-gawd wasn’t going to let it pass. Clearly, she had plenty of excuses not to feel gratitude.

After a few more emails, I realized – all over again – that all self help is SELF help, that it must come from within. And some folks, like Gladys, simply are not ready to change their minds about life or anything else. They’re too busy enjoying their anger and self pity. They’ve practiced it for years, and they’re GOOD at it.

If you’re also doggedly hanging on to your anger, resentment and hate, no website is going to help you. It’s only when you start turning loose of all that STUFF – all those excuses – that you’ll begin to find some joy in life.

Gladys had every reason, every excuse, to be angry at the world. But anger is not the only thing we excuse.

Late to work? Trot out an excuse. Ditto for failure to do the job you said you would. Anything is fodder for excuses… if that’s the way you want to live your life. But frankly, that’s a hell of a way to live.

Especially when getting rid of excuses just isn’t that hard to do. If you’re ready to make some changes and leave your excuses – and Gladys – behind, the BullsEye Club may be the exact thing you’re looking for.

Skill 7. Learn to Really Care What Happens

This skill is the mirror image of Skill number six. Once you stop allowing yourself to make excuses, you have only two alternatives (actually only one, but they come out to the same thing).

You can either bear down and do whatever it is that you promised you’d do (which everyone around you will appreciate more than you can imagine). Or you will start being a lot more judicious about what you promise to do.

In practical terms, you’ll find yourself practicing both of these things, so as I said, they come out to the same in the end.

But far more important than either of these is the fact that you’ll take every task you tackle much more seriously. This is because you’ll no longer allow yourself to just throw it down and walk away. You’ll be much more emotionally and intellectually invested in every single thing you do.

In a word, you’ll care.

Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
~ Erica Jong.

No one ever excused his way to success.
~ Dave Del Dotto …

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.
~ Alexander Pope

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
~ Francois La Rochefoucauld

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.
~ Eric Hoffer

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
~ Florence Nightingale

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
~ Rudyard Kipling

He who excuses himself, accuses himself.
~ Gabriel Meurier

Uncalled for excuses are practical confessions.
~ Charles Simmons

There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.
~ Art Turock

Never do anything you’ll have to find an excuse for later.
~ Old proverb

Now, as I stated previously, you could take this list of seven skills and, working alone, build your own toolkit of success habits.

But most folks simply don’t have the foundational skills they need to persist through all that personal growth all by themselves. To put it simply, IF you could do it that way, you already would have, and you wouldn’t be reading this…

Most of us need a support team of some kind. That’s what the BullsEye Club will be about.

More coming next week.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Ready for a practical lesson in expanding your world?

We Own Everything – a Happiness Tale
By Susan Minarik

“It was Christmas,” Jen told me, “and my son was six.  Like most six-year-olds, he was really excited about the coming holiday.

“The problem was that I was flat broke.  It was all I could do to put food on the table.  But I wanted to do something to make Nate’s Christmas special.

“One day, just as the shopping season was in full swing, I got a crazy idea.  ‘Nate,’ I said to my son, ‘Would you like to play a Christmas game?’  Of course he was eager to play.

“’Well, it’s a secret,’ I whispered, putting my fingers to my lips and looking around as if to see if anyone was listening.  ‘Here’s the deal.  You and I own absolutely everything in the world.  Everything!  It’s all ours!

“‘But, see, there’s so much of it  that we don’t have anywhere to keep it.  So we made stores and we put the stuff there, and we let people come and buy it and take it to their homes to enjoy.  Cool, huh?’

“’Really?’ Nate said, all big-eyed.  ‘Everything?’

“’Yes,’ I told him.  ‘Absolutely everything.  Would you like to go visit our stuff and see how much of it there really is?’

“’Sure!’ he said.  And off we went.  Nobody paid any attention to two more shoppers pawing through the merchandise.

“We started at the local dimestore and looked at the cowboy hats and goldfish and parakeets and clay.  Then we went to the toy store, and Nate was in heaven, sitting on bikes, pulling games from the shelves, trying on a baseball glove.  He carefully lifted a big red fire truck from one of the shelves.  “Boy, I hope somebody takes this home,” he said.  “It would sad if it just sat here in the store.”

“We went to the sporting goods store and he tried on ice skates and lay on a big toboggan. We looked at kayaks and fishing rods and tents and canoes.

“’It’s a good thing we have these stores!’ Nate said.  ‘We sure own an awful lot of stuff!’

“I got into the game, too,” laughed Jen.  I tried on dresses and rings and dabbed on samples of perfume as we toured a big department store.  We sat on soft sofas and watched the display TVs.

“We must have spent five hours, just going from store to store, laughing and pretending that the whole world was ours.

“We were exhausted when we got home, and as happy as if we really did own everything. We had supper and some cocoa, and after his bath, I read Nate a story and tucked him into bed.  As I bent to give him a good-night kiss, he flung his arms around me and squeezed me tight.  ‘We really had fun today, didn’t we!’ he said.

“’We sure did, buddy,’ I answered.  ‘Have a good sleep and sweet dreams.’

“’Mom?’ he said, looking me right in the eyes, ‘I really love you.’

“’I love you, too, Nate,’ I said.  And as I turned off the light, I knew our secret was really true.  Everything that mattered in the world was ours.”

Back to Charles:
How could you take this simple little idea and apply it to your own situation? What have you been “lacking” that could be turned into hidden assets? More importantly, how could you turn it into fun, joy and love?

This strategy is so easy that you can apply it anywhere, to anything. And the best part? Susan has a thousand little stories, insights and ideas that’ll help you see your life as a far happier place than you’ve been thinking. Do go visit her blog. She writes a new piece every single day, and if you go there often, you can expect to become High on Happiness too.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

The answer to either of those questions will obviously vary, depending on whether it’s being answered by you or by your boss (or some other person with no sense of humor). In fact, your own self appraisal will tend to differ from day to day as your moods (and self esteem) rise and fall.

Some of us may even be a bit unclear what’s involved in being “spiritual” anyway. Does being good for the entire past month get cancelled out by one flash of impatience this afternoon? Or are these things figured on a 90-day moving average to smooth out the peaks and valleys?

Well, as I said, we don’t quite have the technology nailed down in this area yet, but guest columnist Peter Vajda today brings us some useful ideas for identifying what “spiritual” means to you personally.

What Does it Mean to Be Soulful or Spiritual?
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

I’m often asked what I mean when I refer to spirituality or soul in the context of life at work, at home, at play or in relationship. Here’s what I mean.

For me, soul or spirit (and I will use them interchangeably from here on) describes the Essential, Innate Force or Energy that lives inside every human being. Being soulful or spiritual, then, means living one’s life according to a deeper meaning that results from a lifelong practice of self-reflection, inquiry and exploration.

Soulful moments

No one, that I know of, lives life spiritually 24/7/365. However, many spiritual folks experience moments of joy, communion, connection, love, compassion, gratitude, and silence, etc. wherein they “transcend” their ego-personality self.

In this spiritual place, these folks experience a kind of “knowing”, a kind of “connection” to the whole of the Universe where they access a “wisdom,” where they really “see” life from this larger dimension or perspective – where all the ego-based “masks” and false appearances melt away. These moments are not “mental.” These moments are more like being “in the zone” where we know how to do, be and have but not from a “mind”-directed perspective. In this place, we are “out of our mind.”

Spirituality in the “real world”

Experiencing soulfulness or spirituality in the real world – at 9:00 Monday morning – means treating others with dignity and respect, kindness, and compassion. It means we respect the world and all that the world contains – its abundance of plant and animal life – by not polluting, destroying, or degrading the flora or fauna of the planet by our everyday decisions about how we live and work. Spirituality means telling the truth, being self-responsible, accountable and forthright with all those with whom we deal – at work, at home, at play and in relationship – acting with full disclosure, and honesty.

Soulfulness means coming from a place of balance and harmony – an equilibrium or alignment between what we think feel, say and do. And taking an Inner Approach to prioritizing our life – work life, family life, personal life – in the pursuit of activities that nourish and enrich every aspect of our life. That we choose, honestly, sincerely and self-responsibly to focus on the well-being of our mind, body and spirit.

Spirituality means we choose to live life as a steward of the planet, that we come from a place of “we,” not “me,” and continually reflect, and then act upon, what “we” want and need, how “we” want to be acknowledged and appreciated, and how “we” can contribute to the well-being of all of us. As a steward, we explore how we can make a difference for the greater good, and how we serve to enhance the well-being of others.

The Ingredients

Passion and purpose are hallmarks of soulfulness – our heart drives us and gives us direction. When we live from a heart-based place, then we are up-front, honest, sincere and in integrity at work, at home, at play and in relationship – no dishonesty, shortcuts, collusion, deception or underhandedness. We live from a place of joy, enthusiasm, appreciation, collaboration and community.

Ingenuity, inventiveness, imagination, discovery, creativity and innovation are soulful and spiritual drivers. We look for new ways of do-ing and be-ing. We exude boldness and initiative. We are open to new ideas and are continuous learners in all of life. Continued self-awareness is paramount.

Finally, soulfulness and spirituality are about being conscious – in our thoughts, words, and deeds. We seek an ever growing awareness of our motives and values. We are intentional in every moment. We see the “truth” of what is happening and know the difference between the “truth” and our projections and fantasies that we make believe are the truth. Consciousness is the lifelong process of increasing self-awareness about “who I am,” “how I am” and “what I’m here to do with my life” – ever seeking to bring our unconscious self to conscious awareness.

My take is that our life at work, at home, at play and in relationship is more honestly served, and truly rewarding, when we focus on ethics, values, integrity and principles that emanate from this place of soul or spirit.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? If so, how does your spirituality play out in your life at work, at home, at play and in relationship?
• Do you ever feel you want to make a difference? If so, what would that difference look like?
• Do you feel your self-worth is defined by your net worth?
• What do you feel the planet demands of you?
• Are you a change-maker? How so?
• How do you nurture your mind, body and spirit?
• Does your life reflect harmony?
• What do you not know about yourself?
• Do you ever reflect on your spiritual nature?
• What is necessary for your spiritual growth and development?
• Do you ever feel guilty you’re not doing the things necessary for your spiritual growth?
• How much time do you spend in self-reflection?
• What was your experience around spirituality (i.e, not religion or theology) like when you were growing up?
• Can you envision a world where folks’ motives and intentions are spiritually-based?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
It’s kind of comforting, isn’t it, to know that even the “saints” have their off moments… or days. I mean, if even they don’t get it 100 percent, then maybe I’m not so hopeless.

On the other hand, if we take that self-forgiveness stuff too far, we can mire ourselves deep in self-indulgence. Then it turns into an excuse for not even making the effort, and at that point our mantra becomes “Hey, nobody’s perfect, right, so get off my back.”

So where’s the balance?

Honestly? I don’t think anybody can pick another person’s balance point for them. But I do think that as long as you’re trying – in good faith – to find a real balance in your life that’s fair both to you and to those around you, then you’re doing good work. In other words, balancing in life is like balancing on a bicycle or a surfboard, not like stacking bricks. It’s an ongoing process, not a static target.

As much as I’d like to tell you otherwise, this is one goal without a BullsEye.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Then two months ago I decided to move everything to a new hosting account.

It was easy to set up the basic blog installation, to activate the theme (template) I wanted, and to customize the appearance.

What was not easy was importing the old database with all the old articles into the new installation. It’s supposed to be easy… I had step-by-step instructions for it, and it LOOKED easy… nevertheless, it didn’t work as described.

After a dozen serious attempts to find the problem and fix it, the old articles were still AWOL, so I decided to climb out of my box and consider some alternativies. Possibility 1 was to keep flailing away at it till I accidentally fixed it. Possibility 2 would be to hire somebody who knew what they were doing. And possibility 3 – what if I just said screw the old stuff, I’ll start over.

When I phrased it that way, starting over sounded sort of charming. In fact, my interest was piqued a bit. First off, it’d save me both time and money. And besides, many’s the person who has mused, “If I had it all to do over again…”  So what the hell, here was my chance.

One thing that did give me pause, however, was my lofty Google page rank. I mean, that PR of 1 was something to treasure and be proud of. It had cost me five years of consistent effort. If I lost Google’s approval, could I bear the shame? Would my readers still respect me in the morning?

Well, no… actually I didn’t think any of that goofy crap. What I did think was more like – “screw Google and the rating system they rode in on… five years and all they can spare me is a measly one?” So I gave the whole matter all the consideration it deserved, which was about three seconds. Tops.

Onward and upward. I did the new start and – confirming my suspicion that Google didn’t even know me – they totally failed to notice that three or four hundred articles had gone missing. BullsEye’s page-rank remained firmly at one. And then one day, about a month into the new deal, I noticed that Google had upped my ranking to a mighty two. Apparently their algorithm saw how much more often I was posting, and rewarded the site for it. Or possibly it was accidental.

Anyway, you can see that sometimes it pays not to worry too much, or as my Grandaddy used to say, “If it won’t cause the end of  the world, or maim anybody, why fart around? Just get on with it.”

So what do you think? Would a trick like this be useful for when you’re procrastinating? Especially the “I’ve got to get this thing better than perfect before I can release it to the world” kind of procrastination.

I mean, I hate to break it to you, but most of what you and I do will NOT cause the end of the world. Not even slightly. And if you really believe you’re powerful enough to maim anybody with the piddle-crap little project you’re working on, then you need some help with your delusions of grandeur.

A well known philosophical rule of thumb is to either spit or get off the pot.

So whatever you’re obsessing over (but not doing), get off the pot and get on with things. Google might even start liking you (but of course, who cares anyway, right?).

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Let’s face it… this No zone of ours is not really a place that encourages change. We tackle all sorts of new projects with the firmest of intentions. We say we’re going to lose weight, learn French, play the flute, dance, get fit, sleep less, get out more, go skydiving, play golf, swim, do yoga, meditate… anything at all that involves change and self improvement. But our No zone tries to shut it down, stop it, smother it, discourage it, make us forget it, maybe regret starting it or fear continuing it.

Our No Zone

Let’s talk about this for a minute. What does it take to change something about yourself? Now, I’m not talking about a different haircut, or starting to wear different styles, although those can seem like pretty big change to some folks. No, I mean big, important alterations INSIDE yourself – not just nibbling around the edges, making an inch or two of progress, then gradually, bit by bit, drifting back into your old patterns. No, I’m talking about MASSIVE change.

What’s your experience? Have you ever dramatically changed anything about yourself or your life, or have you always just wished you could?

My guess is that you’ve experienced plenty of big changes over the course of your lifetime, but that when those changes occurred, you were never quite clear afterward about what – exactly – was the REAL cause. Many of our biggest changes are… well… they’re often less than intentional.

In those cases, we know something happened, and we know what the results were… but the cause – the how-to – of that change usually just totally eludes us. The truth is, this lack of clear understanding is what keeps us from making a change, any kind of change, anytime we want. If our No zone can’t prevent the occasional change, well then it’ll by-golly keep us from looking at the process too closely so we can’t do it again.

Maybe sometime in the past you’ve undergone a major shift in your personal philosophy or your beliefs, and while it was happening you were sure you knew what you had done to trigger it. But then afterwards, when you tried the same technique on something else, it probably didn’t work very well – or at all. This a pretty common experience.

Sometimes we wonder if we REALLY know what’s happening here.

So we stumble and fumble on, getting by, doing the best we can, living a hit or miss life that isn’t bad, but (if we’re honest with ourselves) doesn’t actually measure up to our hopes and dreams, either. Again, this experience is so common it has become a stereotype.

So, What’s the Solution?

I have a theory. And some suggestions. But first, a couple of stories that may help shed a little light on the question.

Back in my mid-twenties, I had just left a job working in the darkroom of a custom photo lab, and taken a job that was just about its polar opposite, selling brushes and cleaners door-to-door. I was a Fuller Brush Man, going around with my samples case knocking on doors, speaking with housewives, taking orders for products. And I loved it.

I was outdoors, after three years of working in the dark and breathing chemical fumes. Outdoors, in the clean air, under the early June sunshine. And I was actually talking with people all day long. Man that was heaven by comparison. As soon as I hit the street, my heart was singing with joy. In fact, I remember thinking over and over, “I am SO glad I’m out here and not shut up in that darkroom.”

And I sold like crazy. I had no sales training and very little experience, but from day one I was selling $100 to $120 dollars every day. My manager counseled me to stay out till nine o’clock selling every night, but I was knocking off at five or five thirty. (And by the way, hundred-dollar days were the holy grail back then – the elusive “successful day.”)

The first four days were great. I was selling up a storm. In fact, I was beginning to feel sort of confident. I was already totaling up how much money I’d make in my first year, and all the stuff I could buy.

Then, the fifth day – Friday – something changed. I got the same early, eight o’clock start. But people weren’t buying.

In the four previous days, I had hardly gone for fifteen minutes without a sale, let alone an hour. But the morning stretched out, barren and unproductive. No sales. On and on. By lunchtime I’d gotten exactly two very small, very grudging orders. Certainly not the friendly reception and enthusiastic orders I had seen up till then.

So I trudged to my car, pulled out my sandwich, my apple and my boiled egg, and I ate.

Changing Patterns

And as I ate, I simply sat and enjoyed the sunshine, the fresh air and the privilege of being outdoors. I could at least be thankful for that. The knots in my stomach and my neck loosened, and I relaxed.

That afternoon, sales caught fire again, and in the next four hours, I had my biggest day yet, selling more in that brief half-day than I’d sold in any of the full days before.

That’s when I first started suspecting that the secret ingredient wasn’t the words I was saying, wasn’t the choice of products I demonstrated, nor was it the houses or the neighborhood I was in. The only difference was in me.

The very instant I went back to simply being grateful and thankful, people responded to that feeling within me.

Over the next weeks I experimented, trying different approaches, different greetings, different everything I could think of. And no matter what outward things changed, the sales continued. The only thing that made any real difference was the feeling I was consciously and deliberately generating inside myself. With it I was a superstar. Without it, bupkis – nothing.

Of course, over the next few months I grew accustomed to being outdoors, and that became the new norm in my life. As that happened, I gradually lost touch with the feeling of contrast – the huge difference between the darkroom and the sunshine – and my feelings of thankfulness faded and dimmed.

And, as you probably guessed, my sales sagged, then slumped, then fell off almost completely. I’d lost my secret ingredient. I eventually left that job, took others, some better, some worse, but recapturing that secret eluded me for more than twenty years. Later I’ll tell you a bit about how I recaptured it. But first, another story, this time someone else’s.

A Seductive Idea

Four or five years ago a friend told me that he’d bought a set of cassette tapes from one of the “seduction training” gurus. He was so excited by them that he wanted me to listen to them too. The methods are based on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), and I did have a strong interest in that subject, so with those self-justifying excuses in mind, I took his tapes home and started listening.

As I listened, I realized a couple of important things.

First, and most importantly, I wasn’t particularly interested in wholesale seducing. The idea of sexual intimacy with a string of total strangers somehow didn’t flip my switches (although intimacy of bodies is exciting, I seem to find intimacy of minds far more fascinating). Simply put, the instruction in those tapes never quite triggered within me a desire to change into a full-bore Casanova.

But I still got a lot out of those tapes because of my second realization. To help explain, here’s the second story I promised you.

In the recordings, the instructor at one point introduced a former student of his, a man who had reached legendary levels of success with seduction methods, and had now become a top instructor in his own right. We’ll call him Steve.

Steve got up and told his story, how he had started out as the most hopeless of non-sexy, non-seductive, losers with women. So he took the course, then started going to clubs every night, trying out the new techniques he’d learned.

And he was an immediate, total failure.

But he wasn’t a quitter. Beside, he didn’t know anything else to try, so he kept on going back to the clubs every night, every night.

And every night, every night, he continued to strike out, getting rejected, going home alone.

He told how he had grown numb to the rejection, so he just kept on running the NLP language patterns with every lady he’d meet. By now he was mainly just doing it for himself, seing how outrageous he could be. He didn’t even expect success anymore, but it didn’t much bother him anymore, either.

For months this went on.

And Then One Night…

As he tells it, Steve recalls chatting with this one young lady and nothing was happening – as usual – so he turned away and spent the rest of the evening talking with one girl or another, then at closing time he went outside to get in his car and drive home… still alone.

But as he was walking across the parking lot, he heard someone running behind him. You know the sound of high heels running on pavement. He turned around, and it was that first girl, the one who’d appeared so disinterested, and she was running after him. She literally slammed into his body and smothered his face and neck with kisses. It seemed she most ardently wished to accompany him home. In fact, she urgently insisted on accompanying him right there in the parking lot, on the hood of his car.

After that, ol’ Steve was a changed man. His life changed, and his sleeping habits altered drastically.

But when I heard that story on the tapes, my first question was this: what actually caused that change? Remember, he’d been running those same NLP language patterns for months, and they had NOT worked. The patterns had not changed, but suddenly they were working, and it was like flipping a switch. What was the real cause?

In my own mind, I’m fairly sure I know what that difference was. Just as in my own experience selling door-to-door, it was an internal change. Mine was not permanent, but Steve’s was.

Second Question – How Do You Make it Permanent?

Don’t these seem like logical, useful questions? Doesn’t it seem like, if we had some reliable answers – a few real, usable, repeatable techniques – we could probably begin choosing the changes we want to make? With that kind of method in our toolkit, we could begin changing things consciously, actually managing our personal growth, rather than the hit-or-miss affair it’s been up to now.

What if we could actually take that No zone in our mind and rewire it to become a Go-Go-Go zone that constantly urges us forward rather than always holding us back?

Well, the good news is, as we go through this course, I’m going to share with you a selection of techniques that actually do work. They really do produce results – not occasionally but consistently.

Of course, where there’s good news, we often also find some less-good news, so here it is: simply learning these techniques won’t do squat for you.

Remember, Steve learned all sorts of seduction techniques, but it wasn’t until he underwent some internal shifts – changes in his psyche, not just in his knowledge base – that he experienced change in how the world responded to him.

So knowledge alone isn’t the point (it never has been). It takes a deeper, more profound settling-in of that knowledge into your deepest inner mind. That’s what produces change. Nothing else.

Been trying to escape your No Zone by building some kind of Know Zone? Then understand this – it doesn’t work. It takes a real, honest-to-god GO zone to get you moving. And it’s this GO zone that we’ll be building over the course of the next few weeks.

If that appeals to you, raise your hand. (And if you just skimmed over that and sat there like a lump without moving your hand, there’s part of the problem. You not only need to think you’re ready, you have to demonstrate it by your actions.)

So raise your hand if you’re ready.

Are folks sitting around watching you, who’d probably think you’re weird if you suddenly go raising your hand for no reason? Then lean back and pretend you’re stretching. But find a way to DO IT, dammit. Do it!

Reinforce. Demonstrate. Act. Make your actions agree with your thoughts.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

But what if someone were to hand you one simple story – an allegory – to enable you to solve virtually every problem in the human experience? What would that be worth to you… assuming it really performs as promised?

And what if, further, this little story could spark in you the ability to keep up with all life’s twists, turns and surprises, as you become, over time, almost immune to overwhelm, confusion and even despair?

Well, I’ve got some good news for you. My very good friend, and today’s guest author, Russ Hamel has exactly that story. He shares it with us today as he asks…

So, What Seems to Be the Problem?
By Russ Hamel

I do it.

You do it.

Even that guy who looks like he has his act totally together – you know the one – Mr. Efficiency? He does it, too. Ask him. If he’s honest, he’ll even admit it if you swear to secrecy.

We ALL do it at least sometimes with certain things. Some of us do it far more than others. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make any person better than the other.

So, what seems to be the problem? I’d love to tell you, but first…

Talk to Me Like I’m Four Years Old

As a private music teacher for nearly 38 years with students ranging in age from 4 to 74, I’ve had to come up with creative ways to explain difficult concepts so that even a child could understand. The funny things is, children often grasp new ideas a lot faster than adults.

The solution you are about to read is so simple – heck, even a two or three year old would probably get it. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity though. Whenever I meet a former student, this is the #1 lesson they remember. It has nothing to do with music, but everything to do with life.

My former students claim that this one piece of advice alone was worth all the years of training as it helped them with their many diverse careers. I should point out that 99.9% of my students go on to work in anything BUT music related fields. The ‘problem’ really is that universal; the #1 solution is more than effective!

Before I tell you about the problem…

It’s All Relative – And We’re Not Talking About Your Uncle

Everything is relative. For a beginning student, whether a child or an adult, mastering eight measures of music is a BIG DEAL. For those of you who don’t know, think of a ‘measure of music’ as a box of notes. Typically there will be four boxes (measures) per line. For a beginner to master eight measures, or two lines of music, is like climbing Mt. Everest.

As the student’s skills develop and progress, those eight measures become eight lines of music. More advanced students can tackle eight pages of music at a time. Accomplished students can play eight songs, each of them eight pages. The best concert artists in the world have repertoires – fully memorized – that can easily fill eight hours of music!

When you think about it, whenever you begin ANYTHING, (even if you’ve done it many times before), the task can look like Mt. Everest. The reason why we go into instant overwhelm is because the problem is universal. Our bodies are hard-wired to seek the path of least resistance.

By now you’re probably very curious as to the name of this ‘problem’. Just a minute…

Feed Your Brain the Way You Feed Your Body

Here is an analogy that explains the #1 solution that all my former (and current students) swear by.

Imagine you have a large party size pizza. Here in Toronto, a party size pizza measures 2′ X 3′. (OK, I’m in Canada, so I’d better put in the metric conversion: 61cm X 91cm).

The question is, “Can you eat this large party size pizza ALL BY YOURSELF?”

Most people I ask automatically say no. A handful may say yes, but mostly to be funny because when I ask them HOW they would do it, they have no idea.

The discussion continues.

I ask, “Could you eat this large party size pizza all in one bite?”

Now of course, everyone agrees that this is impossible.

“So, if you had to eat this large party size pizza all by yourself, what do you think you should do first?”

For some – surprisingly even young children – the lights start to go on. Others still need another question or two before they get it.

“We could cut it into small pieces”, the brighter ones are already offering.

This is obvious, right? Who has ever eaten a whole LARGE pizza without cutting it into slices or pieces first? (I had to qualify the ‘large’ because some of my wiseguy students would cite the personal pan-size pizzas.) You learn things when you teach for 38 years!

I congratulate them saying, “That’s right. You cut it into pieces and have one piece. But you still have to eat the WHOLE large party size pizza. What are you going to do with the rest of it?” This is where 98% of my students get stumped.

“Geez, I had one piece, and I still have to eat the rest of this thing. What am I going to do?”

Major overwhelm!

I’m thinking, “This is so great. When they learn the #1 simple solution AND it’s application, they are going to FLY through life!”

See, at this point most students are thinking they have to eat the whole large party size pizza today… as in right NOW! Scroll back to see if my initial challenge mentions anything about a time limit. Go ahead – I’ll wait.

Things Keep Breaking Down!

Most students will say, “I’ll keep eating until it’s gone.”

I ask them, “Do you REALLY think that’s possible? How do you think your tummy would feel about that?” “Oh…” they reply.

They know it’s not possible, but they can’t seem to get past this roadblock.

Other more creative students will offer, “Hey, it’s a large party size pizza. I can invite my friends to have a party. Then it will be all gone.”

“Nice try”, I say. “But you have to eat this ALL BY YOURSELF.”

Very few people would correctly decide to wrap up the rest of the large party size pizza and put it in the fridge or freezer for another day.

Getting back to the imaginary single piece they have in their hand, I now ask the student, “Could you eat that piece all in one bite?”

By now, everyone seems to be catching on.

“No”, they all concur.

“And when you take that bite, do you just put it into your mouth and swallow it?”

“We have to chew it at least a few times before we can swallow it.”

Ah, now we’re getting someplace.

Let me ask you, dear reader, have you guessed the ‘problem’ yet? If not, keep thinking about it while I tell you about the APPLICATION of the #1 solution.

Applied Knowledge is Power

I tell the above story to every one of my new students during the first couple of weeks of classes. Then I apply it to a carefully planned, step-by-step teaching process, that when followed, produces great results.

There are still those students who don’t (or won’t) practice. They get to hear the pizza story over and over until they either start practicing or I ask them to find another activity. A lot of people don’t do things because… well, they just don’t WANT to. And that’s fine. I encourage them to move on to something more suitable to their liking and talent, with my blessings.

Let’s be perfectly clear that the #1 solution ONLY works if you WANT to do it, but just can’t seem to get over the overwhelm hump.

With my beginner students, I do one measure with them in class. (You remember what a measure is, right?) Then I STOP!

The learning process that I use has seven steps to it. I won’t enumerate them here as they are irrelevant. I make sure the student thoroughly understands each simple small step before proceeding with the next one. Often this requires a few repetitions.

The students are always amazed, “That’s ALL I have to do today?”

“Yup, you just had your one slice of pizza (one measure). You took small bites (seven steps). You chewed each bite thoroughly before swallowing (repetitions). How hard was that? This is how you feed your brain, exactly the way you feed your body.”

Now I ask them, “How many days are there in a week?”

“Seven”, they all say.

“Great. We just did one measure in class. There are seven measures left. If you do one measure each day, you will have the whole song done by next class. Do you think you can do that?”

At this point my students are looking at me as if I had just come up with the solution for world peace!

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

I don’t stop there though. No way, baby. I know people will go home and try to do things their own way. For beginning students, I always insist that they master MY WAY first before branching out into other methods. After all, that’s why they’re paying ME!

So I get graphic on my students. I go back to the large party size pizza and ask them to imagine that they HAVE to eat the whole thing all in one bite right now… they HAVE to. I ask them, “What do you think would happen if you had to eat that whole thing in one bite right now?”

Most of the students agree that they would either choke or get sick and barf.

“That’s exactly right!” I tell them. “Do you think you would want to eat a large party size pizza ever again?”

“NO WAY!” they say, totally grossed out.

“So tell me something, how do you think your brain feels when you try to STUFF this whole song into your head ALL IN ONE BITE?”

I can see the fireworks exploding around my students heads.

“By practicing exactly the way I tell you, piece-by-piece; bite-by-bite; chew-by-chew; you will be able to play the whole song correctly by next week. If you try to do it any other way, you may come back with musical barf – lots of mistakes and stops – it won’t be pretty? Do you think you’ll want to do piano if you keep making your brain barf?”

At this point my students are convinced!

Relativity Revisited

In music class, it starts off with eight measures. Within a few short months, those eight measures become eight lines; which become eight pages; which become eight songs; which become eight hours of pleasure either for oneself or for a packed stadium of 50,000!

Let’s apply the #1 solution to YOUR task now. See the entire project as the large party size pizza. Here are the steps in review:

1. Cut your project into slices/pieces.
2. You take ONE slice. You put the rest AWAY for another time… you decide the time parameters.
3. You take your one slice and take a bite.
4. You chew the bite, fully enjoying the taste. (be sure to enjoy… it’s crucial to your success)
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your slice is done.

That’s it! You’re DONE… for now. Take a moment to celebrate. Enjoy your favorite beverage. Later, within the time-frame YOU choose, repeat the entire process again until the whole large party size pizza is gone.

Does Your Mommy Have to Spoon-feed You?

Recently I added this element to the pizza story. In spite of the awesome (IMHO) example you see above, there are still a handful of students who can’t (or more correctly WON’T) ‘feed’ themselves at home. Yet, they tell me that they ‘WANT’ to take piano lessons. These are the folks in life who LOVE to show up, but HATE to do any work.

I take this as a sort of compliment. I’m a nice guy; I tell great pizza stories among many, many others. So when my students keep coming back each week, I figure I must be doing something right. However, at the end of the day, Mom and Dad are paying me to produce some type of ‘musical’ results. After all, the sign on my door says, ‘School of Music’ and not ‘School of Life Skills’. The latter is just a benefit, albeit a major one.

So if the carrot doesn’t work, occasionally I have to break out the stick.

Does your Mommy spoon-feed you at home, with the high-chair and the little bibby?” I ask, with a slight edge in my voice.

“No…” returns the sheepish reply.

“Then why do you expect ME to spoon-feed YOU every single week? You KNOW the process. But knowing is not enough. At some point you have to DO it! Now can I expect you to DO it this week? I’m NOT going to spoon-feed you anymore.”

With the proper firmness and authority, this is usually enough to nudge a student over the edge. Lots of people have a willing spirit, it’s just that their flesh is weak.

However, if things continue to slide downhill and you’ve done everything else in your bag of tricks, it’s discussion time with the AUTHORITIES. With my students, this means their parents. With YOU, it could be your boss; a marriage counselor; a trustee for bankruptcy, etc.

What Exactly Is Your Problem?

Now you have the #1 solution. Have you guessed the ‘problem’ though?

It’s PROCRASTINATION! (I put off the reveal as long as I could.)

Do NOT take this simple solution lightly. It will work 100% of the time for things you WANT to do. That’s a guarantee proven over 38 years with my own students. Try it and see for yourself.

All the best from Toronto,

Russ

The world can seem like a crazy place sometimes…
OK, a LOT of the time!
However, no matter what is going on in your life, magic happens when you learn how to choose better feelings now!
You’re Gonna Love That Feeling

All the best from Toronto,
Russ and Maggie Hamel.

Back to Charles:
What’s something in your life that has been hanging over you unfinished (possibly even unstarted) because it just seems so big… so complex… so overwhelming…

Isn’t it obvious that taking one small bite of it at a time would go a long way to neutralizing the fear factor? Seriously now, can you think of ANYthing that can’t be whittled down to size by using this one-step-at-a-time approach?

I’ve written it before – procrastination isn’t the huge, unvanquishable problem that everybody claims. It only seems big because we’ve learned to think it is. We expect it to be hard. We’re sure it’s hard. Everybody says it’s hard. We’ve tried struggling with it before, and sure enough, it was hard.

And you know what? It’s going to stay hard right up until we change our minds about it and finally let it be easy. Then we’ll wonder why we ever let ourselves be conned into thinking it was difficult.

So hey – might as well start now. Repeat along with me (with feeling) procrastination is nothing. It’s a paper tiger. It’s all an illusion. And now I’m no longer impressed. I get things done fast and sure, because I am free to do so anytime I decide to. I’m free, taking one step, one bite, one nibble at a time.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,

Charles

But mostly we aren’t doing those things.

So let’s try a different tack. Let’s examine what we should NOT be doing (since we can sometimes be blind to those things in our own behavior).

Today’s guest author, Tristan Loo, brings us a contrarian view of success as he details for us the…

Nine Behaviors that Will Prevent Success
By Tristan Loo

Much has been written about how to obtain success in life, but little has been written about the behaviors that pose a threat to obtaining success. While success principles are very important, we should not ignore those behaviors which will prevent success from happening in our lives. By recognizing these behaviors, we can effectively eliminate them from our lives and focus on those behaviors which will ensure success.

1. The Desire for Instant Gratification

Those who fail to get what they want out of life are most often short-term thinkers, meaning that they base all of their decisions on what they want now, versus what they want in the future. Why do you think that lottery and gambling industries flourish? It’s because they prey on our desire for instant gratification – that of becoming rich overnight. When making a decision, focus on how that decision will impact your life in the long run, rather than focusing on the short-term benefits of that decision.

2. Greed

Greed is a dangerous behavior because it fulfills your desires, but at a cost to the lives of those people around you. The behavior of greed can be described as wanting something from others without the intention of exchanging something of like value in return. And while greed might get you what you want in the short run, it causes an imbalance of social karma within your relationships with other people and eventually that imbalance will have to be corrected and this is usually in the form of a crushing life crisis.

The root cause behind greed is a grossly underdeveloped level of self-esteem, which always urns to possess and to control because it is uncomfortable accepting its own self. Combat the behavior of greed by instead trying to help others with their lives. You will find that positive things will come your way when you provide value for others instead of trying to deprive others of their value.

3. Lack of Confidence

People who lack confidence in their abilities simply get by life without ever engaging life with all their capacities. They neither take a stand, nor do they show any courage in the face of adversity. They conform to what everyone else is doing in order to be accepted by their peers. Those who do not possess the confidence to take a stand are like cows in a herd being led off to the slaughterhouse.

Realize that whatever stand you take throughout your life, there will always be people who support your views and there will be people who oppose your views. You can’t please everyone in life, so please the one person who is the most important in your life – yourself.

4. Not Willing to Pay the Price

Success in life not only requires that you know what you want, but perhaps even more so, it requires that you know the sacrifices you have to make in order to reach that success. Success in any aspect of our lives comes at a price and we must pay this price in order to achieve that success. Unwillingness to pay the full price of the success that you want will assuredly prevent you from obtaining that success.

In the grand scope of things, you can’t cheat your way to the top. You can’t take shortcuts and expect to create any long-term success. If you want to be an Olympic athlete, you have to do the time – you have to have the dedication and the perseverance and the drive to win. No amount of intention-manifestation will enable you to get what you want unless you are willing to give up the things that are necessary for you to obtain it.

5. Lack of Persistence

Lack of persistence is a big distinguishing behavior between those who consistently achieve success in areas of their life versus people who often fail to realize their goals. When pressure builds and problems seem to stack on top of each other, quitting is the easy way out.

There is a big distinction we must make however between quitting and failing. Failing in life is a perfectly acceptable thing. We all fail at some point in our lives and chances are that we will fail yet again. But if we try our best and fail, then that is courageous and there are no regrets because we have the peace of mind of knowing that we did everything in our power to try to reach that goal. Failing is part of the journey towards success.

Quitting, on the other hand, is much worse than failing. Quitting is not using your fullest potential to reach those goals. This is very disempowering because not only will you not reach your success, but always in the back of your mind, you will wonder if that success could have been possible had you given it one-hundred percent. As my former gymnastics mentor and 1984 Olympic gold medalist, Peter Vidmar, once said, “Getting to the Olympics was simple. I just trained when I felt like it and I trained when I didn’t.”

6. Unwillingness to Take Risks

Getting ahead in life and reaching success involves taking calculated risks. That does not mean you have to be irresponsible however. Risk taking, as it applies to success, means that you have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone so that you can effectively expand your box and grow.

When I was competing as a gymnast, I used to perform acrobatic stunts that had the potential of seriously injuring myself or even killing me. But I never considered those stunts to be irresponsible risks because my knowledge, training, and competency gave me the confidence to push myself further and try things that I knew I had the ability to do.

I believe that great opportunities come into our lives daily, but it’s our indecision or fear that prevents us from taking hold of those opportunities. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone and seize those opportunities when they appear.

7. Procrastination

Waiting for the perfect moment is a big killer of success in our lives. If we don’t have to do it, then chances are we won’t do it, but it’s this lack of action which erodes our chances of success early on.

Realize that there will never be a perfect time to implement an action and the longer we wait to act, the less likely we are to do it.

We all know how to fill up our time with busywork, but not all of us know how to prioritize those tasks that are important. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of our results will come from only 20% of the actions that we do. People who procrastinate instead focus on the other tasks that are of little importance, while delaying their action on those high-value tasks that will produce the most change in their lives. Remember the adage, “Don’t wait for tomorrow what you can do today.”

8. Unwillingness to Learn from Past Mistakes

Failures and mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and a crucial part in building any real success for yourself, but you must be willing to extract the lessons from each failure and apply it towards your future in order for it to be effective.

Those people who ignore the lessons to be learned in their failures are doomed to fail again, and again, and again throughout their lives.

Successful people, on the other hand, not only learn from their own mistakes, but they seek out other people and learn from their mistakes as well. They use history as a powerful leverage tool for their success so that they don’t have to recreate the wheel.

9. Feeding Yourself Negative Affirmations

The law of attraction states that we attract to ourselves that which mirrors our mental attitude. Negative thinkers attract negative people, things, and events into their lives. That is why negative self-talk is so dangerous and detrimental towards any success in your life. Conversely, positive thinkers attract successful people and events into their lives. Make a conscious decision to eliminate negative self-talk from your daily life and replace it with rich, positive affirmations.

For over 10 years, Tristan Loo has inspired, motivated, and brought success to the lives of the people he’s touched. Successful in his own right, Tristan has competed athletically against Olympians as a world-class gymnast, saved lives as a police officer, authored numerous Personal Development and Interpersonal Communication books and articles, and is a highly sought-after Personal Development Coach. Tristan is the founder of the Synergy Institute, a San Diego based Personal Development Firm. His philosophy of passionate living and helping others fulfill their dreams has continually been the driving force that has placed him well above the industry standard. Visit Tristan’s website at http://www.synergyinstituteonline.com/ or by email at info [AT] synergyinstituteonline [DOT] com

Back to Charles:
Sometimes a fresh perspective, such as this one, can help us see things we’ve been missing. The artist steps back from the canvas. The composer asks someone else to play his music. The novelist seeks out the views of peers – or an editor.

And this unflinching look at the common traits of a failure shows us the contrast. We can all profit from holding ourselves up against this “failure’s standard,” just to see how well we fit the profile. If the fit is uncomfortably close, then it’s time to do something about it.

But one thing we should NOT do about it is beat ourselves up over it. Frankly, that’s the cheap, lazy way out. If you find that you don’t quite measure up in some area, instead of changing what needs to be changed, do you just give up and cry, “Oh what’s the use… I’m failing…”?

I hope this is not your way.

Sadly, some people have found that it’s easier to pretend they’re angry with themselves, or to act out feelings of depression and despair, than it is to stand up and do something useful.

Notice I said they pretend to be harsh with themselves. At the conscious level they actually believe their actions are real. But at the inner level, it’s different.

They have learned that it takes less energy (it’s cheaper) to beat themselves up than it is to put forth the effort for success. Yes, it may take less effort in the short term, but it’s a really bad tradeoff because they continue having to pay and pay and pay with their little self-hatred trick.

Meanwhile, the successful person is putting in her effort, getting her success, and moving on to the next thing in her life, all the while feeling better and better about herself.

Just think about it. The next time you find yourself spiraling down into a round of “I’m a failure… I’m no good… I can’t do anything right… I’ll never make it…” just remember that this is nothing but an old habit you learned from someone else long ago. It’s not even your habit.

Nevertheless, you’re being cheated by it. Terribly cheated.

When we pay the price right now, the price of effort and energy and decisiveness, it is always far cheaper in the long run than all that whining will ever be.

So how often do you stand up and do it the way winners do? I hope it’s pretty often because it makes a vast difference in your whole life.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

This is good advice, but there’s also another kind of speed that the Universe loves as well. This kind is even more fundamental than the speed with which we implement our plans.

This other, more basic type of speed goes hand-in-hand with enthusiasm and inspiration, and we wouldn’t achieve much without it.

Today’s guest contributor Thea Westra explains exactly why…

The Universe Loves Speed
By Thea Westra

I’ve often heard it said that “The Universe loves speed” and this of course includes the speed of your own personal vibration.

How the world responds to you, and therefore the results that you produce, is reliant on the vibrational energy that you put out. You have likely observed it yourself, many times. One person can walk into a room full of people and everyone’s head turns and notices. Another person can attend a public event, yet when a friend asks where they’ve been their reply is, “I’ve been right here!”

The energy that we emit either makes us super attractive and highly visible or else obscure to those around us. There are people who we want to be near all the time and there are those we tend to avoid, and we can’t always quite put our finger on why. It is all related to vibrational energy.

Individuals Vary

How does that connect to your personal success and happiness? That of course depends on what you define as success and on what you say makes you feel happy. Once these are determined, you then must generate the kind of energy that would move you toward producing that result.

You will know that you are experiencing success and happiness by the emotions you feel. Emotions are your measures. Yet, they are also your access.

Some put the cart before the horse e.g. when I have ______ then I’ll feel happy, or then I’ll be successful.

When you get into action on projects that would bring you closer to your definition of success, some activities with which you engage will intrinsically provide you high energy and excitement, you’ve already associated them with fun and the things that you love to do.

Energy Drains?

Then there are the other activities, they may be things you cannot avoid in bringing your plans to fruition, yet you’re not excited by those activities and your vibrational energy drops just thinking about doing them. You say you want the result, yet you cannot seem to drive up the level of personal energy required to engage fully with that particular activity and so you never get started, or you take action with one foot on the brakes.

Essentially, three types of energy exist: universal, personal and physical. Energy is not good or bad – it is simply just that, energy. We, and all other matter, are made up of little atoms and it’s the nucleus of these atoms that generate energy, creating electromagnetic fields. Thought controls their movement, and the fields surrounding one of these impacts each of the ones alongside.

To feel the emotions of happiness or the feelings that we associate with success, we want to go to work on finding ways of creating those types of energy vibrations. It is our thoughts that we want to be focused on. And directly connected to those thoughts are the words we use when we speak and in turn, the associations that we have connected to those words.

Positive or Negative Associations

One person can say the word “mother” and feel completely at ease, yet another person speaks or thinks that word and will feel an emotion with a highly negative charge. We would then either want to replace that word with another that holds a positive charge and is therefore more personally empowering, or shift the associations we have with this word to bring us closer to a desired energy state.

For example, imagine you are in a business of your own and things are not faring well. What are all the thoughts you have when you say the word ‘business’. As Dr Phil would say, “How’s that working for you?” If you are not producing your desired results, could you attach some new thoughts to the word ‘business’ or give it another label that empowers you? This will help raise your personal, vibrational energy so that your personal actions and results will begin to reflect those newly created electromagnetic fields and attract the kinds of things you’d like.

Continue to work on your personal experience and understanding of what James Allen meant when he said, “All that we achieve and all that we fail to achieve is the direct result of our own thoughts.”

© Thea Westra is the senior thought leader at her Forward Steps site. She resides in Perth, Australia with her ultra-supportive partner Greg. Thea publishes a monthly ezine (among many other publications and products) at http://www.forwardsteps.com.au Enjoy her life success blogs at http://www.timeformylife.com/blogs.htm and get personally connected here, http://www.ask-thea-about.com

Back to Charles:
The frequency (or speed) of our energy vibration is greatly influenced by the kind of thoughts we think. Not just the words themselves, but the feelings and emotions attached to the words we’re thinking. We say they are “associated with” the words.

The good news is, if you have words with negative associations, you don’t have to take that lying down. No need to be a victim of the feelings that words pipe into your head.

We can actually re-program the feelings and meanings attached to words. If you’ve grown up with a belief that rich people are ruthless, cold and uncaring, you can change that belief. It takes a little time and effort and attention, but once done, you can have warm, fuzzy feelings every time the phrase “rich person” crosses your mind.

Think how much less inner resistance you’ll face, how much easier it’ll be to start thinking of yourself as rich, once you have this enabling new attitude. You’ll have literally raised your frequency (or vibration speed) to a new level, where you match a richer, happier, safer life experience.

Doesn’t that seem useful?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

When you’re finished with one task on your to-do list, do you immediately move to the next, and then the next? Or do you stop, go for coffee, read some emails, browse a few sites, call someone, talk with the person in the next cubical, and otherwise fill your productive time with non-productive activities?

In other words, do your everyday habits sweep you forward or trip you up?

Today guest author Thea Westra offers us a list of habits that, if we’ll only cultivate them, can dramatically up our chances of reaching our life goals. Here then are Thea’s…

DAILY SUCCESS HABIT TIPS
By Thea Westra

Here are a few of my daily habits that have contributed to my success:

1. Read, read, read!
I could not begin to tell you how many personal development books, articles, blogs and sites that I have read. I love to keep up with the latest. Information being disseminated is prolific and the personal growth ‘conversation’ is growing exponentially.

2. Stay in communication.
Each day I am connected with others who are in the personal growth world. We find things out from each other and share each others’ experiences.

“Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”
~ John Luther

3. Participate in programs.
Since the 1990’s through to today I have been on many personal or business development program weekends such as Landmark Education, Anthony Robbins, Christopher Howard, various one-hour or half day programs, evenings led by a very diverse range of people such as Brad Sugars, Mal Emery.

4. Take consistent action.
Never, ever give up. Do what you love to do and do it daily. I love to share resources and personal growth tips with others. My daily blogging reflects that. Whenever I find something useful, I share it with others. Sharing knowledge is what expands an empowered environment for us all to grow.

5. Develop clarity.
Get more and more clear on what I want for my life and what I want my life to be about. Sharing these kinds of posts with others helps to get me more clear about what I love and what I want to contribute. I constantly search for the ‘footprint’ I want to leave on Earth and move toward that direction, daily.

6. Visualize with emotion.
Spend time every day, a few moments before sleep and on waking, to see in my mind’s eye and feel, with every fibre of my being, how it is for me when I fulfill every one of my personal goals.

7. Vision board.
Yes, I have created one of these and it is posted up on the inside of my wardrobe door so that I see it each day when I dress for the day. Here is a little more about vision boards for those of you who would like to create one as well.

8. Have systems.
For all the things to which I need to attend daily, I have systems in place to keep me organized. I have templates that I can personalize for emails that are repetitive. I have filing systems so that I always know what to do with the bits of paper that cross my path! I have a calendar that throws up reminders on my computer screen. Any promises, appointments, requests are immediately entered into that calendar with an advance reminder set in place. Wherever I can, I automate and organize so that it saves me time.

9. Be discerning.
I am becoming more and more selective and attend only to those things that move forward my vision. There are less and less low quality and time wasting activities that grab my attention, the more success that I experience. As success levels increase, so do the number of requests in my email in-box and other places. I am more vigilant with productive, high leverage use of my time.

10. Create personal time.
Greg (my partner) and I have set aside Saturday afternoon through to Monday morning as our time. We both have our own businesses and unless we schedule time together, it is very easy to allow external influences to keep us in activity 24/7 so we must set aside deliberate time that is ours to do with as we please.

11. Good friends.
Have people around you who know you well and will tell it to you straight!

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”
~ Plutarch

I have phone calls and coffee meets scheduled with those friends, every week.

12. Focus on the good.
This one takes me a lot of practice. Keep the focus on what is working and what is right, rather than what is wrong and not going the way I’d like it to go. My best tool for this is a poster at my desk, “Whatever you focus on WILL expand.” It reminds me to ’switch’ and replace a negative thought immediately.

13. Be aware and present.
I am so much better at staying in the present moment, noticing my internal hunches and going with those than I used to be years ago. This is as a result of committing to being that way and being vigilant. It takes practice.

14. Value myself and my contribution.
I trust that I make a difference. I believe in myself and value myself as unique. I take space because I have a right to do that. No human is of lesser or greater value than another and I include myself in that equation.

15. Learn and explore.
I stay curious. It’s amazing the things I discover when I give up that ‘I already know’. I hear the gold in the communication from other people and can weigh up if something is for me or not, by staying open to the new. It keeps me flexible and OK with saying yes or no. It helps me forgive myself moment by moment when I change my mind about a direction I’m traveling.

16. Know when enough is enough.
I am finishing my article here because I can see that I could go on forever. There are so many things I could choose to share which contribute to my success. So this paragraph is my cut-off, and I decide to be content and complete with what I have written here. I trust that others will fill the gaps with items that I have not shared here!

© Thea Westra is the senior thought leader, at her Forward Steps site. She resides in Perth, Australia with her ultra-supportive partner Greg. Thea publishes a monthly ezine (among many other publications and products) at http://www.forwardsteps.com.au Enjoy her life success blogs at http://www.timeformylife.com/blogs.htm and get personally connected here, http://www.ask-thea-about.com

Back to Charles
These are excellent habits to foster in ourselves. And of course, as Thea says, there are many other desirable qualities you could practice as well. But the fact is, you can’t do everything first, and starting small, right here, right now, will take you much farther than waiting till you can “do everything right.”

So why not do exactly that? Why not start here and now with a small first step.

Remember, you’ve already got a head start with the positive habits – what Benjamin Franklin called “virtues” – that you’ve already build up. Remember also that it’s important to give yourself conscious credit for the victories you’ve already won. What are some of those victories?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles