Consequences

Consider the Consequences

The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something. The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important it really is to you and to your company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what your next frog really is.
Long Time Perspective
 Doctor Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than 50 years of research, concluded that "long time perspective" is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. Long time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections or virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life and at work.
 Your attitude toward time, your "time horizon," has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take the long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.
Think About Your Future
 Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten and twenty years out into the future. They analyze their choices and behaviors in the present to make sure that they are consistent with the long-term future that they desire.
 In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short term.
Determine the Consequences
 By definition, something that is important has long-term potential consequences. Something that is unimportant has few or no long-term potential consequences. Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, "What are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task?"
 The clearer you are about your future intentions, the greater influence that clarity will have on what you do in the moment. With a clear long-term vision, you are much more capable of evaluating an activity in the present and to assure that it is consistent with where you truly want to end up.
Make It a Top Priority
 If there is a task or activity with large potential positive consequences, make it a top priority and get started on it immediately. If there is something that can have large potential negative consequences if it is not done quickly and well, that becomes a top priority as well. Whatever your frog is, resolve to gulp it down first thing.
Keep Motivated
 Motivation requires motive. The greater the positive potential impact that an action or behavior of yours can have on your life, once you define it clearly, the more motivated you will be to overcome procrastination and get it done quickly.
 Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life.
Action Exercises
 Review your list of tasks, activities and projects regularly. Continually ask yourself, “Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?”
 Whatever it is that can help you the most, set it as a goal, make a plan to achieve it and go to work on your plan immediately. Remember the wonderful words of Goethe, “Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!”

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Napoleon Hill Tribute

I was reflecting on yesterdays post and had to share this from napoleon Hill's site.

Napoleon Hill Philosophy and the Idea of Cosmic Ordering
by Jack Kennedy

"What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve," an axiom of the motivational philosophy of the late Napoleon Hill, a Wise County, Va. native turned journalist, presidential speechwriter, and bestselling book author, leads one to the metaphysical concept of "Cosmic ordering."

Cosmic ordering sounds like some New Age religious cult or, some newly conceived physics theory, but it is a conceptual mental construct of Napoleon Hill as to the power of positive thinking and bringing dreams forth to reality. Some see the concept of cosmic ordering as a phony mystic belief of "wishful thinking." On the other hand, one only need look to many of the 20th century science fiction scriptwriters, such as the late Gene Roddenberry of the Star Trek series, or the late Sir Arthur C. Clark of 2001 and 2010 movies, to realize the power of an idea in the mind of man to beget the creation of future reality.

In the book Keys to Success, based upon Hills' observational power of learning the traits and actions of very successful people of the 20th century, the motivational writer provides insight as to seventeen traits humans may opt to undertake to achieve most anything professionally or personally. Many successful business leaders of the 21st century attribute their readings of "Think and Grow Rich" and "Keys to Success" as essential to their own personal success stories.

"The Philosophy of Achievement," as Hill adeptly later branded his teachings, has its foundation in the belief that freedom, democracy, capitalism, and harmony serve as the basic tenants of any personal success in life. Hill readily denounced the negative emotions of fear, selfishness, and jealous as the traits of the unsuccessful. These negative emotions are to be rooted out of our lives wherever possible, just as he composed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt with, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Central to embracing Hill's philosophy is the understanding of thinking positively, or the subconscious channeling of positive mental energy to think more affirmatively about our own human undertakings whether it be at work, hobbies, relationships, or play. One must constantly look to what one shall be as opposed to what they are now. Without mastering a positive mental attitude toward challenging goals, they are often lost to the negative side of mental energy.

The principal of 'Definite Major Purpose' suggests that a student of Hill's philosophy undertake self-examination of what is important. Without knowing what is truly important to us, it is improbable, at best, to achieve any great success. Hill wanted his book readers to question what is important to them first; then the reader could endeavor to apply the cosmic ordering or the keys to seek to undertake meaningful personal achievements.

Recently, Don Green, the adept executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation in Wise, spoke of the late Napoleon Hill to a new generation of Wise County students during a dinner break from building their first rockets to launch skyward the next morning. Each young rocket scientist received a copy of Hill's Keys to Success book as their own. Each would-be rocket scientist student has in his or her hands the means to begin their own cosmic ordering by adopting a positive mental attitude and a definite purpose.

While not providing each of the seventeen keys to success verbatim, Green gave the twenty or so Wise County high school students paraphrases of the meanings of Napoleon Hill's Philosophy of Achievement to apply in preparing for their individual cosmic ordering of their respective futures, to wit:

• Set a specific goal and pick a specific and reasonable date to achieve it,
• Project an image to the world of who and what you intend to be, and that will help you achieve it,
• Choose your own goals by not pursuing what someone else expects of you,
• Employ a 'mastermind alliance' network of friendships among people to form expert teams,
• Go the 'Extra Mile' by doing a little more each day than what others may expect of you,
• Turn thoughts into positive actions and avoiding procrastination and indecision,
• Power is in how to apply knowledge gained as opposed to knowledge without application; and,
• Dedicated practice of balance and self-discipline to stay focused on 'Definite Major Purpose.'

The Napoleon Hill philosophy is adaptable to almost any humanistic goal or aspiration - not just youthful Wise County rocket scientists, though their importance to the next generation is unquestionable. Men and women of the arts, sciences, and business apply the 'Nap' Hill school of thought around the world, as his works are today available in numerous languages.

By way of the Internet, a local newspaper report of Don Green's remarks to the aspiring aerospace engineers participating in the rocket building and launching weekend, made its way to the San Francisco, California radio station studio of Dr. David Livingston, a doctor of business administration. "Dr. Space," as his global radio listeners affectionately call Livingston, has booked Don Green to his niche interest space show next January. Green will share Hill's philosophy of the keys to success with commercial, civil and military space aficionados, perhaps to better enable their cosmic orders, so-to-speak.

While Wise County may only legitimately claim to be the birthplace and youthful home of Napoleon Hill, his works are applicable everywhere from teenage would-be aerospace engineers building rockets in Wise County's classrooms to the maverick inventor, space agency engineer, or international planetary scientist who may listen in to The Space Show, (www.thespaceshow.com), come January from around the planet.

One 21st century aerospace engineer has successfully applied the Philosophy of Achievement with great success. Eric Anderson, a University of Virginia aerospace engineering graduate and founder of Space Adventures is an avid reader of Napoleon Hill. Anderson frequently quotes Hill in remarks to audiences --- as he pitches the sale of seats to ride in momentary zero gravity for $5,000 or a Russian-made Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station for about $25-million, or as Anderson urges purchase of a would-be space trek around the moon for about a mere $100-million. He has sold hundreds of Zero Gravity flights, eight successful orbital spaceflights, and he expects to sell seats for the over the moon flight in the next few years. It makes me wonder if Napoleon Hill would have dreamt of such metaphysical manifestations of the future in 1930's.

Let us hope it is in the Cosmic Order for one would-be aerospace engineer now in a Wise County high school to one day utter in 2037, "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve," as she or he makes a stand on the planet Mars in freedom, democracy, capitalism, and harmony. A young Appalachian student aspiring to a 21st century fulfillment of Napoleon Hill's then 100-year old words would be most appropriate in the grand scheme of the cosmic order.