Habits are the key to success

All too often Habits are seen as bad things that must be broken. However lets explore what they are and how they can be useful.
If you were look and ask every successful person you will find somewhere in the conversation the word Habit would appear. Through doing the same thing day in and day day out has helped people attain greatness. Until recently a great example would be Tiger Woods. What about Compound Interest. By havling little sums added often helps generate the increases of compound interest.
Our thoughts and and feelings are driven by our values and beliefs. These cause us to do what we do. It is an important thing to explore what we value and what we believe.
It is time to stop blamming failure on this and or that. Rather than look at theings and say I wish....turn it AROUND and ask what would that look like if I were doing it now.
Then simply start doing the small things that are needed....Habit
Habits and powerful whent hey are the ones we want and need.
Make it a great day

Have you hit a road block....feeling stuck?

The other day I mentioned the need for keeping on keeping on. Some days we feel down and like we are doing the same old same old.
Darren Hardy just wrote a great piece which I wanted to share:

I saw something absurd the other day. A highly engineered and specially designed high-performance race car stuck on a 35-mile-an-hour downtown street.

That is not what that car was made for. That is not what its creator (Enzo Ferrari) envisioned for it.

This 6-speed, F140 Aluminum V12, 4700cc engine with 660hp was built to go 0-60 in 3.8 seconds and race at 217 miles an hour (2010 specs). But here it is… stuck.

I see this absurdity every day.

But not only in the streets—in office cubicles, conference rooms, huddled behind computer screens, and dragging luggage through airports.

People who were specially engineered and designed with special talents, skills and abilities who are traveling down the wrong road, with their potential stuck in first gear; trapped and unable to race.

That is not what their creator had envisioned for them either.

Are you…

1. Stuck. Traveling down the wrong road? Are you in a job, company or business that has you boxed in on the slow lane? Is it keeping you from being able to get out of first gear and challenge your greater abilities?

Sometimes it’s not the car; it’s the road the car is on.

2. Traveling with Pintos? Are you going slow because you are keeping pace with ordinary cars, when you were designed for racing?

Sometimes it’s not the car; it’s the cars it travels with.

3. Are you even aware that you are a race car? You were specially engineered and designed for speed… to race. You were built for greatness. I’m not kidding. You are a miracle of machinery. Yes, you… the one reading this. It’s likely you have never even experienced half of what your top speed is.

Sometimes it’s not the car; it’s the one given the responsibility to drive it.

If you ever really gripped the wheel, braced your neck and punched the pedal with all your might… the awesomeness of your innate potential will shock and exhilarate you.

Punch it. NOW!

Its time to refresh ourseleves and get in alignment with the desires in our heart and as a result the passion will start flowing again.

Get up and eat for the journey is long

Its been one of those weeks where it seems like everything has been by have to...It reminded me of the ability to get one self in the right head space is the most important thing we have:

We can all persevere even when we think we can’t.

Therefore, how to increase determination and maximize motivation

We can face issues like:

•facing illness;

•keeping a family together;

•facing massive life changes after divorce;

•making a business work;

•doing a degree;

•getting into peak physical shape; or

•going for the kind of life you feel you must live;

we all need to be iron-gritted in our determination sometimes.

In the articles 7 Self-Discipline Techniques and Boost Your Self-Motivation Today, It mentions how important it is not to fall into the trap of having to constantly feel emotionally rewarded by stuff you do in order to actually get on with it.

Here are some tips for hanging in their

Tip 1: Draw inspiration from others

Actually, whilst it can be useful to draw inspiration from extraordinary individuals, research shows we draw more inspiration from reading, seeing, or thinking about a type of person rather than a one-off ‘outlier’. We become cleverer (in tests) if we see photos of ‘clever-looking people’ rather than, say, a picture of a ‘one-off genius’ like Einstein.

So consider that:

•Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.

•Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.

•Ancient Australian aboriginals threw hardwood spears 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48m) (3).

•Most people in history have had to survive without healthcare, social security, or modern medicine.

•Most people in history have had to educate themselves if they wanted to improve.

Tip 2: Don’t think; just act

Thinking is vital and much of human folly happens because we don’t think. We can think ourselves out of problems, around situations, into solutions - but also out of doing what we should. “I can’t go on” is a thought that may be useful or it may be self-deception. If you have to keep on, then start to ignore these kinds of thoughts. When times are tough, sometimes we need to just keep on without thinking until the ‘nose down to the grindstone’ times have passed.

Tip 3: Strengthen your will by exercising it

I have a lazy friend. Don’t get me wrong; he’s a lovely guy, but he’s so unaccustomed to work or exertion that if you ask him to do anything, it’s a major deal. It’s much harder for him to do anything than most people. He’s healthy and fit enough, but he’s not used to work - and it shows.

Recent research showed that willpower, like a muscle, gets stronger the more you use it. So remember that even when it feels tough, it will get easier. The more you exercise your will and determination, the more naturally motivated you will begin to feel.

Tip 4: Think about what you really want

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernhard Shaw

What do you want your life to be like? Are you happy living the way you are living? Take two sheets of paper. On one sheet, write down how you’d like to be living. Now take the second sheet and write down all the things you need to do to make your life as it is now more like the life you’d like to have. Every detail counts. This will be your initial blueprint. Remember that you can update this blueprint as you go. But if it seems too unreasonable to you…it might not be at all.

Tip 5: Imagine an iron centre within you

Sometimes life calls for you to be irrepressible, unassailable, resolute, and super-focused. I remember when I was a child distinctly feeling on occasion a palpable, almost physical, determination within me; a sense that my determination was a thing I could feel. Today I’ll use self-hypnosis to recapture that and get that real ‘iron core’ feeling when I really need it.

Tip 6: Never give up!

The night is always darkest just before dawn. You just don’t know how close you are to a breakthrough. If your intentions are good and you keep working, something will happen - even if it’s not exactly what you had planned. If you do nothing, nothing happens.

Dieter Dengler could have stopped walking in the jungle, Helen Keller could have stopped learning to communicate, Edmund Hillary could have stopped climbing Everest, and Thomas Edison could have given up on the light bulb.

Don’t stop.

Keep on keeping on...this is my day this is your day

Choices

For so long I have been wondering what to do...do I go this way or that....

However I have been working with my clients and they have reminded me of the importance of making a decision and sticking with it. There is not right of wrong. The world is nutural and it is only our responce to it. I am spoilt for choice. I just need to make one and follow it through. Just make it happen. I attract success in all I do. I demand the best. I will get the open doors. I will get the clients. I will get the backing by the investors. I will get my desires. I will get the goal. In order to get it I simply just need to make the choice and make it happen. Moses had to step into the Red Sea before it was parted. He had to strike the rock before it shot out water. So Bill gates needed to start before he got the windfall he did.

POV Continued

Still thinking of our point of view


The Power of a Paradigm Shift
Covey has the best example of a paradigm shift: he was traveling in a subway, a man gets in with his two sons, the sons are running all over the place bothering the people, this continues, so he finally gets irritated enough to ask the father why he doesn't do something to control his kids. The father replies, "We just got back from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know how to handle it and I guess they don't either."

Suddenly you see the everything differently. That is the power of a paradigm shift. They are the same kids yelling and screaming in the subway, but you look at them and understand them in a different way.

I was at the swimming pool the other day and saw a family of three leaving out the door. The little boy suddenly stopped and stood looking through the glass at the swimmers in the pool who were still swimming. The father yelled back to him, "Come on, what are you doing, just staring at things again? Let's go!" I thought about the paradigm that the father had of his son: "stupid, slow kid who's always doing something he isn't supposed to." Now what if the school conselor were to call the father up the next day and tell him, "We have just received the test results back from your son and have discovered that he has impressively high IQ. He is a genius." The next time his kid stood staring at something, I wonder if the father wouldn't go back to him inquisitively and say, "Tell me what you are thinking about son. What do you see?"

Our behavior results from our paradigms of the world. The classic example of the old woman/young woman picture which Covey includes in the book is a good example. You can look at the picture and see an old woman or you can look at the picture and see a young woman. Depending on what you see is what you are going to say about "that picture."

The Principle-Centered Paradigm
In this book, Covey wants to express to us how we can base our behavior on a paradigm of the world which is centered on our unchanging principles instead of being centered on what happens in the world, what others do, what we do, how we feel, how others feel, the stock market, and the vicissitudes of life.

The Way We See the Problem Is the Problem
If you have a problem, the actual problem is that you are looking at it as a problem. It could be something else, such as an opportunity. When it rains lemons, make lemonade. You just need a paradigm shift.

What you see is what you get?

What we think becomes our reality. We need to be careful because while we think we may know all the facts we in fact may only have part of the story. That is our personal Point of View (POV). Sometimes we have only a small amount of the story and we aren't fully aware of the whole.
There is a story that explains this very well.

ELEPHANT AND THE BLIND MEN

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions.

be careful what you think because there is more than likely much more behind the story. Till next time.

Who is the person in the mirror?

What do you say to your self when you look in the mirror? What things do you see? Do you see someone merely looking back dreding what lies ahead of you this day? Do you see a fire burning from within eagerly wanting to get stuck into the day?
No matter what our definitation if success is, our self talk to the man in the mirror is vital. We must be like our own body/ mind guard.
The aim of a bouncer is to keep unwanted people out of the area. Therefore we too must ensure we don't have unwanted thoughts entering our body too. We can underpin years of work if we allow the wrong thoughts to enter our mind.
What if I am just living day to day?
Then being living the life you want in your mind. Don't wait for the big break. Create it. Start by grooming yourself to the highest standard today. Don't wiat for Sunday to dress your best. No longer let the people around you set the standard. You be the change you want. Start seeing yourself walking, talking and breathing as you will be and in fact as you are in the process of becoming.
The time you spend in front of the mirror is vital.. The thoughts you think and the words you say are shaping the day that is unfolding in front of you.
There used to be an advertisment of a cat looking into mirror. What was reflected in the mirrow was not a kitten but an adult lion. He had insight. What are you seeing? What are you saying? You were born for this day. Start projecting ideas, thoughts and concepts to the man in the mirror.