Focused Action

Many times people spend countless amounts of energy but, dont seem to know what results they want.  A magnifying glass when held still and focused, it can create a beam of light that can start a fire.  So can we, when we realize our top priorities and focus on them. When you truly know where you should be headed, your priorities become clear and you   start taking on significant action towards your desired result.

GREAT PASSION + CLEAR MISSION = FOCUSED ACTION

When things come up in your business, which they will, follow this plan Determine the validity of the need. Look for a leadership opportunity to be able to incorporate someone new. Your focus should be on only a few things and delegate the rest. Make sure to delegate to the right people. When bringing on new leaders, make sure to give credit them great publicly. Build confidence and trust in them. Many of us have heard of the Pareto Principle. It states that 20% of your priorities will give you 80% of the production. In our business, we need to focus on recruiting.  If our desire is to help non-profits, how many more could we help with 1,000 people in our team?  If we want to earn money from shopping, wouldn’t it be easier to have 1,000 business builders helping us find the customers?  Many times because it’s easier and more attractive, we think we should focus on other things than going through the numbers necessary to find interested talented people to be in our team. The reality is that this effort is what the Pareto Principle reflects.  Our time focused on these activities will not lead to the 80% of our desired result.  I did not love recruiting.  In fact I was terrible at it in the beginning, but I learned to love it because instead of focusing on the work I focused on the result.  I then began to tie the work emotionally into the passion for the desired result.  I soon loved to do the work.  Everything works this way.  For many new people they have not placed enough passion and enjoyment to reaching their goals and attaching that desire to the work necessary.

Buddhist Wisdom

We all have those things that mess up our smooth travels forward.   

[The] defilements are like a cat. If you feed it, it will keep coming around. Stop feeding it, and eventually it will not bother to come around anymore.

-Ajahn Chah, “Still Forest Pool”

Life Is Like A Frozen Bag Of Peas-Michael T. Smith

A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles, rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe the peas rolled across the kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other side and rolled in another direction.

My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an unbearable pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it doesn’t take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.

For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find a pea that had escaped my first cleanup. In a corner, behind a table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat, or hidden under a heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas hidden underneath.

At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck. I was a bag of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.

When life gets you down; when everything you know comes apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times, remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start to move on. Later you will find the bigger and harder to find peas. When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.

The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move on, but how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them around with a broom, or will you pick them up one-by-one and put your life back together?

How will you collect your peas?

Image

Have you heard “it’s not what you know but who you know?”  That is great, but more true is “it’s not who you know but who knows you and what they think about you.” This statement relates to image.  The definition of image is: a mental conception held in common by members of a group, symbolic of a basic attitude and orientation.

Always have a good elevator speech.  If you only had 10 seconds, how would you describe you and what you do.  We should  also have a cocktail party speech that is a minute in length.  Make sure that you practice them, write them out and memorize them. Image is not a constant but an always changing variable.  There will always be instances when we are getting better and other times when we are not as good.  We won’t stay the exact same.However, there are some things that need to be constants: integrity and professionalism.

One of the keys to success is staying motivated because it is being motivated that keeps us picking up the phone every day to change the world and reach our destiny! It is our desire for a better life, for change in ourselves and others, and for personal growth and fulfillment that moves our mountains! Desire!

Desire sure is a word with much more umph behind it than the word “want”, though they are essentially the same. “Want,” though, sounds like you could take it or leave it. “Desire” says, “I have to have it!” Desire, is “want” with a fire under it!

Unfortunately, we tend to go back and forth from want to desire, even with the same goal! One day we may be passionate about building our business or growing our relationships and then, the next day, we find ourselves simply in the “want” camp again. The key to keeping on is to re-light the fire under “want” so it roars into a raging fire of desire! Then, and only then, will we see the passion needed to be tenacious pursuers of our dreams! Keeping the fire lit is what will see you through the mountains and valleys of life and the journey you are on to your success!

So what do we do? We light the fire! Here are a few thoughts to help you build the fire of your desire!

The wood:
Keep a clear mental picture of the goal. This is crucial. The picture of the goal is like the wood in a fire. It is the raw material. Know what your goal is and what it looks like.

The fuel:
Keep a list, if simply just a mental one, of all of the benefits of pursuing and reaching your goal. Make them as “sense” oriented as possible. “See” the benefits. “Hear” them. “Touch” them. This is like the fuel that we add to a fire to get it going. Now all we need is a match.

The match:
Keep yourself active! This is the match: Action! Even when you don’t feel like it, get yourself to act and soon you will see the fire burning because you have again ignited the dream! The more desire you have the more the fire burns.

Eventually the fire will begin to die out. Are you surprised?  That’s what happens each and every time you are not focused on keeping the wood burning hot.  When that happens here is where you throw the wood on again, pour on some fuel, and if need be, strike another match. I would encourage you to not let the fire go out though, because it is easier to continually throw wood and fuel on an already burning fire than it is to start one up again!

Adversity

“Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.” — Lou Holtz

Success in life depends upon being strong people with clear goals and focused discipline. Unfortunately most of us aren’t born that way. We grow that way. And that growth can either come from us entering into situations that will cause us to grow, like creating a business, or from the way we react when circumstances come upon us that we have not chosen. The latter is what we call adversity.

Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid adversity, and who can blame us? We shouldn’t pursue adversity, but when it arrives, we should welcome it. Through our interaction with it, it will make us into better people. Every contact we have with adversity gives us again the opportunity to grow personally and professionally and to forge our character into one that will achieve much more later on.

With that in mind, here are some thoughts on adversity, and how it can help you to succeed in every area of your life and achieve your dreams.

Adversity brings out our resources. Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it. When everything is going well, we coast. There isn’t a lot of stress, and we don’t have to draw too much on the resources that reside within us. But when adversity comes we begin to draw upon each and every resource that we have in order to conquer the situations at hand. Adversity then, keeps us sharp. It keeps us using our personal muscle, if you will. That is a good thing because we grow through the use of our resources.

                                                                     
Adversity brings us together with others. Sure a team can have their problems with each other, but when they step on the court and they experience the adversity of facing another obstacle, they pull together. One for all and all for one, as they say. The next time you experience adversity of some kind, keep your eyes open for how it can bring you together with your family, your mentors or your team. Then when you are through it, you will find a bond that was created that wasn’t there before.

Adversity makes us better people with stronger characters. Never underestimate the power of adversity to shape us inwardly. How will courage, discipline and perseverance ever flourish if we are never tested? After adversity, we come out stronger people and able then to use our character and influence in an even greater way to lead those around us and to improve their lives as well as our own.

Adversity makes life interesting. John Amatt said, “Without adversity, without change, life is boring.” How true. Have you noticed that while we are in the middle of adversity we only want to get out of it, but we then spend a lifetime talking about  it to anyone who will listen? This is because it spices life up a little. Imagine how boring life would be if everything always went well, when there was never a mountain to be climbed.

Question - If you are in the middle of some adversity right now, what resources are you drawing on? Who are you drawing closer to and working with? What part of your character is being tested, and built up? What can you do to view this adversity as someone who will be better for it on the other side?

Remember the words of Napoleon Hill - “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” It is true!