Think & Create

Stress is usually the result of doing more things than you are able to cope with. Here are a few tips that might help you deal with stress when it comes.

• Set your priorities and put the rest aside. “Write out or plan work and learn to say NO to things,” says Shiamala.
• Talk about it with a friend or family member. Sharing your problems with others can be therapeutic and you may end up with some useful advise as well.
• Take a day off work. If your job is stressful, leave it aside for a day or two to do activities that are relaxing.
• Take up alternative therapy such as acupuncture, aromatherapy, tai chi, reflexology, meditation and soft music therapy, which is good forms of diversion and distraction for the brain, says Shiamala. “Even a warm bath or massage will help in relaxing the body.”
• Learn to delegate. If you have a high paying job that is stressful, pass some of the work to your subordinates otherwise you might end up being overstretched and overstressed.
• Manage your time. Bad time management can cause unnecessary stress, so planning your schedule well and sticking to it will help you stay relaxed.
• Do something you enjoy everyday. Make time for fun and leisurely activities, whether its watching television for a few hours or playing your favourite sports.
• Eating well and getting enough sleep is very important. Maintaining a good diet and sleeping well will help give your body a good start to the day, enabling you to cope with things better. If you are having an important meeting in the afternoon, avoid food that is spicy or heavy in carbohydrates so you dont feel drowsy.
• Avoid caffeine. Caffeine increases stress levels and aggravates symptoms of chronic stress.
• Get professional help. Talk to your doctor, counsellor at the workplace or psychologist if you need help to relieve stress.

kennethg Life, self improvement, Tips

By Brian Tracy

The major mental obstacle to financial success is that some people believe that they don’t really deserve to be rich.

The Biggest Demotivator of All
They have been raised with a steady drumbeat of destructive criticism, as I was, that has led them to conclude, at an unconscious level, that they don’t really deserve to be successful and happy. The worst effect of negative experiences in childhood, which are all too common, is that when people actually do succeed as the result of hard work, they feel guilty. These guilt feelings then cause them to do things to get rid of the money, to throw it away. They spend it or invest it foolishly. They lend it, lose it or give it away. They engage in self-sabotage, in the form of overeating, excessive drinking, drug usage, marital infidelity and often dramatic personality changes. To change your results with money, you have to change your attitude toward it.

Treat Money With Care and Attention
The fact is that money is very much like a lover. It must be courted and coaxed and flattered and treated with care and attention. It gravitates toward people who respect it and value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it. It flows through the fingers and flees from people who do not understand it, or who do not take proper care of it.

Become Skilled With Money
Sometimes people say that they are not very good with money. But being good with money is a skill that anyone can learn through practice. Usually, saying that one is not very good with money is merely an excuse or a rationalization for the fact that the person is not very successful or disciplined with money. The person has not learned how to acquire it or to hold on to it.

Be A No-Limit Thinker
The starting point of accumulating money is for you to believe that you have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need. Look upon yourself as a financial success just waiting for a place to happen. And see yourself as deserving all you can honestly acquire.

Open Any Door
Money is good. Money gives you choices and enables you to live your life the way you want to live it. Money opens doors for you that would have been closed in its absence. But just like anything, an obsession can be hurtful. If a person becomes so preoccupied with money that he loses sight of the fact that money is merely a tool that is to be used to acquire happiness, then money becomes a harmful thing.

Money is Neutral
The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” It doesn’t say, “money is the root of all evil.” It says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” It is the preoccupation with money, to the exclusion of the really important things in life that is the problem, not the money itself. Money is essential to our lives in society. It is also neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is only the way that it is acquired and the uses to which it is put that determines whether it is helpful or hurtful.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, recognize and accept that virtually everyone who has money today at one time was broke and probably broke for a long time. Then they learned the skills of accumulating money and they are now financially independent. Whatever they have done, you can probably do as well.

Second, become a student of money from this day forward. Study it, learn about it and apply the lessons you discover toward your own financial life until you begin to attract more and more money in your direction.

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By Brian Tracy

Organize Your Life Around Your Family, Your Career and Your Personal Goals
You need to stand back on a regular basis and analyze yourself, your life and your time usage. You need to become a master of your time rather than a slave to continuing time pressures.

Your Most Precious Resource
Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. All work requires time. And time is absolutely essential for the important relationships in your life. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.

The Starting Point
Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things that you want to accomplish. You need to set goals in three major areas of your life. First, you need family and personal goals. These are the real reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time.

Decide Upon Your Goals
What are your personal and family goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family going for walks or reading books. Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.

How to Achieve Your Goals
The second area of goals is your business and career goals. These are the “how” goals, the means by which you achieve your personal, “why” goals. How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.

Personal Development Goals
The third type of goals is your personal development goals. Remember, you can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved and become on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life. Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, develop the habit of stopping on a regular basis and thinking about what is really important to you. The more often you stop and think, the better decisions you will make.

Second, decide clearly upon your personal and family goals. Write them down. Discuss them with others. Be clear about why you are doing what you do.

Third, take some time to think about your career goals and the steps you will have to take to achieve them. Do something every day that moves you forward in all three areas.

kennethg Goal Setting, Life, self improvement, Time Management brian tracy, career, Family, goals, Time Management

By Matt Furey

Let’s play a game. Just for a moment I’d like you to pretend that I’m going to give you some money.

You have two choices in this game:

The first choice, I give you one million dollars right now.

The second choice, I give you one dollar, and I double it every day for 30 days.

If you’re like most people in this country – and the world – you’d take option number one.

And what a foolish mistake that would be.

Why? Because if I give you one dollar today and double it every day for 30 days, at the end of 30 days, you will have been given over $500 million.

In fact, the total after 30 days would be $536,870,912.

And if you could hang on for one more day, you’d have over a billion bucks – $1,073,741,824.

Most people, without thinking, would ask for the million up front. They want INSTANT GRATIFICATION. Yet, as Chinese philosopher and martial artist Deng Ming Dao once inscribed to me in a book, “In discipline lies freedom.”

I was recently reminded of this when I read Joachim de Posada’s sensational book Don’t Eat the Marshmallow… Yet. 

Don’t Eat the Marshmallow… Yet has already sold over two million copies – and there’s no end in sight, because it teaches the “sweet” secret of success that few have the guts to share.

The book begins with a Stanford University study.

A group of children were put in a room, and each one was given a marshmallow. A researcher told the children that they could eat the marshmallow right away – but if they waited 15 minutes before eating it, they’d get another one as a reward.

Then the researcher left the room.

Most of the kids ate the marshmallow immediately. But when researchers tracked the group over many years, they found that those who held out turned out to be much more successful as adults.

It wasn’t because they were smarter, cuter, had better genes, or were more skilled. It was because they had the ability to delay gratification.

What about you?

Do you “eat the marshmallow”? Or do you do that which will bring greater prosperity your way?

Each month, when you receive payment for work performed, do you pay yourself first and force yourself to save at least 10 percent of it? Or do you do the easy thing and pay everyone else first, so there’s never anything left to invest in your future?

In the evening, do you eat the marshmallow by watching hour after hour of television or gossiping with friends? Or do you save the marshmallow by reading, writing, exercising, or working on a plan to get ahead and stay ahead?

Do you invest in information products that will help you learn how to improve your economic situation? Or do you eat the marshmallow by blowing your money on fancy food and entertainment?

Two choices.

Which will it be?

kennethg Life, self improvement, success dont eat the marshmallow...yet, finance, financial choice, joachin de posada, Life, Matt Furey, success

By Marci Shimoff

Is the state of the economy getting you down? Now, more than ever, we need to learn to be happy from the inside out – what I call Happy for No Reason. Here are four tips to get you started:

Know you’re all right in this moment.

Stop and take a breath. Look around and ground yourself in what’s actually happening right… this… second. Motivational author and speaker Eckhart Tolle calls this the power of Now. It anchors you to a place of inner calm.

Don’t believe everything you think.

When you start to spin out and “awful-ize” your situation, interrupt the downward spiral of worry and anxiety by questioning your negative thoughts. Just because you think something doesn’t make it true.

See that what truly matters isn’t in the bank.

This is an opportunity for all of us – as a nation and as individuals – to re-evaluate our priorities and values and go beyond materialism. What do you need to be happy? When you dig deep, you’ll find that meaning in your life, not money, is at the top of the list.

Switch from me to we.

You want to feel wealthy? Give of yourself! It doesn’t have to be money that you contribute. Simply look around and see if there’s a need you can fill for someone else. Switching from “me” to “we” is a guaranteed happiness booster.

Join the ranks of the resilient and become Happy for No Reason. When you build a refuge of unshakeable peace and well-being inside, you begin to turn things around – not just for yourself, but for every life you touch.

kennethg Life, self improvement Happy for No Reason, Life, Marci Shimoff, success

by Chris Widener

You know, whenever you are going to make a major change and begin to undergo a different lifestyle, it is probably good to make a massive move in that direction. Think about it. As the old saying goes, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!” So if you keep on living the way you are living, you will keep right on with the life that in many ways you wish was changing! So how do you change your life? You change what you are doing!

This is the basic idea behind the military’s Boot Camp. You know the drill. This is where they take a bunch of 18-year-old kids who think they are in pretty good shape, both physically and psychologically and they put them through six weeks of misery! But the misery is intentional!

All of the hard work and physical and mental exercise they put the young folks through is to strengthen them and to prepare them for the jobs they will be performing later on. Could you imagine if the military took a lackadaisical approach and greeted every new recruit with, “Welcome to the Army. We are going to work you easy into your new lifestyle. You can get up tomorrow around ten and brunch will be served at eleven. Come as you are.” No way! They get them accustomed to drastic and massive change because they want them to have drastic and massive change in their lives. The only time they ever got up at four a.m. before was to go fishin’! Now it will be every morning!

So what about a life boot camp? Is it possible? Is it something we could, or should, try? I think for many people, the idea of a six-week period of drastic change would be great for them. Even if they didn’t live that way the rest of their lives they would still probably make a major shift in the direction they want to go and would be happy with the results they would receive.

So here are some thoughts on ways you could go through a life boot camp. Give it a try for six weeks, just like in boot camp, and see if it doesn’t make a difference in your life. As always, if you are going to do something physically, contact a doctor and if financially, contact your financial advisor before beginning anything.

Health.

Try getting up a half hour earlier and going for a walk or a run every day. Perhaps you just skip a half hour of television at night and do it then.

Try cutting out desserts or other favorite fattening foods.

Emotions.

Make contact with a broken relationship and begin to get together with them to restore your friendship. 

Take time each day, even if just for fifteen minutes to sit quietly in silence or with some soft music just to quiet your spirit.

Finances.

Don’t make any new purchases that aren’t essential for six weeks.

Take any extra money you get and pay it all toward your debt. Every nickel!

Spiritual.

Attend your local family of faith for six weeks in a row.

Take time each day to listen to some spiritual music or read good faith building literature. (This can probably be combined with the time you take for emotions)

These are just some thoughts for you. I am sure you can come up with some of your own. The idea is to make a drastic step in the right direction. Maybe you do all of them; maybe you combine just a few. The goal, however, is to put yourself into a life boot camp situation. That is what will help you change and make you strong!

Come on soldier, the trumpet is blowing!

kennethg Life, self improvement, Spirituality boot camp, chris widener, health, Life, success

by Ron White

His name was Jason Dunham and he was a corporal in the United States Marines. The story picks up with Jason as he was talking with the men in his unit. They wondered whether a person could jump on a grenade and survive by putting it under his helmet. Deep down they all knew that it most likely wouldn’t work, yet on the streets of Baghdad all topics of conversation can soon become quickly exhausted and hypothetical solutions to real-life problems can pass the time.

Unfortunately for Jason Dunham, the circumstance that he had hypothesized about arrived just a few weeks later. However, fortunately for his unit, Corporal Jason Dunham was there. In this life and death scenario, there is no time to think. There is only time for fight or flight. Jason chose fight and performed above and beyond the call of duty. He threw his helmet and body over a grenade and gave his life for his friends. Jason was nominated for The Congressional Medal of Honor. He was 20 years old.

Your stance on political matters or world issues is irrelevant in this scenario. Jason did not do this for you. He did not do it for the people of Baghdad. He didn’t do it for the U.S. government or a politician. He did it for the men beside him, period.

To give your life for your friends is perhaps the greatest thing one person can do for another. It is also one of the rarest acts of civilization.

In 1981, shots rang out and bullets screamed through the air to pierce the flesh of the 40th President of the United States. No sooner had the gun powder been ignited than secret service agent Tim McCarthy stood up as straight as a board and extended his arms to make himself a large barrier between would-be assassin John Hinckley and President Reagan. While others ran for cover, Agent McCarthy stood looking directly at his potential death with firm resolve. Tim was shot square in the chest and, believe it or not, that was exactly his goal. As he positioned himself spread eagle to take a bullet for a man, an office and a nation, others cowered in trembling fear. Because of amazing grace, agent McCarthy survived.

What causes men and women to lay down their lives for another? It takes a lot. First and foremost, it takes a realization that life isn’t about you. It is about making a difference, about making an impact and about giving.

Jason Dunham and Tim McCarthy were able to respond the way they did because:

- They decided how they were going to respond long before the event occurred.

- They were not selfish people – the farthest you could be from selfish, as a matter of fact.

- They realized that life was not about them; it was about making a difference – it was about others.

I hope with all my heart you are never placed in a situation where you have to choose between your life and those around you. Yet, every day you are in situations where you have to make choices. You must decide right now how you will respond.

The lesson to extract from the lives of Corporal Dunham and Agent McCarthy is that of an overall attitude on life. That attitude, simply put, is that it is better to give than receive. It is honorable to view the lives and well-being of others above yourself. If we can take any pearl of wisdom from the extraordinary lives and attitudes of these two men, it is that making an impact on the world is not always about recognition, power, money or personal gain. Sometimes the greatest success is one who gives himself up so others can succeed. That is the mark of the ultimate high achiever.

Decide today how you will respond in your moments of crisis – whether it is financial, personal or life and death. As you plan your actions, remember the selfless lessons of Corporal Dunham and Agent McCarthy.

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By Brian Tracy

Know the Right People

One of the greatest forms of financial leverage is contacts. Knowing the right people and being known by them can open doors for you that can save you years of hard work. The quality and quantity of your contacts and your relationships will have more to do with your success than perhaps any other factor.

Here are three things you can do to expand your list of contacts. First, make a list of the 25 people you feel it would be most useful for you to get to know. Develop a strategy to get to meet everyone of them over the next 12 months. Then make a list of 25 more.

List the people in charge of the major corporations that would be useful for you to know. List the mayor, list the congressmen, list the senator. List the important people that it would be helpful for you to know and then make a plan to meet them.

Network at Every Opportunity

Second is for you to network at every opportunity. Join business and trade associations. Attend meetings. Get involved. Volunteer for service on a key committee. This action alone can cut years off your career.

Once, when I was working with the Chamber of Commerce, I came to the attention of a senior executive who hired me away from the company I was working for a year later at triple the salary. Meeting people is very important. Network at every opportunity.

Get Involved in the Community

The third way is to get involved in community service organizations. The best people in every community, the people you should know and who should know you, are usually involved in public service in some way. Start with the United Way in your own city, or get involved in any charity that you care about or that you’re interested in. You’ll be amazed at the quality of people that you’ll meet doing voluntary service.

Unlock Your Creativity

Another form of leverage is creativity. Remember, one new idea is all you need to start a fortune. Everyone has the ability to come up with creative ideas and solutions if they look for them. All great fortunes begin with an idea.

Create Good Work Habits

A powerful form of leverage that can help you is good work habits. Good work habits make an extraordinary difference. In a recent study, 104 chief executive officers all agreed that the ability to set priorities and then to get the job done fast were the two qualities that most readily led to promotion and increases in pay. Good work habits will bring you to the attention of the important people in your life as fast or faster than anything else you can do. In the final analysis, you always get paid for your results. If you develop a reputation for being the person who gets the job done fast, that alone can put you onto the fast track in your career.

Your Action Assignment

Now, here are two things you can do to leverage your financial potential:

First, get involved in the business, trade, civic and social organizations in your community. Once you become a member, off er to help and serve on committees. This will bring you to the attention of people who can help you faster than any other way.

Second, develop excellent work habits. Be punctual. Plan your work and work your plan. Always concentrate your conscious energies on high priority tasks and make sure that you are doing things that are important to your boss and to your company.

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Virtually anybody can succeed with their home business, yet the majority fails. Why? Here’s three main reasons.

Not Really Getting Started

Often people sign up for some programme or another and think that is all there is to it, and that the money will come rolling it – WRONG!

As with anything, getting started is the hardest part, requiring planning and organization. Get this part right and the momentum you create will push your business forward in leaps and bounds. Any reputable programme will have all the information you require to get your home business off to a flying start.

Half Hearted Approach

Many people fall into this category. “Oh well, I gave it a try a while ago, but it didn’t not work out for me, did not really expect it to work anyway.” These people are just looking for an excuse to fail. This is an attitude that we acquire as we grow up, as child failure was not part of our vocabulary.

Take learning to ride a bicycle. You probably fell off more than once, and it did hurt, but that did not stop you did it? you’d get back on it until you mastered the skill.

It’s the same with your home business as you will have falls. It is all part of the learnig curve. You will learn a lot more from these slight setbacks.

Belief

This is probably the most common category, and also the biggest difference between successful people and the vast majority of people – no matter what walk of life they come from.

Everyone has dreams and ideas.

The differenceis that successful people have the belief and conviction to make thei ideas happen, doing whatever is needed to fulfill their dreams.

If you do not really believe in your home business, you cannot convince anyone else. Believe in your business and other people will believe; and your business will thrive.

Getting Started

This can seem a pretty daunting task and this is where most people fail, but dont worry. Even if you know absolutely nothing about home business, all reputable programmes will supply you with help, information and support that you require to ensure that your business is a success

Once you have made the decision to start your own home business, keep focused on what motivated you to start in the first place. This will provide the drive to push your home business forward.

A final thought – What if you were to take the action required today? What might your lfestyle be like in a year?

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By Noah St. John

I had just gotten off the stage at a major marketing conference when the founder of a nationally known software company (you’ve seen their commercials on TV) came up and said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Noah, one thing you just said on stage changed my life. I never realized that I’ve been living my life with one foot on the brake. And if I just get my foot off the brake, I’ll be much more successful.”

He told me that his company had been “stuck” at $4 million a year for the previous four years. (My first thought was: “Gee, a lot of people would like to be ‘stuck’ at $4 million!”) He asked if I would coach him on how to stop holding himself back from success. Since I’ve been doing that for companies and individuals since 1997, I said “Sure.”

What I coached him in is what I call it The Secret Code of Success. I call it a “Secret Code” because even the people using it don’t know what they’re doing!

It’s like asking Tiger Woods to explain how he got so mentally tough or Bill Gates to tell you how he made so much money. These highly successful people do certain things that they’re totally unaware of, because they are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. They might be able to tell you some of the steps they took to get there – but because they’re unconsciously competent at letting themselves succeed, there will always be something missing in their explanation.

Let me explain what I mean by “unconsciously competent.”

To become unconsciously competent at any skill, you go through four levels:

Unconscious incompetence - when you don’t know that you don’t know how to do it

Conscious incompetence – when you know that you don’t know how to do it

Conscious competence – when you know that you know how to do it

Unconscious competence – when you do it without any conscious thought

Happy, wealthy people – whom I call the Naturals – are highly successful for the precise reason that they are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed.

Which brings us back to our software entrepreneur. When I walked him through what the Naturals are doing (without being consciously aware of it), he began to understand why, even though he’d spent a lot of time and money taking “how to succeed” programs, he couldn’t move forward.

Here are the three essential steps he took to get his foot off the brake:

1. Show appreciation for those who have made a difference in your life.

Human beings are starving for attention, appreciation, and acknowledgement. Research has shown that people will do more for acknowledgement than for money, because appreciation is the true currency of human interaction.

There are dozens of ways to acknowledge the people in your life, but what it really comes down to is your willingness to do so. That’s because everyone is wearing an invisible sign that says “Please make me feel important.” The problem is, you’re wearing that sign too!

If you become that one person in a million who is willing to make others feel important first, you’ll see an amazing turnaround in your relationships… just like our entrepreneur did.

2. Become aware of the ways you’re holding yourself back at the same time as you’re pushing yourself forward.

When I’m on stage and explain that most people are driving down the road of life with one foot on the brake, many in my audience tell me it never occurred to them that they could be stopping themselves at the same time as they’re driving forward.

This happens because the Why-To’s of Success are conscious, but the Why-Not-To’s of Success are subconscious. Everyone has reasons to want to succeed. (Those are the Why-To’s.) At the same time, most of us have hidden reasons for holding ourselves back. (Those are the Why-Not-To’s.) What made this concept truly life-changing for our entrepreneur (and for thousands of others who’ve learned The Code) was understanding that:

Because they’re subconscious, your Why-Not-To’s of Success are hidden even from you. No one gets up in the morning and says, “I think I’ll hold myself back from success today!”

The Naturals of Success have eliminated their Why-Not-To’s of Success. But because they’ve never had their own foot on the brake, they can’t possibly tell someone else how to get it off. That’s why there’s always something missing when they try to explain their “secrets of success.”

3. Realize the benefit of regular mentoring to achieve your goals.

While the rest of us often feel adrift and alone, the Naturals either always had, or unconsciously created, Systems of Support that allowed them to reach their goals faster, easier, and with less effort.

Having that kind of support made all the difference in the Naturals’ lives, and it can make a big difference in your life, too. One way to get the support you need to succeed is to find a mentor or coach who:

Understands and believes in you

Doesn’t make you feel wrong for wanting what you want

Gives you solid, doable action steps to reach your goals

Before our software entrepreneur heard me speak on stage, his company had been “stuck” at $4 million a year for the previous four years. But because he knew he was capable of much more, it was just as frustrating for him as it would be for someone making much less.

With just 90 days of coaching in The Code, he learned how to take his foot off the brake. His company’s revenues exploded from $4 million to $40 million in less than a year.

And now, every time I see his commercials on TV, I smile. Because his success is just one more example of what can happen when you take your foot off the brake.

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