Self Improvement Information

Do Success Secrets Really Exist?

Absolutely! Here’s a short list of traits
or “secrets” that successful people use to
reach their goals. No one principle here will
catapult you to amazing achievements, but when
combined, you’ll be unstoppable.

1) Can you really think and grow rich? Think
and Grow Rich is one of my favorite success books
of all time but let’s face it, you can’t think
and grow rich. But thinking in a positive light
about what you want to accomplish, combined with
these other traits, is a powerful tool for becoming
as successful as you’d like.

And if you’ve read
Napolean Hill’s book, you know he doesn’t recommend
sitting around thinking about being rich. Most
definitely not. If you’ve never read Think and
Grow Rich, you must do so. Or grab a copy of
The Science of Personal Achievement Audio program
by Napolean Hill. It will change your life.

2) Take Responsibility for Your Actions. This has
become a lost art in today’s culture of ‘blame everyone
else for everything wrong in your life’ but the cold
hard fact is that no one is responsible for what you
do or don’t do but you.

Yes, bad things happen beyond
our control. But how we react to those things is
completely under our control. Don’t let yourself
use excuses as a crutch for not fulfilling your promises
and potential.

3) Focus, Focus, Focus! Don’t let other people or
things distract you from what you want to accomplish
with yoru life. Go for it and let nothing stand
in your way.

4) Get Educated. Never stop learning. Go back to
school, read books, listen to audio tapes, get
training and acquire the skills you need to reach your
goals.

5) Be Persistant and Work Hard. Success is not a sprint.
Success is not easy. Don’t bale out on your goals. Too
many people give up before they get where they want to
go. Don’t be that person!

6) Write Down Your Goals. You gotta do this. Figure
out your goals, write them down, develop a plan to reach
those goals and then TAKE ACTION on that plan!

7) Take Action! Take Action! Take Action!! This is
last on the list but most important in your success. Without
action, absolutely NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!

Where is your
action?
What have you done today to get you closer to
your goals?

Have you been forgoing taking responsibility
for your own actions, and letting excuses keep you
from achievement?

What are you going to do differently,
starting RIGHT NOW, that will have you taking action on
a persistent, consistent basis?

If you aren’t seeing
the results you want, I’d wager that a lack of action
is the problem. The first six “secrets” on this list
are 100% worthless without a lot of number seven. You
gotta take action! And you gotta do it all the time!

Put together a “plan of action” so
that you can immediately implement the strategies.

You will not be successful unles you TAKE ACTION and apply the things that you learn.
Make a committment to yourself to set aside the
time you need to take action on the things that will make
you successful.

What’s your action today?

Gregg Gillies is the author of fattofitfast.com fattofitfast.com and
he specializes in helping people develop success strategies and
plans in health and fitness and internetprofitmethod.com online business development, as
well as overall self improvement techniques. Check out
k2audiobooks.com/list.aspx?catId=137 k2audiobooks.com/list.aspx?catId=137 for the best
in self improvement.

Most of us, at one point or another, take a moment to evaluate our lives and the paths that we have chosen to take. We each do it at different times and with different emphasis. Sometimes people do it around high school or college graduation time, when deciding what career to pursue, how we want to be regarded by society, friends, and family or how to transition ourselves from a student to a grown up.

Some people do the evaluative process when planning for a family. Sometimes it takes the illness or death of a family member, or some other tragic event to make us stop and see if we are taking our life in the right direction.

For many of us, however, hitting a certain age can cause one to stop and take pause. This happened to me last summer. I had just hit the big 3-9 and I realized that in less than one year I would be 40 years old. Now, I have been saying and believing that today’s 40 is yesterday’s 30, but I was still a bit shocked at the prospect that I would soon be what I had always considered middle aged.

Part of the problem for me with aging is that I never “feel” my age. I have this preconceived notion about what a person should be feeling or doing at a given age. I am always surprised though that I never match up with what my notion is. I have also realized that no one ever wants to be their real age. If I ask my kids how old they are they always want to round up… my daughter doesn’t turn 9 for a few weeks, but today she is nine if you ask her. Teenagers try everything to look older, sometimes even getting fake IDs to get into clubs and bars. Then once we hit 21, that magic age of “real” adulthood, something happens and we start to feel like we should begin shaving off years to continue to be young. The older we get the more years we shave off.

So in turning 40, I started to think about what that meant. My husband has been busting my chops because I am getting “old”, (I turn 40 two weeks before he does, something he finds great delight in!). I remember that when my parents turned 40, I thought that it did seem old. Today, I don’t feel like I thought 40 would feel. I certainly don’t feel old; I certainly don’t feel like 20 either! So how am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to act? Do I have to be more serious and mature? Am I suppose to start looking into botox, or getting plastic surgery? Should I start buying sensible shoes? Do I need to start stocking my medicine cabinet differently?

In making the decision about how forty feels, and who I was going to be as a forty year old, I had to first look at who I was and how I currently felt. I have been plagued by a gnawing sense of insecurity since childhood, something that I have tried to work on for years. I didn’t always like myself and found it hard to have confidence in myself or my work. Friends and family would often be frustrated when paying me a compliment because I never wanted to believe them. I thought that they were only saying the words to be nice. But for some reason, turning 40 is making me look at my life and the things that I have accomplished differently. What I am realizing is that I really do have some good stuff under my belt. I am realizing that I am the only one holding me back and that I can have another 40 remarkable years if I let myself. I am beginning to truly believe that age is only a number and that the soul is only as old as you feel. In my research, there aren’t any hard and fast rules for how 40 acts or thinks or feels. So, I have decided to create my own definition, feel free to borrow it if you like!

I want to go to the park and run with my kids and play tag. I want to swim in the summer and sled in the winter. I want to go to a rock concert with my husband just because he asks. Or snuggle up in front of the fire because he didn’t. I want to like myself and the life that I live because I am choosing to do so. I don’t want someone to tell me that I need to act my age, I want them to be envious that I don’t. I am choosing to believe that I am worthy of friendships, love, happiness, and any compliment that someone chooses to offer. I am embracing the fact that I am going to be 40, and I am going to feel great about starting a new page in my book of life. I am choosing to go after what I want and if I don’t get it, I will choose not to let it devastate me. When that happens, I’ll pick up my behind and go after something else. I want to feel alive and proud and energized by my family, friends, and my own desire not to be a couch potato. I want to feel like dancin’. (Ok, maybe I am getting a bit carried away, but I think you get the point!)

I have never been one to focus much on my looks or to worry much about my style. Don’t get me wrong, I like to look good and stylish, but I never had the money it takes to do it up great. I am a fairly simple person and have no intention of changing that fact, but turning 40 does make me take a realistic look at the image that I put out into the world. I see this time in my life as an opportunity to possibly recreate myself, or minimally make sure that what I am I want to keep.

One thing about my image that I know that I don’t want to keep is an extra forty pounds I have been carrying around. After three children and years of eating whatever I wanted and not making exercise a priority in my life, I realize that not only was I setting a bad example for my kids, but I was looking pretty dumpy doing it. I constantly complained about my weight to my husband, who would look at me and say “what are you doing about it”. It was a legitimate question, but coming from a guy who can eat anything, doesn’t do a lot of structured exercise and still maintains his slim college weight, I was bitter to answer his question. Unfortunately, the reality was, I wasn’t doing anything but making excuses and being depressed. My birthday made me aware that enough was enough. I needed to take control and make my health a priority and get my weight in check. I didn’t want to be 40, and 40 pounds overweight. I want to be an active part of my kid’s life and carrying all this extra poundage around wasn’t allowing me to do that. So, I am changing my lifestyle. It really is about making a total mind change not just a diet change. I make time for exercise. I do the exercises that I like to do not what I think I should do. I have a couple of buddies, who I am committed to supporting and who are committed to supporting me. We are making a great team and we are all excited about the changes we feel and see in our overall health and wellness. I admit that making time for exercise is easier now that I work from home, but I also realize that I cannot make anything an excuse for not being good to myself.

I am also trying to eat wiser. I still enjoy a good bowl of ice cream, or a chocolate candy, but I savor the smaller amounts that I allow myself to have, and I do it less frequently. I try to eat more green and orange foods, and less white. I also realize that I can be satisfied with less food, and I don’t have to eat until I puke. It is easy to say and harder to do, but everyday I renew my commitment to myself and my goals, and so far it is paying off and coming off!

My relationships are another area that I am examining. I need to make sure that those people in my life know how important they are to me. I have a large number of acquaintances, but only a few true and close friends. Those friends have made a huge impact on how I live my life and some of the decisions that I have made over the years. They need to be recognized as the truly vital part of whom I am and who I will yet to become. My husband is one of the most important people in that category. I have been married to him for 13 years and I think that my marriage is as strong if not stronger than when we were first married. My husband and I have watched marriages of friends and family struggle, some even ending in divorce. I am not naïve enough to believe that it can’t happen to us, so I am making a new commitment to him and our marriage. Every couple with kids knows how easy it is to let the romance and intimacy of marriage take a back seat to the care of your children. My kids are very important to me, but I also know that if I don’t focus more on my marriage and myself, I won’t have anything to give to my kids. I want to be a good role model for my kids when it comes to relationships. I also want to be a good wife for my husband. Relationship experts talk about the importance of date nights, but we have a tight budget and it doesn’t always allow for traditional dates. My goal is to be more creative in our dates. We can have candlelight dinners at home after the kids go to bed, even if we are having hamburgers. We can create a spa atmosphere in our own bathroom tub. We can write love letters or poems to each other, something we haven’t done in years. Our love is strong and I know that only constant attention and creative thinking will continue to foster its growth.

I AM 40 AND PROUD! I hope that when I turn 60 and start to evaluate my life again, I will look over the previous 20 years and see accomplishments, advancements, and wonderments that are only dreams now. I hope that I see that I was happy with my life, and myself. I want to see that my family and friends continued to bring me joy and completeness, and that I have shared more of myself with them. I hope to see that I have continued to grow personally and professionally and that I have more in my life to be grateful for. And mostly I hope that at 60 I feel as great and proud as I do today!

Kim Dziobak is a personal coach dedicated to working with individuals and families to improve their health and wellness.

With life coaching becoming “the” career choice in this millennium, many of you are seeking the right choice for training and certification. Hopefully this article will answer some of your questions.

There are many fine life coach schools, academies and institutes. Some are accredited and some not. Should the school’s accreditation make a difference to you? In my opinion, no.

Because there are no universal standards for the life coaching profession, there are no universal standards for schools. Also, because well-paid coaches generally work in a niche, those niches are such that they are developed by the coach independently of any training they might receive.

What makes the issue of accreditation particularly confusing is marketing. Accreditation is being used as a marketing tool in some cases, not as a barometer of their success. Many coaching schools are accredited only because a group of colleagues got together and decided to form a group and accredit their associates’ schools. How do you know whether this is the case for a school you are interested in? You really don’t know and generally can’t find out.

Many schools use accreditation as a marketing ploy to draw you in and charge exhorbitant rates. If you just want to spend more money, go ahead. Price really has little to do with the effectiveness of the materials. Mid-range schools generally work harder to please students and offer as good or better training in many cases, because students get more one-on-one time with instructors.

How important is a school’s accreditation? Let’s put it into realistic perspective. What is most important to a prospective coaching client is, can this coach help me? Most clients look to see whether a coach has had formal coach training, but not into the background of the school. And the truth is, clients don’t care whether the school you attended, is accredited. It just doesn’t come up. Clients will decide to use your services if they like you, feel a connection, and experience benefits from their sample session with you. That’s pretty much it.

Peer Resources ( peer.ca/coachingschools.html), recognized world leader in coach training resources states “accreditation” in the coaching field at present has a number of troubling aspects, including its lack of wide-spread acceptance, conflicts of interests between reviewers and some rated schools, minimal reporting of results, and questionable or vague criteria. While accreditation typically means the school has been reviewed by an external source, it does not necessarily mean that “non-accredited schools” provide less value or poorer quality programs.”

Since coaching is a distinct and relatively new profession, and no universal standards exist, many new schools have come into existence. To build a fence around the training opportunities and the income derived from it, some schools formed organizations to accredit only their schools of choice and make it nearly impossible for a newer school to become accredited. They will mandate applicant schools to show evidence of ten or more years of professional success, before they even consider them for accreditation. Then, they apply personal biases for accrediting schools, so unless a school fits within their philosophies, they aren’t eligible or will not be approved.

So how does the potential coaching student make a sound choice? Here are some ways:

Read student testimonials

Verify the school’s philosophies allign with yours

Contact the school and see if they are prompt with replies to your questions

Look for a school in your desired niche - Here is an example:

Let’s say you are a Christian and prefer training that agrees with your faith. It will be important to select a Christian (bible-based) certification course. Admittedly this niche offers a few options for training. Some are accredited and some not. But this should not matter, because there is no governing body to decide whose course is best. The Christian schools who show accreditation from established secular accrediting bodies, are actually less likely to have substantive biblical content, because secular groups frequently subscribe to new age philosophies and may influence course content and materials.

Through my research and contact with various institutions, there was only one Christian coaching school which impressed me. That is the Professional Christian Counseling and Coaching Academy. (www.pccca.org). PCCCA offers training and certification for Christian Life Coaches and Christian Counselors.

I found they stand on their principles of faith, maintain the integrity of their programs and consistently strive for excellence. What is more, they offer one-to-one training with practicing coaches, serving as coach training instructors. Any coaching school’s success relies on what they bring to the table with their skills, integrity, response-time, reasonable fees and knowledge. Add that to superb training and you have an unbeatable combination. While PCCCA has Christian School Accreditation, they do not have secular coaching school accreditation.

I recommend that potential students not be persuaded by gimicky advertising, high fees and accreditation. Look for the best school for you. Period.

The author, Emery Hilton-Goode is a freelance writer specializing in entrepreneurial strategies and career training.
You may contact the author at mailto:diamonglo@aol.com diamonglo@aol.com

Some believe leaders are born. Others believe that leaders are developed. I believe that people are born with certain leadership characteristics. The characteristics that they are not born with can be developed. Some of these characteristics we can get from the Eagle. By observing and studying this matchless bird you can pick up on leadership characteristics to help develop you and your network marketing team.

The eagle shows four major leadership characteristics:

1) Vision – Just like the eagle, all leaders must have vision. The eagle’s eyes can see great distances. They can also directly into the sun without being blinded. You, being the leader of your network marketing team, must have vision. You must have a vision that guides and leads your team towards the organization’s goals. The vision must be big and focused. A big, focused vision will produce big results.

2) Eagles Never Eat Dead Meat – You will never see an eagle eating meat that it did not kill. An eagle is not a scavenger. It hunts for and kills its own food. It hunts for the prey while it’s warm and alive. You as a leader must go where the action is. You must go where hunt down and find lively people to grow you business.

3) Looks For & Flies Into Storms – As storms approach, lesser birds head for cover, but the might eagle spreads its wings and with a great cry mounts upon the powerful updrafts, soaring to heights of glory. Eagles use the storm to lift him to these great heights. Leaders use storms (challenges); we don’t run from them. To leaders, storms are tools used for their development.

4) Very Gentle & Attentive To Their Young – The eagle is known for its ferocity, yet no member of the bird family is more gently and attentive to its young. At just the right time, the mother eagle begins to teach her eaglets how to fly. She gathers an eaglet onto her back, and spreading her wings, flies high. Suddenly she swoops out from under the eaglet and as it falls, it gradually learns what its wings are for until the mother catches it once again on her wings. The process is repeated. If the young is slow to learn or cowardly, she returns him to the nest, and begins to tear it apart, until there is nothing left for the eaglet to cling to. Then she nudges him off the cliff. In summary, TEACH AND TRAIN your organization! Network marketing is about duplication!

By studying the eagle, you can be born with and also develop leadership characteristics. Developing and using them your network marketing business will grow and become very profitable.

Motivated, Very Energetic, Entrepreneur from TX. Everything is big in Texas - INCLUDING DREAMS!

What does being successful mean to you? It really depends who you are, where you come from, what your life experiences have been so far, what you want to achieve, and where you want to go in life. For me, success means taking my responsibilities seriously, and working hard at each one until I reach my set goals. It means being happy with what I have achieved and where I am going. It means knowing myself inside and out, being a good friend and lover, staying fit and healthy, having fun, and enjoying life with a peaceful mind-set and no regrets. The definition of success will be different for everyone, but the ways to become personally effective and professionally successful have some common elements that should be taken into consideration.

The first thing to do is to know yourself. Knowing who you are means that you can evaluate your own thoughts and actions, as well as those of others, and make adjustments to yourself when necessary. Sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning and the rest of your day is filled with negative thoughts about everything and everyone you come into contact with. If you know yourself, you will know if this is a sign that you are unhappy with your current job, or marriage, or that your kids did something that you wish you handled better, or your boss ticks you off - or if you just didn’t get enough Z’s for the night and you need more sleep. If you know you didn’t get enough sleep, then you can adjust your moods and negative thoughts, or if it’s more than lack of rest, maybe you need to change something about your life that isn’t making you happy. Taking responsibility for your own negativity means knowing you have a choice about and control over how you react to the people, events, and world around you.

Next, you want to make sure your life is purpose-driven. Have you figured out the meaning of your life yet? I know that many people, myself included, have struggled with what their real purpose in life is. For some, it will take a lifetime to discover, and others will never really figure it out, but the more you think about what really matters to you the most, the clearer your life purpose will become. Once you know what is truly important to you, you can start working towards that destination, being and doing on a daily basis what you envision for yourself and for your future. The problem is that many people are following the wrong paths. They work hard to achieve what their friends, family, or society considers successful – the dream job, the dream car, professional status, and what have you – when really what they want is love, or a family, or a different career path all together.

Once you know who you are, what you want, what is important to you, and where you are going, it’s time to keep tabs on yourself to make sure you are doing, acting, thinking, and behaving in the ways that will get you to where you’re going. This takes self-discipline, focus, and commitment to your action plan. It means keeping yourself and your time organized, and doing whatever steps it takes to get to where you want to be. If you don’t know how to organize yourself, or build an effective business or life plan that you will stick to, then read a good book on the subject, or get advice from someone who knows. Usually when you are living a purpose-driven life, this isn’t so much a problem because you are doing what you love to do and what has the most meaning for you. When you do what you love, tasks that once seemed difficult suddenly become easy and enjoyable.

Liane Bate owns a Plugin Profit Site web business, is a member of Success University, and the IAHBE. Visit: HonestMoneyMaking.com HonestMoneyMaking.com

Today, the flip investor is faced with an entirely new set of circumstances that makes flipping more risky. Interest rates have risen substantially and property appreciation has slowed dramatically (certain types of properties in certain areas have even gone down in value), signaling that the wind of market value is in the flip investors face. This does not mean that flipping properties in the current market is necessarily a bad idea; it does mean, however, that careful planning, forecasting, analysis, and project management are essential to keep these types of investments from coming back to haunt the investor.

I loved Norman Vincent Peale’s, Power of Positive Thinking as much as any book I have ever read. I have read Napoleon Hill’s books and I am an ardent believer in almost everything Dale Carnegie ever wrote. I have notes scribbled on the back pages of my Bible from Carnegie’s…How to Win Friends and Influence people, albeit I refused to read it at first thinking the title was too corny. For years now I have both pondered and studied the effects of positive thinking and talking, as against negative thinking. I have agonizingly and carefully begun to approach something that might at last qualify for a conclusion.

The sum of my conclusions could be found in one single verse of the Bible. And we know that all things work together for good to them who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 KJV
The key words in this passage being “all Things.” That is understood to mean the negative and the positive.

Few believers would not agree that difficulties and problems are part of the building of our faith and character. But in today’s world of positive thinking buffs it would be a weakness, an admission of defeat or even an act of faithlessness to even make mention of our problems. God has warned us that we will have tribulation in this world so who are these believers who seem to think that just to mention them would be faithless or negative. Since Jesus said it is enough that we be like the master (Mt. 10:25) then mentioning our troubles is no different than what our Master did. Jesus also said that we should be of “good cheer” when we were beset with troubles. The Apostle Peter said we should “count it all joy” when our faith was tried. It would seem that God is looking not for people who deny problems but face them differently than anyone else. The negative kept, silent or spoken openly has much less effect on our future than you imagine. Conversely, how you handle these matters has a more profound effect than you can imagine. God, it would seem, is watching the latter more than the former because after all this life is more of a battle ground than a playground according to the Bible.

Can the painful moaning of a dying soldier be thought of as complaints? Can that same moaning take anything away from the debt of gratitude a nation may feel for his sacrifice? A little show of pain isn’t an alliance with the negative forces of the universe it is merely a show of our humanity and our vulnerability. But today there are those who would rebuke us for even the slightest hint that we are undergoing pain, a problem or a negative outcome of any kind.

I was amazed to see that when Christianity Today reviewed Joel Osteen’s, Your Best Life Now, that they were not squeamish about saying that his emphasis on being positive became a negative. I couldn’t have agreed more. I see negative and positive together in this world but above that I see the will of God unfolding through it all. When I put my key in the ignition of my car as I prepare to drive to a crowded interstate highway, I see that as positive. I don’t think I will die in a huge accident, but just before I take off I do a very negative thing, I buckle up! God forbid I had to explain why I was doing that to a pathological positive thinker. To speak out loud that I may get in an accident after all would be the grand no-no.

The outcome of wars is often accurately predicted by military analysts that delve into the negative. That is they take the worst case scenario and make provision for that occurrence and thereby are prepared for such with contingencies. It Works, ask Norman Swartzkoff. Dale Carnegie advised many people to do this in order to take away the nagging power of doubt. The banana grower who was afraid that the trains might stop running before the crop could make it to market was told to envision that very thing. He made contingency plans, perhaps two or three of them and then he got on with the business of growing bananas without any further worry. He was told to see and plan for the negative to clear the path for a positive experience. Are you paying attention?

By now someone is saying, but God spoke the worlds into existence so we must recognize the power of the spoken word. Yes, and I do, his word not mine or yours. For your words and mine I would tone down their importance in the light of one very important verse of scripture. Jesus said…But let your communication be, yea yea; nay, nay for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Mt 5:37 KJV

Rev Bresciani has written many articles over the past thirty years in such periodicals as Guideposts and Catholic Digest. He is the author of two books available on Amazon.com, Alibris, Barnes and Noble and many other places. Rev Bresciani wrote “Hook Line and Sinker or what has Your Church Been Teaching You,” publisher, PublishAmerica of Baltimore MD. He also wrote a book published by Xulon Press entitled “An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ.” His book is now being heralded as the clearest book on the subject of the second coming of Christ since Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” Rev Bresciani’s website is,

americanprophet.org americanprophet.org

Time management sounds like a horribly boring topic. Images of men and women in white suits with clipboards checking on every move you make spring to mind.

As we may not work in factories and are thinking about our lives as a whole we can forget timing our every move round the factory floor or even our own sitting room. We don’t need that level of detail. .

But we do need to list what we actually do each day even if it is only a very sketchy list. Without such a list it is easy to come up with the favourite excuse of all non-achievers: “I didn’t have time.” Many of us waste huge chunks of time without realizing or admitting it.

I’ve just wasted half an hour trying to win £16000 on a TV program. All you had to do in this particular program was add a second word to the first word ‘over’. For example someone had already won more than a thousand pounds by coming up with the word ‘overgrown’.

It should be quite easy to win but the problem is that you have to get through on the phone to the presenters. Each call costs 75 pence and more often than not you are greeted with a groan which means you have not got through and need to try again. I have just wasted £7.50 on 10 calls without getting through.

Worse than that I’ve wasted about half an hour making those calls. Instead I could have been reading a good book about copywriting or about how to make £16,000 without playing silly TV games!

It is astonishing how easy it is be distracted by TV, the internet, other people or pets and our own restless minds. However, if we list our main activities during the day, we will at least know how we are wasting our time..

If we also list the main activities we plan to do each day and then record what we actually do, we will realize how much we are not doing.

The difference between those who achieve success and those who fail is not how much they know or how skilful they are but how well they manage their time. Time management is the number one life skill. It really means ‘Life management’.

Many experts agree that one way of managing your time well involves making a list of 3 to 6 things you need to do tomorrow in order of importance. Let your subconscious mind work on the list as you sleep. This should make the work much easier to do when you actually start doing it.

When you wake up, get cracking on the first item in your list and don’t stop until you’ve finished it.

If you do stop before you finish, you will have to gather up all the loose ends before you can continue what you have started and this wastes time. You may, once stopped, not restart the task for weeks, months and even years. As you might imagine, I am speaking from my own experience!

If you actually complete your first task you will feel full of energy and ready for the second task. You will have taken another step on the road to achieving your dreams.

Even if you don’t finish all the tasks on your list by the end of the day, you will feel satisfied because you will have spent your time on the most important tasks in your life at that time. Just carry over any remaining tasks until tomorrow.

Some people manage their time by devoting each day of the week to a different activity.

For example, you might work on one of your websites on a Monday. You might work on writing a book on Tuesday. You might spend Wednesday walking and exercising and so on.

I think I might get bored working on just one kind of an activity for a whole day. I prefer following a plan like the following. This can be summarised and easily remembered by the acronym SOG i.e.

Work for an hour on developing a skill that you wish to have e.g. copywriting
Work for an hour on an overwhelming task e.g. clearing the clutter in your bedroom
Work for an hour on achieving one of your key goals e.g. keeping fit

SOG, of course, stands for Skills, Overwhelming tasks and Goals.

Time management, then, needs to be taken seriously. It is not just some boring option which does not affect our lives. It can revolutionise the way we live and make our lives exciting and full of achievement. It is Life management.

Try out the list before you sleep method; the finish it before the next task method, the do one project a day method and, my favourite, the SOG method. Don’t forget to create your own methods.

There is no law that says you can’t use all these methods, including your own methods, at different times of the week.

Try them in turn and see what happens to your life. Good luck!

John Watson is an award winning teacher and 5th degree blackbelt martial arts instructor. He has written several ebooks on motivation and success topics. One of these can be found at < motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php>

You can also find motivational ebooks by authors like Stuart Goldsmith. Check out motivationtoday.com/the_midas_method.php motivationtoday.com/the_midas_method.php

Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site but please include the resource box above

Ever heard of the Fuller Brush Man? You know, those legendary guys who came knocking on the front doors of America, selling brushes, mops and cleaners?

I was one of them, back in my early twenties.

I had just quit a job in an employment agency after four-and-a-half very long, very stressful days.

Confined for eight hours a day to an incredibly tiny cubicle, ear pressed to the phone calling through the yellow pages trying to find job listings, then on my very first interview having to lie to a girl about a fictitious job the boss had advertised to pull in applicants. (Can you say bait-and-switch?)

That girl knew I was lying, and when she walked out the door, I walked out, too, almost on her heels.

So when I started a new job selling door-to-door, it seemed like heaven in comparison. No cubical - I was outdoors in the June sunshine and balmy breezes. No telephone - I was talking to people face to face.

And no lying. If I didn’t think a product measured up, I simply didn’t put it in my case; I only showed what I thought was the best.

I was ecstatic from the first minute of the first day.

Every house I walked up to, my heart sang and I said over and over to myself, “I am SO-O-O-O-O-O glad to be out here and not trapped in that cubical.”

I was deliriously happy to be where I was. Overjoyed to be doing what I was doing.

And sell? Man, I sold just about half of all the people I talked to. Back in the early sixties, a hundred-dollar-day was the holy grail of Fuller Brush men. Sales people would stay out till eight or nine o’clock every night trying to nail that hundred dollar mark.

But not me. I knocked off every afternoon about five or five-thirty with $120 or $130 worth of receipts in my order book.

Then, after a few weeks, something quietly changed. My sales began to sag. Each morning saw me going out a little less enthusiastic. I spent increasing amounts of time trying to figure out what was going wrong.

After a few months, I left that job, utterly disappointed in myself.

Afterwards I wondered how I could have taken something so obviously perfect for me and messed it up so badly.

In fact, that question followed me, haunted me for twenty long years. Eventually, though, I figured it out.

The secret had been right in front of my nose all those years, but just as a fish can’t see the water it swims in, I had been unable to repeat that undeniable success.

My big secret? It was simple, really.

I had filled my mind with thankfulness - undiluted gratitude - unreserved joy at being right where I was, doing exactly what I was doing.

Then, twenty years later, when I started being thankful again - but deliberately, this time - my life changed back.

Suddenly, all sorts of “serendipitous” things started occurring. People I barely knew started bringing me terrific opportunities.

Mark this: Joyous stuff started happening AFTER I went back to being overjoyed with my life.

Make no mistake - there were still challenges that needed to be dealt with. But I stopped seeing “problems” as personal affronts deliberately sent by life to impede me. In fact, with the right mindset, I couldn’t see problems at all. Instead, they looked like fascinating puzzles to solve and games to enjoy sorting out.

And even now, anytime I feel life becoming a bit too stressful, a bit too heavy, a bit less fun, I make myself stop and - against all logic - I start looking at all the stuff around me and calling it good.

And yes, I even make myself say, “I am SO-O-O-O-O glad to be right here, right now.” And I don’t stop saying that until I can feel it taking hold.

Now, I realize that on the surface, there is absolutely no logic to this practice… except for one tiny thing.

It works.

So if you decide to try this approach, do this: make a list of all your major problems and start through them, one at a time, saying, “I am so glad this is happening. This is actually very interesting now that I look at it closely, and I’m lucky to be here so I can gain some great new knowledge from this. I am SO-O-O-O-O glad.”

Warning: you’ve got to put some real oomph into it. Some real feeling. Just saying the words without working up some enthusiasm is like writing a letter without a pen in your hand. You’re going through all the motions, but no communication takes place.

So do that, and keep doing it till it starts taking hold.

How can you tell when it’s taking hold?

There are two signs. First, you begin to lose that tense, blocked, frustrated feeling. And second, your life starts working FOR you instead of AGAINST you. Lots of little things start going right instead of wrong. People begin treating you like you’ve always wanted them to.

And you go to bed each night feeling like you’ve just had a wonderful day.

If you’ve tried and tried all the logical stuff and your life is still a mess, try being illogical. Try being thankful for everything you’ve got.

Including the mess.

And you’ll find, just as I have, that indeed there is a miracle in every mess.

Charles Burke is the author of Command More Luck, the book that shows you why all those things keep happening to you. Learn why “luck” doesn’t work the way you’ve always been told. Not even close. The bad news — There’s no such thing as luck. The good news — There’s something even better. Learn how it works at moreluck.com moreluck.com

Attitudes really are important when it comes to accepting the fact that you do forget things, often important things and frequently. It’s O.K. to forget.

Let me digress for a minute and give you a little trivial background.

The human mind has from 200 to 3oo million brain cells. This number depends on which expert you ask. You also lose over one hundred thousand brain cells a day. Now I don’t know where these go but they do leave.

There is another school of thought that says that our brain cells, the ones that are left at the end of each day, tend to pick up the roles and functions of the ones that left for better places.

The third thing to consider is that the brain is like any other organ in the body. If it is abused or not exercised it will develop a rather apathetic and unpleasant attitude and say essentially, “Don’t use me, there’s no sense in my continuing to develop or be productive.”

Medical research has indicated over the years and now believes that most mental disorders are partly due to this lack of the mind’s continuous development and exercise. I know, I know, you can’t put your brain on a tread mill for thirty minutes but you can read, play scrabble, do cross word puzzles or give your mind some other form of mental stimulation on a routine basis.

So, do you think what I have just covered has anything to do with your attitudes, life outlook and beliefs? I certainly hope so.

Let me give you one other bit of trivia. Years ago Lionel Tigre wrote a book called, Biology, The Optimism of Hope. I am sure the book is out of print, so you’ll have to trust me on this one. Anyway, he states that, people who are optimistic and positive tend to live longer and get sick less frequently than people who are negative and pessimistic. And that was over thirty years ago. Trust me here, there has been a lot of recent research on this subject and it validates his earlier work.

So are these attitudes? Da!

Another critical condition that can affect the degree and frequency of your senior moments is your level of self-acceptance and self-love.

I am not talking here about a narcissistic attitude or outlook or as the common phrase goes “it’s all about me.” Self-love and self-acceptance can be seen in how a person lives their life. Do they have self-abusive habits, a death wish or just a lack of discipline.

Are they kind, thoughtful, loving, caring and giving or self-absorbed.

Are they generous with their time, money and help or selfish hoarders.

Get the picture? You can’t be both. Gotta go one way or the other folks. If you try and swing both ways (no pun intended here so relax Dude) you are probably just a manipulative old fool who enjoys bringing pain, sadness or insecurity to others.

My author friend jay Carter calls these people invalidators.

By the way if you have never read his book, get it today and devour it. No I don’t make any money of the sale of his books. Besides he has sold more books that I have and has more money than I do. He should be paying me for recommending his book to you. Sorry, almost forgot to give you the title. It’s called, Nasty People.

Many people are searching for acceptance outside of themselves when they haven’t yet learned to accept themselves. Self-acceptance is being O.K. with who you are, how you got there and where you are going. It is patience and loving yourself even when you make mistakes, fail or do really stupid things.

Self-acceptance is a close relative of self-esteem. It is difficult to have one without the other and if you have one you will tend to have the other also.

Why do people have low self-acceptance? There are many reasons but most fall into the following categories:

1-The need to be perfect.

2-The need to be right.

3-The need for approval and to be liked.

4-Feeling inadequate due to some perceived
lack of ability or skill.

5-Staying stuck in mistakes and errors in
judgment in the past.

6-An extraordinary concern for other people’s
opinions and views about you.

7-A focus on your imperfections rather than
your blessings.

8-A high need to please others.

9-An ego that is out of control.

10-Emotional immaturity.

To accept yourself fully is to recognize that you will never be perfect. You are not finished making mistakes. You will fail again. Not everyone you meet will like you. A happy and contented life is not about what happens and why but what you do with it or about it. Very few people will agree with you on numerous occasions. And, you will die with some unfinished business.

The key to gaining self-acceptance is to recognize that you are in process as a human being and as a result of that process your growth comes when you need it most. Your job is to take yourself lightly and what you do seriously. That doesn’t mean walking around with a long face and sour disposition. It only means that you do the best you can with what you have at the time and let the stuff that is not within your control go either emotionally, physically or psychologically.

So now that we have covered all of that psycho-babble what does self-acceptance or self-love have to do with senior moments? I’m getting there just take it easy.

When a person lacks self acceptance or self-love they may also tend to have low self-esteem. Some of the outcomes of low self-esteem is the need for approval, acceptance or validation. If a person has an unhealthy need for any of these they will tend to always be focusing on other people’s wants, needs or desires in an attempt to manipulate them into giving them (the person with the low self-esteem, in case you were getting confused as to who I was talking about). As a result they will often put their own needs or desires second and when this occurs they will often forget what they were doing and why, where they were going and why, what they wanted and why. This list is endless and I need a cup of coffee. Will continue this later. That is if I feel like it. If not, well we’ll just move along to chapter two.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics. He is the best selling author of over 60 books including; Soft Sell, That’s Life, Peace Of Mind, 81 Challenges Managers Face and Your First Year In Sales. He is also the CEO of Sales Clubs Of America. He can be reached at mailto:tim@timconnor.com tim@timconnor.com, 704-895-1230 or visit his websites at timconnor.com timconnor.com or SalesClubsOfAmerica.com SalesClubsOfAmerica.com

What image comes to mind when you hear the word “manager”? Do you think of an engineer, an accountant, a police officer? These images imply precision, attention to detail, control, regulations, procedures and punishment for not following the rules. Conversely, when you envisage a leader, do you have feelings of being inspired, engaged, energized, uplifted and emotionally moved to take action with unswerving resolve? This way of separating management from leadership has a kernel of truth in it, but being an oversimplification, it is as much wrong as right. To understand what it takes to be an effective manager, we must first know what management means and how it differs from leadership.

The clearest way of differentiating leadership from management is to say that leadership promotes new directions while management executes existing directions as efficiently as possible. The truth is that leadership, an appeal to change direction, can be inspiring but it can also be factual, based on evidence and expressed in logical, quiet or even quite forceful language. While management aims to achieve efficiency, it need not be coldly controlling. If you are managing intelligent knowledge workers and trying to get them to work harder, you might let them be as self-managing as possible. You might coach and develop, nurture and motivate them. In short, you can be just as inspiring as a leader. The only difference is that you are trying to get people to work harder or smarter while the inspiring leader is trying to get people to change direction. In other words, influencing or communication style is a poor way of separating managers from leaders. This has to be true because we can all think of leaders with widely different styles. Compare Martin Luther King, Jr and Gandhi – both leaders but no similarity in communication or influencing styles.

So, the only way to differentiate management from leadership is function or purpose. It’s like marketing and sales. Maybe certain personalities are more suited to one of these functions than the other, but there will always be exceptions to the rule. Notice that we define sales and marketing, not to mention human resources or finance, in terms of the function or purpose they serve in organizations. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to do the same with leadership and management. Other writers have suggested a similar functional distinction but they have all had one foot in the past so they have felt compelled to add that leaders are inspiring while managers are merely factual, logical and unemotional. This is a myth that needs burying once and for all.

To be an effective manager, then, you have to be able to get things done efficiently, to achieve a goal with the best possible use of all resources at your disposal. Self-management simply means making best use of your own resources relative to a specific objective – your time, talent and personal skills. If you are a manager in an organization, you will also have financial, human and material resources at your disposal. It is helpful to compare management to investment. If you want the best possible return on your capital, you need to think carefully about how best to invest it. You also need to monitor your investment regularly so as to shift your money around if you see a way to make a better return.

So, to be an effective manager, you need to have the necessary discipline and organization to first deploy your resources wisely and then to monitor their productivity relative to your objectives. Now deploying human resources to get the most out of them takes a whole different set of skills. At one time, managers regarded people as just another part of the organizational machine, to be managed like any piece of hardware. But modern employees are much more intelligent, well educated and prepared to go elsewhere if they do not like the way they are treated. Today’s managers are almost in the same position as the managers of professional athletes such as top golfers or tennis stars. In these cases, it is the athletes who really call the shots. Their managers are really service providers for stars. While organizational managers have the power to promote or fire employees, they are so dependent on their talent that their own job security is based on how well they manage people. This means that effective managers must be excellent motivators, skilled at retaining, coaching and developing core talent in addition to being well enough organized to foster efficiency. It is also important to realize that being good at these tasks makes you an excellent manager, not a leader.

See leadersdirect.com leadersdirect.com for more information on this and related topics. Mitch McCrimmon’s latest book, Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes was published in 2006. He is a business psychologist with over 30 years experience of leadership assessment and executive coaching.