Quote of the Day

“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
Lorraine Hansberry

TAKE TIME FOR 12 THINGS..

1. Take time to WORK-it is the price of success.

2. Take time to THINK-it is the source of power.

3. Take time to PLAY-it is the secret of youth.

4. Take time to READ-it it the foundation of knowledge.

5. Take time to WORSHIP-it is the highway of reverence and washes the dust of earth from our eyes.

6. Take time to HELP&ENJOY Friends-it is the source fo happiness.

7. Take time to LOVE-it is the sacrament of life.

8. Take time to DREAM-it hitches the soul to the stars.

9. Take time to LAUGH-it is the singing that helps lifes loads.

10.Take time for BEAUTY-it is everywhere in nature.

11. Take time for HEALTH-it is the true wealth & treasure of life.

12. Take time to PLAN-it is the secret of being able to have time for the first 11 things.

Quote of the Day

"Dream big dreams! Others may deprive you of your material wealth and cheat you in a thousand ways, but no man can deprive you of the control and use of your imagination. Men may deal with you unfairly, as men often do; they may deprive you of your liberty; but they cannot take from you the privilege of using your imagination. In your imagination you always win!"
-Jesse Jackson

Use Your Imagination?

Oliver Wendall Holmes said, "A man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions", and Anatole France said "To know is nothing at all, to imagine is everything!" But if you think about it using your imagination is something that we think of as being for kids. Kids have big imaginations and big dreams and all kinds of crazy ideas. When you get grown we're taught to deal with reality "the real world" we all have been told that something was not realistic, "be real" "keep dreaming." Are phrases you might hear when if a dream is mentioned. And many of us go through the day without taking a moment of reflection, just to think it's one of the hardest things to do. Have you ever imagined how you want your day to go, what you want to accomplish that day. Then it could go further then that, imagine the things you want in life coming to pass. Just use your imagination. Famous writer Napoleon Hill stated, "The imaginaion is the workshop of the soul wherein are shaped all plans for individual achievement. Man's greatest gift in his mind. It analyzes, compares, chooses. It creates, visualizes, foresees, and generates ideas. Imagination is your mind's exercise. It challenges and is the mirror of you soul." And if you want to get technical it says in the bible Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him." He imagined man in His mind. Even Einstein said "Imagination, is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

Quote of the Day

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.

Celebrate, Remember.. Not Just a Day OFF

Quote of the day

If you don't know where you come from then you don't know where you going. Don't live for yesterday but for today.

Quote of the Day

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is filled with educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent.”
-Calvin Coolidge

Remember Persistance is #1

It's a beautiful Friday, and we have reached our final day in the 7 Qualities of a Successful Person series and it's the quality that all successful people pocess, and that's Persistance. Persistence is the only common success denominator of all successful people. All the successful people you can think of share one thing and that's-they never give up. And like Katie Byrd says "And, because of that, they tend to make far more mistakes and have far more failures than unsuccessful people. But failure only stops failures. Successful people get right back up on their feet (possibly to fail again), and keep on keeping on, until they finally succeed.

Quote of the Day

"The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible."
-Unknown

*Bonus Quote*
Watch your thoughts; they become words
Watch your words; they become actions
Watch your actions; they become habits
Watch your habits; they become your character
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny
-Frank Outlaw

Your Thoughts

What came in second on our list of the 7 Qualities of a Successful Person was Think & Speak Positively. We all have hear about positive thinking over and over. But it's true what they say, "pessimists never succeed" and "losers never win." So, how could you ever achieve something with a negative attitude? Author Katie Byrd says, "successful people generally use optimistic self-talk, an attitude of gratitude and a positive perspective to stay entusiastic, creatively motivated and consistently moving towards their vision."

The Power of Thinking

I found an article that explains the importance of Positive Thinking. Once I read this article I felt like I couldn't have said it any better it was written in 1991 by a college student named Donald Martin.

The Power of Positive Thinking
Key Point
You are what you think. You feel what you want.

Why Think Positively?

All of our feelings, beliefs and knowledge are based on our internal thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. We are in control, whether we know it or not.
Aim high and do your best
We can be positive or negative, enthusiastic or dull, active or passive.

The biggest difference between people is their attitudes. For some, learning is enjoyable and exciting. For others, learning is a drudgery. For many, learning is just okay, something required on the road to a job.

"Most folks are about as happy as they
make up their minds to be."
-Abraham Lincoln

Our present attitudes are habits, built from the feedback of parents, friends, society and self, that form our self-image and our world-image.

These attitudes are maintained by the inner conversations we constantly have with ourselves, both consciously and subconsciously.

The first step in changing our attitudes is to change our inner conversations.

What Should We Be Saying?

One approach is called the three C's: Commitment, Control and Challenge.

Commitment
Make a positive commitment to yourself, to learning, work, family, friends, nature, and other worthwhile causes. Praise yourself and others. Dream of success. Be enthusiastic.

Control
Keep your mind focused on important things. Set goals and priorities for what you think and do. Visualize to practice your actions. Develop a strategy for dealing with problems. Learn to relax. Enjoy successes. Be honest with yourself.

Challenge
Be courageous. Change and improve each day. Do your best and don't look back. See learning and change as opportunities. Try new things. Consider several options. Meet new people. Ask lots of questions. Keep track of your mental and physical health. Be optimistic.

Studies show that people with these characteristics are winners in good times and survivors in hard times.

Research shows that,
"... people who begin consciously to modify their inner conversations and assumptions report an almost immediate improvement in their performance. Their energy increases and things seem to go better ..."

Commitment, control and challenge help build self-esteem and promote positive thinking. Here are some other suggestions.

7 Suggestions for Building Positive Attitudes:

• In every class, look for positive people to associate with.


• In every lecture, look for one more interesting idea.


• In every chapter, find one more concept important to you.


• With every friend, explain a new idea you've just learned.


• With every teacher, ask a question.


• With yourself, keep a list of your goals, positive thoughts and actions.

Remember, you are what you think, you feel what you want.

Quote of the Day

"In the final analysis there is no other solution to man's progress but the day's honest work, the day's honest decision, the day's generous utterances, and the day's good deed."
-Clare Boothe Luce

Pay the Price

For those of you that have not been reading the blog for this week I will take this time to recap a little bit on Saturday Jan. 5, 2008, we decided that for the next 7 days we would have a post for each of the Qualities of a Successful Person. So, the post on Saturday featured Time Management which was felt most important at the time and as the posts continued they kinda went in a order that applied to us: Sunday-Take Action, Monday-Know What You Want, Tuesday-Prioritize and today the quality we will discuss today is Pay the Price.

As you already know you can't get nothing for free, so you're gonna have to work hard to get what you want. So keep that in mind, stay motivated buckle up and enjoy the beauty of your struggle. I realized that a lot of times we may look at somebody, and they might be driving a Bentley or you might know someone with a nice condo. And you might say to youself, "damn that's nice, I love that car(house, whatever it may be), I gotta get one, I need it. And we all have these wants, but for one second we don't take the chance to think about that persons struggles and what they had to go through to get what they got, or where they are. I guess it's in our nature to want, but you can't get something for nothing. If you want that Bentley you're gonna have to pay the price, and that's a big ticket, so you gotta be willing to work hard and put in some serious work for it. It ain't gonna come sitting on the couch, you must earn your success; Pay the Price.

Pay the Cost: Earn Your Wages

THINK AND GROW RICH: A Black Choice
by Dennis Kimbro & Napoleaon Hill pg. 36 reads:

Financial Freedom
Financial freedom is not attained by the possession of money alone. It is attained by the service one renders. Useful service may be converted into all forms of human needs, with or without the use of money.

Those who are financially free have learned a central rule of riches: You may have all the money you desire-the only requirement is that you earn it. Fully 80 percent of those with whom you come in contact think of money all the time without realizing the above maxim. The average man will tell you he wants to make a million dollars, or that he wants to make a lot of money. He doesn't realize that the only people who make money are those who work in a mint. The successful must earn their wages or profits.

Quote of the Day

“The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.”
-Eric Hoffer

Prioritize, is the Quality of a Successful person that we will be sharing today. I'm glad that now you know what you want. But that's not enough now you have to prioritize and get things in order. Because there are always choices to be made, and it won't be any different with your goals. So, it might be a good idea to write your goals down in priority order. The list doesn't have to be set in stone since things are subject to change. But if you get confused or off track refer back to your list. Most would agree that being able to prioritize is key when your trying to achieve something. But being able to prioritize is hard, it's hard for most of us to decide which task is really the most important at any given time? Is it the one that’s most urgent, the one that will earn you the most money, the one that will produce the greatest long-term happiness, the one that will please your boss the most? In a article called "How to Prioritize" by Steve Pavlina, he says "If you don’t use an intelligent method of prioritization, you’ll lack consistency and bounce from one task to another with no rhyme or reason". In his article he shared a simple and effective prioritization method adapted from the military. And I wanted to post it here for an example on how you might prioritize your daily works whatever it may be.

To Read the rest of the article
"How to Prioritize" by Steve Pavlina Click Here


From a pure military (i.e. non-political) standpoint, the goal of any engagement is to achieve victory by inflicting the greatest damage on your enemy with the least amount of resources. Wouldn’t you say this is the essence of personal time management as well? You want to make the greatest amount of progress towards your goals with the least amount of effort.

Objective

For prioritization to have any meaning, it’s imperative that you have a clear objective. For the military your overall objective may be to achieve a decisive victory. Your personal objective may be a set of goals, your mission statement or purpose, or even a state of being. The role of prioritization then is to help you achieve this result with as little effort as possible.

Resources

The second consideration is the resources you have available. Military resources include troops, guns, tanks, bombs, planes, fuel, supplies, etc. Your personal resources include time, money, your social network, your physical energy, and so on. Time is generally your scarcest resources because it cannot be replenished.

Prioritization

Now in order to prioritize intelligently, we need a method that tells us how to evaluate projects in terms of their overall importance. Which projects will help us achieve our objectives most efficiently?

CARVER

A key component of military strategy is selecting the most important targets to attack. But how do you know which targets are the most important? Centuries of warfare have provided us with a reasonably intelligent answer.

CARVER is an acronym for a military method of target selection. CARVER stands for Criticality, Accessibility, Return (or Recuperability), Vulnerability, Effect, and Recognizability. I’ll explain what these are in a moment.

For every potential target, we assign a value of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for each CARVER factor, thereby creating a CARVER matrix. Then by summing the six CARVER values, we can calculate a total score for each target, and those scores represent the targets’ relative prioritization. The higher the CARVER score, the more “important” a target becomes.

Now lets explore the six CARVER factors, and consider how we can apply them to personal projects.

Criticality. How critical is the target with respect to the main objective? Will it move you significantly closer to your goal, or is it a relatively puny and insignificant item? A low criticality project might be cleaning out your garage. It would be nice to do, but it’s probably not going to make that much difference in your life.

Accessibility. Can you actually reach the target, or is it so well defended that attacking it directly is impossible? Do you have the means to tackle this project immediately, or does it have prerequisites? Starting a new business might not be very accessible if you work long hours and are living paycheck to paycheck, but asking for a promotion may be very accessible.

Return. In military operations the term Recuperability is used here, referring to how quickly the enemy can recover from the destruction of the target. There’s little point in attacking a target that can be rebuilt or replaced with minimal effort. For personal effectiveness we’ll use Return instead. How great is the expected return on your commitment of resources? Developing a new passive income stream may yield a significant return, while watching the news may yield virtually none.

Vulnerability. How vulnerable is the target? What amount of resources will be required to take it out? How vulnerable are the projects you’re considering? A one-day project will score a high vulnerability rating, while a six-month project will score much lower. Similarly, an inexpensive project is more vulnerable than an expensive one.

Effect. If you successfully destroy the target, how widespread will the impact be? If you successfully complete your project, what effect will it have on your life as well as the lives of others? Writing a best-selling book may have a significant effect, while completing your tax return will have very little effect.

Recognizability. Can we see the target well enough to attack it, or is it highly camouflaged or mobile? Is your project crystal clear or totally fuzzy? How easy is it to recognize the steps necessary to complete the project? Have you completed this type of project before, or will you have to figure out the steps as you go along? Clear goals with clear steps will score higher on recognizability than foggy goals with unclear steps.

Now let’s see how we can create a CARVER matrix to prioritize certain projects. The 1-5 rankings for each factor are simply for the sake of example, so your own rankings may vary. Keep in mind that these rankings are all relative to your primary objective, mission, or purpose.

See Article for Example of Table

Quote of the Day

You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love, who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams."
-Oprah

To Know What You Want

Know What You Want Knowing what you want is one of the most essential 7 Qualities of a Successful Person.

They say the first step to getting your hearts desire is to know what you want. And you should be specific as possible. "If you don't know what you want, you won't know when you've gotten it."
What do you want? Does money fit into that? If you can't answer these two questions, you might not ever know when you've been successful. Better yet, it could be worse: you might achive what you thought you wanted, or what all of your friends and family want, and suddenly realize that it doesn't satisfy you. In order to make sure that you're going in the right direction for you, it's important to figure out what you want from your life. You have to find your definition of "success". I’m not just talking about personal and business goals. You need to be crystal clear about all your desires, because everyday we're distracted by hundreds of things. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll end up someplace you don't want to be or wasting time all over the place. We’ve all known people with lots of great success qualities who work hard, but still end up just take their spin at the wheel and end up nowhere. You should be able to answer these questions: What are you living for? What's your life's goal? Because we're all going somewhere, we're all going after something. That's part of being alive. As long as we're living, we are headed towards something. Even if we don't want to live, we're going towards our goal (that makes death is a goal). Our lives are going somewhere. We're all in a the stream of living and we'll end up somewhere. The beauty of it is that we have some say so, in where we can end up. So, Know What You Want and lets get there!

Quote of the Day

"Well done is better than well said."
-Benjamin Franklin

Taking Action

Today is day two that we will be featuring one of the 7 Qualities of a Successful Person: Take Action.

Don't Wait
"No matter what anyone says you can't get what you want by just thinking about it." (Katie Byrd) You must be focused and have a clear enough vision of what you want, and you will naturally just start taking action to reach your goal. You’ll be surprised at the get great ideas you come up with and be able to expand the ones you already had, and you will know exactly what to do and be motivated to do it. Successful people do not wait for the "perfect" time to start achieving their goals; they go straight for them and don’t wait for a particular moment to surface. If you you're waiting for something big to happen before you can do what you wanna do, you might be waiting along time. The perfect time is now, stop making excuses for yourself: I don't have enough time, I don't have the money right now. Whatever it may be, there's no time for second guessing, "He who hesitates is lost."
Take Action and if you fail at your first attempt, all you have to do is simply learn from your mistakes and try again. Keep Pushing. For so many of us the hardest part of becoming successful is reaching a starting point. So the next time you want to do something no matter how big or small, Take Action.

“Take the Lead”

Leadership in all its richness is easier said than done. The awkwardness to do such a task is rarely bestowed in a time of convenience or is a choice that we make in which we understand the fullness of all predicted responsibilities and the agony that such a decision may cause. Nonetheless, the understanding of leadership does not come from if we are aware of the uneasiness it brings, but whether we are built for such a circumstance. Either we lead, have the ability to lead and don’t, or lead because we have to. So the irony of the situation is not who is leading us or what those leaders are made of, but precisely what type of leaders we have.

Interpretation:
A lot of times we chose our leaders based on their moral character, their resume’s accolades and at even times because of how well they may resemble us in some way. But these things should seldom be ones main concern when it comes to selecting a leader because none of the above ensures a leader will be successful. A true leader is someone with not only the requested accolades but equipped for the position both psychologically and emotionally. They are able to handle the pressures, devise creative solutions, problem solve and manage the personalities of all, and that is only scratching the surface. The importance in understanding this is that what essentially makes us great is what makes us human. In closing, from a logical stance the person who is qualified should be granted the opportunity to have the position, but it is our humanistic qualities that we should not ignore when making a decision as important as selecting who we chose to lead us.

Quote of the day

"People have to do what they gotta do in
order to do what they want to do."

7 Qualities of a Successful Person

On Sept. 28, 2007 we had a entry on here about the 7 qualities of a successful person. It was a pretty good entry, and I think we learned a lot from it. I noticed that we poccessed many of the traits rather they are being applied is another story. So, I thought it would be a good idea to reinorate the 7 qualities and in addition. I will be adding an article about each of the 7 qualities for the next 7 days. So, if you don't remember the 7 qualities are:

• Persistence


• Know What You Want


• Prioritize


• Time Management


• Take Action


• Pay the Price


• Think & Speak Positive

For a break down of the 7 Qualities click here

Beating Procastination

So, the first article is for Time Management which is an extremely important quality from the 7 traits of a successful person. Time Management we help to Beat work overload, Increase your effectiveness, Achieve much more, and work smarter. I found a few articles on this on MindTools.com So visit there site for more on this and more skill building tools.

The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. The remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations.

Here is the article taken from MindTools.com
Overcoming Procrastination
Manage your time. Get it all done.

If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them achieving things they're capable of and disrupts their careers.

The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes.

Why do we Procrastinate?

In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.

They may feel that they're doing the right thing by reacting fast. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest. Either way, by doing this, they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.

Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away - truly important tasks rarely do.

Other causes of procrastination include:

Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand;
A fear of failure or success;
Underdeveloped decision making skills;
Poor organizational skills; and
Perfectionism ("I don't have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won't do it at all.")

HOW TO OVERCOME PROCASTINATION
Finish Article Here

Quote of the Day

"Every great achievement
was once considered impossible."
-Unknown

One of the World's Best Quotes?

Today, I found this site called careerlab.com and I thought it was pretty cool. The career lab is a career and leadership development firm, and they had a section on their site called the worlds best quotes and I wanted to post one of them and a few of the comments. Check Out The Rest At (free plug)
www.careerlab.com/comments.htm

"No great thing is created suddenly."
—Epictetus (A.D.200)

We live in a McDonald's culture. We want everything instantly and without effort. And we bristle when others around us appear to be getting more, sooner. Waiting for rewards or results is out of favor. It is so uncool.

Many things are created suddenly: the two-day house makeovers on HOME & GARDEN TELEVISION, for example, but they aren't great. They are adequate, functional, or practical improvements. Greatness requires thought and time, effort and sacrifice. Especially sacrifice.

Stellar careers aren't built overnight. Take the orthopedic surgeon, whose education extends 15 years past high school. Take the country western star on Grand Ole' Opry. Take the NFL quarterback or wide receiver, the CEOs, CFOs, and Vice Presidents of brand-name companies. Think about Edison, Einstein, or Galileo, or anyone else you might admire. None of them got there overnight.

Great careers are built upon hundreds of thousands of small efforts, undertaken daily, that eventually grow into a series of satisfying wins. An ad for Paul Masson Vineyards picturing a bottle of wine said, "Nothing good happens fast." I framed it, and hung it in my office.

Quote of the Day

"Everything is ok in the end, if it's not ok..
then it's not the end."

I don't know what to say

I don't know but I think if everyone did this once a day it just might be good for your soul.

Quote of the Day

"The only place you'll find success,
before hard work is in the dictionary."
-Mary B. Smith

Succeeding Against the Odds

Succeeding against the odds is something people put on the back
burner just because it seems impossible but in reality it's not
hard at all.It's only a few tips to keep in mind for example:
start a revolution in whatever it is you are trying to succeed
in, win over intimidation, have direction, maintain
your standards, and most important have faith.

P.S.
Procrastination is not an option; have a sense of urgency