Personal Happiness: Work less to live more!

Hundreds of thousands of people are at this very moment striving to become millionaires in order to be happy. At the same time, millions more are trying to achieve even just a small slice of fortune and wealth. And although many people do get to that stage of attainment of reaching success, in the end most of them regret the fact that they have devoted all their time and energy to seeking happiness through money.

These people were fooled into thinking that finding happiness is at the next big job, or that next business venture, or perhaps if they just saved enough money, etc. They regret about things that they did not do and happiness that they would otherwise enjoyed had they worked less and lived life more.

What is ironic is that these people are not the type of individuals who are confused, obsessed, neurotic, or without a clue as to what they want to accomplish in life. These are smart, talented, well-balanced, and well respected people in our everyday society who are going through life never seeking the true meaning of happiness.

For instance, take George Soros, the famous currency speculator. By using his financial skills and know-how, Soros collected a fortune that was estimated at $5 billion. However, he states that he would trade it all up for a chance to have achieved the career he has always dreamed of having. His real passion has always been about intellectual pursuit, not the making of money.

Some time ago, Soros had told a reporter for Canada’s National Post newspaper this statement: “It would give me a great deal more satisfaction if I was recognized as a philosopher.” The reporter then asked him if he would give all his money away for that, his reply was “Well, yes definitely.”

The experience of George Soros is very common. There are thousands of people who have worked hard and built up a substantial amount of money and fortune but later realized that it was not worth it. They concluded that if they had less money, they would only have given up objects and possessions that they did not really need anyway. In addition, they realized that they would have enjoyed their life more and would have been happier along the way, had they worked less.

Many things that are worth having cannot be calculated in dollars and cents. No amount of money can guarantee you a relaxed, stress-free, satisfying, happy, and fulfilled life. Giving up a more fulfilled and happy life in the present for a possible equivalent of more financial gain in the future seems foolish. There is nothing more rewarding than being able to enjoy your life now – in the present and to live every day of it with excitement and passion.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Perseverance: Used As A Key To Success

Perseverance implies continuing to do something in spite of obstacles. Swimmers have great endurance, or perseverance, especially when attempting to set a new record. Mountain climbers and weight lifters push themselves to the limit when increasing their stamina. Students forge new pathways in education as they expand their awareness and move into undiscovered territory. Entrepreneurs rise above the mundane and set new limits in the social and business world.

You, too, have pushed yourself at one time or another especially when you were told to “give up.” What is that deep desire within you that prompts you to hold on? It’s your faith and belief that you can persevere in spite of all odds. Perseverance is the driving and staying power of “will.” It musters all your strength and energy and directs you toward your goal.

Toxic relationships and negative communications are barriers to growth. The pain and anger caused by toxic relationships is like an emotionally fused land mine which can go off at any time. When this land mine (or person) explodes, toxic reactions cause internal storms or upheavals affecting your physical and psychological stability.

Once you cultivate and develop perseverance, you can continue in spite of toxic and negative communications that cause pain. When negative thoughts and words penetrate your attitude, it’s like listening to a program that keeps telling you how you’re going to fail, rather than succeed. Negative thoughts or unhealthy suggestions from others fill your mind, both conscious and unconscious, with psychological messages that lower self-esteem. Negative thoughts or unhealthy suggestions from others also affect your body with physiological responses that can endanger your health.

Perseverance is key in helping you steer your way through negative and toxic feelings. Perseverance is the fuel that motivates you to courageously sweep over these land mines to detect and defuse them. Don’t allow the poison in these venomous relationships to affect you. The greater your self-esteem, the stronger your tolerance in dealing with negative situations. As you create more peak experiences and positive moments in your life, the greater will be your ability to persevere. Develop the will-power and desire to control your own destiny.

There are five personal factors that will help you to develop perseverance.

1. Develop the sense of being in control of your life.

2. Develop a network of friends or family to provide “social support.” A supportive alliance with a select few will help you carry your plans through to fruition.

3. Develop personality factors such as hopefulness and flexibility. Eliminate all negative influences and persons in your life.

4. Develop will power and a definite purpose. Continually move forward with your plans, dreams and aspirations.

5. Decide “I Can and I Will”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Having Success Is A Choice - Not An Accident

In a lifetime, you make literally millions of choices that affect your future success. Most choices, after you make them a few times, become ingrained in you. You know from past experience what works for you, so you repeat the process. You only get into trouble when you don’t get good results but keep doing the same things over and over again. It may seem hard to believe, but many people operate that way - most in fact.

You literally can opt to be happy or miserable by the choices you make. If you choose to be happy, you need to explore what makes you happy. Identify whether happiness is a sense of accomplishment when you make an A in school, achieve a specific weight-loss goal, make a difficult sale, complete a mini-marathon, win over the sourpuss at the checkout counter, or whatever. Accomplishments make you feel good, and you’re happy as a result. After you determine what makes you happy, choose to do those things.

People who are unhappy are generally unhappy because they think that other people should be doing things for them. From time to time, people write in to their motivational teachers: “I want to thank you for making me successful.” But realistically, those people can’t accept credit for making anyone successful, nor should they accept responsibility for causing anyone to fail.

People who choose to follow the success procedures that many current teachers offer get good results, but it takes action. And to be honest, instructors give those principles to several hundred thousand people each year, and by no stretch of the imagination do I believe that all of them follow those principles and become successful. I do believe that people of good character who follow these procedures are far more successful than they otherwise would be. However, following or not following motivational suggestion is their choice, so if they follow the procedures and are successful, they are the ones who did it - not the instructors!

On the other hand, if they say, “I attended your seminar, read your books, and listened to your tapes, but none of it worked for me,” I have to question whether they actually followed the principles carefully, whether they followed those principles believing that they would work, or whether they followed them with the idea that “I’ll do it, but I know it’s not going to work.” Success is a choice in all areas of life; that’s why the good teachers will deal with the physical, the mental, the spiritual, the financial, the personal, the family-related, and the career-related.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Self Approval: Clearing The Path For Success

You cannot and will not be happy, successful, and at peace unless you take a good honest look at yourself first. You must take stock of all of the negatives so that you can get to work on your life. Below are 4 ways in which to start:

1. Get to know what other people like about you. Ask someone close to you to tell you honestly how he or she views you. Have that person rate you and your specific traits on a scale of one to five. Do people describe you as your own worst enemy? If they do, you need to work on your self-knowledge to understand why.

2. Determine what you expect to achieve in life. This is what you expect, not what you hope or dream for.

3. Consider your life for a moment. What drives you? What inhibits you?

4. Evaluate how you handle compliments. This is a good barometer of how you feel about yourself because if you accept them naturally without seeking them out you have strong self-approval and a sense of worthiness. Can you accept compliments without discomfort, or do you always have to take exception or deflect them? Do you crave compliments to the point that you will do anything to get them?

Once you begin to know and understand yourself more completely, then you must accept and love yourself. Self-approval is crucial to changing your life and pursuing your dreams and goals. Self-hatred, guilt, and long-standing anger block your growth. Practice self-love and forgiveness and they will carry over into your relationships, your work and the world around you.

By loving yourself, you open up the possibility for others to love you, too. Work to remove the psychological blinders that restrict your own growth. Understand yourself and your motives and the influences in your life and open yourself up. Direct your energy away from self-destruction or self-loathing. Forgive yourself. Forgive those who have hurt you. Give yourself self-approval and permission to move on.

Right now, write down all your bad habits and faults and all the mistakes you have made in your life. Did you hurt someone? Did you malign someone? Did you waste an opportunity? Have you written down everything that has nagged and eaten at you over the years? Good. Now take that piece of paper, tear it to shreds and throw it away. Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on. The way to your dreams is now clear!

Popularity: 16% [?]

Accountability Gives You Power Over Your Life

Have you ever found yourself in situations where you look around and wonder, “How did I ever get here?” The simple truth is that we participate, either knowingly or unknowingly, in the process of getting where we are. The more we observe that and pay attention, the more aware we become.

At times we all want to say, “Who, me? I had nothing to do with creating this mess! It just happened!” Or, “It was so-and-so’s fault - there’s nothing I could have done!” We feel absolutely powerless over the situation - like helpless victims. The last thing we want to hear when we’re all caught up in our “victim story” is anything about being accountable and responsible!

Yet, it is assuming accountability that gives us power over our lives. The more we practice the habit of acting from a position of responsibility, the more effective we become as human beings, and the more successful we become as managers of our lives.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Blueprint For Success: Defining Your Goals

A goal is a specific, measurable result that you want to produce at a determinable time in the future. Your goals are the stepping-stones toward the realization of your dreams, the second key element in the blueprint of your life.

Goals are experiences you have not yet had, places you have not yet been, people you have not met, a level of income you have not achieved, a type of relationship you are not now enjoying, or having something you don’t currently own. Like your dreams, there is no limit to the number of goals you can set other than the limits of your imagination. And although
goals represent what you intend to achieve in the future, they are always set and worked on in the present.

A study of university business school graduates who had been out of school for ten years was conducted to determine how they were progressing toward their goals. Amazingly, 83 percent of the graduates had set no goals at all. This 83 percent reported that they were working hard and staying busy but had no specific future plans. Another 14 percent had goals, but their goals were mental, not written. However, this 14 percent was earning on the average three times the income of those who had no goals at all. Only 3 percent of the entire graduate group had written goals. That 3 percent was earning a whopping ten times what those with no goals were earning.

The message is clear: goals, particularly written goals, make the difference in your overall level of accomplishment. Among the business school graduates in the study, the short time they spent establishing clear, written goals made a dramatic difference in their income levels.

Establishing goals has a positive impact on your life. But if what you hope to achieve in life is based on your expectations, rather than on working to reach established goals, you are setting yourself up for the possibility of disappointment. Expectations have to do with how you believe other people should behave, and how the world should bend at your command. Your expectations may result in a large amount of grief, whereas established goals will result in a large amount of satisfaction and success.

The winning choice is clear: develop your goals, drop your expectations. It is a mistake to expect that you will accomplish any goal because you deserve it or because there is something in your past that entitles you to it. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as “deserve.” You end up achieving in life because of planning and control, not because you have “paid your dues”.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Success Means Nothing Without Character

You can have millions of dollars and not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered successful by those who know you. The reason is simple: You can make millions of dollars without having character. Character is one of the most important ingredients to success. Without it, the best attitude, the strongest skills, the most concrete philosophy, and the most worthwhile objectives mean nothing.

Drug dealers, smut peddlers, and con artists may accumulate considerable financial wealth and acquire the things that money can buy, but they are never truly successful because without character, they can acquire few, if any, of the things that money can’t buy. Unfortunately, the same thing can be said about some businesspeople, politicians, athletes, attorneys, physicians, movie and TV stars, and so on.

People with integrity do the right thing. When you have integrity, you have nothing to fear because you have nothing to hide. In doing the right thing for the right reason, your personal, family, and business lives you experience no guilt and no fear. With fear and guilt removed from your back, it’s much easier to travel farther, faster, and higher.

Popularity: 24% [?]

In Order To Succeed, Always Assess Your Current Situation

In order to be successful, not only must you know where you are when you start, but you must also plot your course as you go. Airline captains must know where they started, but they also must constantly plot their course and stay in contact with the ground personnel and with other aircraft in the air; otherwise, disaster awaits them.

You may not be faced with that type of disaster, but you can rest assured that your personal, family, and business lives are on a collision course with failure if you don’t regularly assess where you are and what progress you’re making.

In your journey to the top, you have to change course on occasion because you can’t know all the nuances, obstacles, and circumstances that may arise. That’s why flexibility and checking up on where you are as you go are so important. Checking up on yourself requires discipline because when things are going well, you may assume that they always will - and that’s when you encounter disastrous situations. Just remember that you can discipline yourself and change your course of action to prevent being disciplined by others. Discipline is an important quality that you must have in order to achieve your potential and have any shot at greatness.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Success Means Taking Time For Your Family

Your relationships may grow together or apart because of the priority you do or don’t place on your personal time. Your kids are growing up. You are getting older. Time you could have spent with your family or on your own personal dreams and goals is irreplaceable.

How many families have you observed in which there seem to be no shared interests or little interaction or quality time spent together? They’re not a family; they are just roommates. If you want roommates, find tenants who will pay rent but will not get involved in your business or personal life. Family members should not be treated as nonpaying tenants who just happen to occupy the same house.

Make dinner each evening with your family a commitment. Set an automatic business cutoff time. If you like to work late at the office, then schedule dinner at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Be there every time, no matter what you leave undone at the office. Don’t worry, it will still be there tomorrow. Ensure that your family spends at least thirty minutes together at the table each evening with meaningful discussions, a lot of humor, a lot of fun. Make it a family tradition.

If you want to spend quality time with your family at dinner without one of you being stuck in the kitchen cooking, serving, and cleaning up, then bring home take-out or have someone cook and deliver. Or share kitchen chores as a family, making that part of the quality time you spend together. Get creative - it’s your life.

If you become a slave to either office worries or to household chores, they will have power over your life. If, on the other hand, you treat your personal time as the most important time of your life, you will end up refreshed, less frustrated, and less stressed out, and you will have more positive energy each time you tackle new business situations and problems.

Schedule all of your personal activities on a “Daily Activities List.” Your daily business activities are scheduled on that same list. Compare the two schedules. Is there a conflict or the potential for conflict? If so then reschedule to avoid it. And remember, a scheduled personal activity, like a scheduled business activity, is an appointment that you are committed to keep. Don’t lose sight of why you work so hard - to be able to enjoy your personal life and to finance your personal dreams and goals.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Technical Skills + The Right Attitude = Success

Your attitude is enormously important; it enables you to accomplish amazing things. But without the right skills, you’re limited in what you can do, regardless of your attitude. An enthusiastic salesperson with the right attitude can achieve a degree of success in selling a good product - sometimes even considerable success. But this individual can’t realize his or her full potential without being thoroughly trained in the product and understanding something about the people with whom he or she is dealing.

Salespeople must have good people skills and be able to answer the questions that prospective customers ask. Without those skills, they miss a high percentage of the sales that they should be making.

In a similar vein, many enthusiastic, highly motivated, upbeat people don’t have a clue how to operate today’s high-tech equipment. Others don’t know how to deal with people effectively in a changing world. As a result, they can have limited success, at best.

In short, without the skills to go with the right attitude, your success ceiling is predetermined, and it isn’t especially high. Remember, motivation always precedes education. The person with the right attitude and the right skills can become more successful than ever before because competition for good-paying, skilled jobs continues to decline.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Next Page →