Monday Morning Inspiration – The Will to Succeed featuring Will Smith

Powerful, powerful video featuring Will Smith. My takeaway: The will to succeed. Watch it and have it touch you and your journey in your own way.

Monday Morning Inspiration: The Butterfly Effect

Specificity Is the Key

by Denis Waitley

This is the season for goal-setting. It’s the time to start with a clean slate and fill your slate for 2010 with tangible, incremental, stair steps to your ultimate dreams.

One of the major reasons so few people reach their goals is that most people don’t set specific goals and the mind just dismisses them as irrelevant. Most people want financial security, but have never considered how much money it will take. The mind cannot begin to formulate the strategies and actions required without specific information. Your mind will simply not respond to a request to get rich, have more, do better or make money. You must act like a bank loan officer with your goals.

The reason loan officers want to see a detailed business plan is that they know the entrepreneurs who are precise and specific are the ones who will succeed and pay off their loans.

If you ever begin to feel that you are losing your drive, if you feel like your energy level is down, your frustration level is up and you just can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm to face a challenge, check the pulling power of your goals. You may have outgrown your current targets and present lifestyle. It may be time for motivation by elevation. Raise your sights and challenge yourself with some goals that are farther out on the horizon.

This may require more knowledge, new skills and a new lifestyle. If so, that’s great! Many people resist goal-setting because they assume it leads to a formula-driven, highly uncreative life. Actually, the exact opposite can be true. People who passively assume that everything will somehow work out in the end can hardly be termed creative. They’re not creating their lives, they’re just hoping against hope that something good will happen to them.

Setting worthwhile goals is a much more imaginative approach. It’s fashioning and molding the life of your choice. It’s approaching your life the way an artist might stand before a new canvas, on which a beautiful painting can be crafted. There are other useful metaphors for creativity in goal-setting. The rudder of a plane, for example, is small and rigid, like a short-term goal you might accomplish in just one day. But the rudder can turn the plane in any direction the pilot chooses. In that, there’s a great deal of freedom and flexibility.

Once you set a goal, you can adjust and fine-tune it any way you wish. That’s creativity. And persistence is what allows you to keep progressing toward the goal, no matter how many adjustments are required, and no matter how long it takes to accomplish.

The mind is the most magnificent bio-computer ever created. But remember, like a computer, it only responds to specific instructions, not to vague ideas. So come alive in 2010! Get laser-focused on goals that are just out of reach, but not out of sight.

Get specific and achieve great things in 2010!

Reproduced with permission from the Denis Waitley Newsletter. To subscribe to Denis Waitley’s Newsletter, go to www.DenisWaitley.com Copyright 2009 Denis Waitley International. All rights reserved worldwide.

Turn your resolutions into reality with these 7 simple steps

Its that time again. A new year has begun filled with new possibilities if we set our intentions and work towards making it happen. Here are some simple tips to help you turn your resolutions into reality and have your best year ever!

1) Put them on paper – Yes! Every goal-setting or resolutions article will echo this, but its true. You can’t get away from this. You need to write your goals down. Just the same way you schedule vacations, trips or other fun things. Write it down and schedule it (oops, that’s step #2)

2) Schedule it! – If your goal is to take a trip to Europe, start an online business, get out of debt, whatever. Schedule it. Commit to a date that you would like to achieve your goal and then work towards it. When you have a deadline, you are more conscious of working towards making it.

3) Quarterback it! – I love this term even though I’m not into football. Got it from a movie. But basically it means to plan it out. You can’t just wait for ideas to fall into your lap or expect things to fall into place to achieve your goal. You need to have a basic blueprint for ‘how’ you can achieve your goal. Spend some time with this. Schedule this time too if you have to. But remember success is not an accident, you do need to have a plan for success.

4) Set Reminders – In order to stay focused on your goal, set reminders for yourself. So you can use index cards to write a main goal and the deadline date and carry it with you in your purse or wallet. Then look at it several times per day. Or you can commit to looking at your calendar, diary or datebook every Sunday to plan your week. Then reaffirm your goal by writing it down at the beginning of the week. And schedule things in the week that you will work on as baby steps to achieving your main goal.

5) Change your routine – If your goal is to make twice the amount of money this year as opposed to the year before, then you will need to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. You will have to become a whole new person to make a whole new income. If you find yourself falling into the same routine, then you’re obviously not in line with achieving your goal. It does not have to be major. It could be waking up one hour earlier than usual to fit in the new exercise routine that will help you to lose weight. Or it could mean getting up early to work on a new income stream to allow you to increase your income. Bottom line, make some changes.

6) Be accountable – You will need some outside support for this one. You need to be accountable to someone – friend, colleague, partner or mastermind group or life coach. We tend to have no problem with letting ourselves down. But if we have someone who checks up on us to see how we are going with our goals or plans, its easier to stay accountable. Set up a schedule like a weekly or Monthly meeting for this.

7) Daydream – [check that] Visualize! Visualize yourself achieving your goal. Imagine what your life would look like with your goals achieved, imagine how you would feel. Try to get into it emotionally. Let yourself come alive with excitement, fulfillment, relief. Do this often. It will help to keep you focused and get your creativity juices flowing and attract into your life more opportunities for achieving your goal.

Let’s hear from you… are you good at setting goals and achieving them? Have you made and kept your new year’s resolutions? Do leave a comment below. You may help someone else who is struggling to achieve their goal. You can also use the comment box to apply point #6.

Believing in us – let’s make it happen.