Thankfully, most of us are not facing life or death battles, but the idea still holds true. You need to understand fully both the great gifts with which you have been graced and the inherent shortcomings that accompany those gifts. We must understand that the things we do well and the blind spots that often accompany our gifts. When we understand both our gifts and our shortcomings, we can move beyond the shortcomings, leverage the gifts and motivate ourselves to success in our chosen goals. Always remember that all gifts are double edged swords – they have both a light and dark side.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: blind spots, goals, personal success, Sun-Tzu

You Gotta Have Faith

You will encounter many people who tell you that you will never, or simply cannot, achieve your dream. They are the people who once had a dream of personal success, but have now settled for less. As children they once believed they would one-day become pilots, doctors, actors, singers, ballerinas, missionaries, air-hostesses, etc.

Unfortunately, life gradually ground them down; and their dreams were ground into dust and blew away. Those dreams still reside somewhere, deep down within their hearts, but they long ago gave up believing that their goals are achievable.

First, their parents worked on them: questioning their abilities, doubting their chances and telling them that they once had the same dreams. Their parents told them they needed to grow-up, be more responsible and life would work out just great.

Then their teachers worked on them: saying that we all have such ambitions, but in the real-world, you needed a trade, a job, a career – and that life had so very few of these exciting opportunities. They ingrained the attitude of the ’scarcity mentality’ into their charges – resources are scarce. They told these children that the universe did not have enough abundance for all.

Finally, their friends worked on them as they also settled for the jobs on offer, they questioned: what was so wrong with being a sales-person, a plumber, a secretary or a brick-layer? After all, the world needs trades-people and there was nothing wrong with making an honest living by providing these services. Absolutely true! Gradually, their beliefs about the world were changed – they no longer believed in the possibility of reaching the heights they had once dreamed of – and they made the decision to settle for less; in many cases – much less.

Only a few of those pilots-in-the-making believed they could still learn to fly aircraft; only a few of those singers still believed they were destined to sing for their supper. Many people had their dream figuratively strangled out of them. Once you are again ready to pursue what is in your heart, you need to be aware that you are still not immune to this negative conditioning. Many people will still be ready to tell you why what you are now doing, or about to do, is hopeless!

That’s why you need faith – a deep-down belief that, regardless of the evidence, you are going to make it! You are going to achieve what your personal success goals. You are going to make a difference in this life.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: Confucius, dreams, faith, goals, tips for personal success

Ask Questions To Achieve Your Personal Success Goals

Ask questions – in order to get ahead, you need to know what you are doing and what you can do differently. You need to take control of your career and ask the right questions. Is your personal success goal to get a promotion? Talk to your co-workers and your bosses about moving up and gaining control of your job. Ask the people who are in the positions you desire how they got there. Watch what they do and ask them why and how they do it. Ask someone to be your mentor. Just ask.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: Albert Einstein, goals, tips for personal success

How Do We Use This Master Plan For Personal Success?

We’re going to develop five-year enabling objectives based on the four personal success Life Goals. Let’s pick a straight forward example. Assume you’re 20 years away from retirement. Let’s say one of your Life Goals is to have $1 million dollars cash in your bank account. What is the five-year objective that will enable you to get there? You might decide that “having $250,000 in my bank account” is your five-year goal. Note: I’m not telling you that this should be your goal, or that you would or should ever have that much money in a bank account. I’m just attempting to use an example that is mathematically straight forward.

Once you have your list of five-year personal success enabling objectives, you’ll develop your one-year list. So using our example above, the one-year goal becomes “having $50,000 in my bank account”. Next you use the one-year goals to develop your monthly lists and use each monthly list to create your weekly lists. Of course your weekly lists are the basis for your daily ‘to-do”lists.

I know this sounds like a lot, but the plan is pretty straight forward. Let’s review. We get the big picture of what we want our lives to be, that’s our personal success Life Goals. We look at the perceivable future, listing our five-year personal success enabling objectives. We then use the five-year objectives to decide what we need to accomplish this year (these are not New Year’s resolutions). We use this year’s personal success objectives to determine what we’re going to accomplish each month. We use the monthly objectives to develop our weekly list. Finally we use our daily “to-do” list to ensure that we making progress every day towards accomplishing our personal success Life Goals.

This is a fairly long post, so I’m sure you need a break as much as I do. Next post I’ll show you how I use this process myself.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: goals, Jim Rohn, personal success, sucess, tips for personal success

Tip 3 In Developing Your Personal Success Master Plan

A quick review of our previous tips. First,  you developed a working definition of what personal success means to you.  Then you developed your “bucket list” and  selected your “top ten” list of personal success goals.

What are we going to do now? Glad you asked, cut the list down to four. I know this takes some work, but it is necessary. We need to get down to your true “Life Goals”, those things which are vital to you and will help make your life complete.

Once you get down to four goals, order the list. Yup, pick number one, two, etc in order of importance. Then on an index card, write the four goals in order. Be sure to keep the card somewhere close at hand, in you pocket, purse or wallet. You’ll want to review it often.

In our next post we’ll discuss how to use this Master Plan in your daily activities.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: Anna Pavlova, goals, personal success, tips for personal success

Tip 2  For Writing Your Personal Success Master Plan

In the last tip we discussed writing down your “Bucket List”, a list of all the personal success goals that you wished to accomplish during your lifetime. Now that we have the complete list, we’re going to make a cut. Pick the top ten items. Some people scratch off the personal success goals they want to eliminate, others hi lite the ten they wish to keep. I’ve also know people who rewrite the goals on post-it-notes or index cards so they can place them on a table and shuffle them around until they get the top ten. Whatever method you use, you must get down to the top ten.

You may find this takes a little effort, but please hang with me. Again it’s best if you can do this at one sitting. Keep working until you’re down to ten. Now take a break, next post we’ll continue the process.

Wishing you a larger life,
BB

Technorati Tags: goals, Malcolm Forbes, personal goals, personal success, success

How To Give Yourself A Chance To Accomplish Your Dreams

We’re going to develop a contract between you and yourself. That is a contract between the visionary you and workaday you. We’re going to take larger nebulous ambitions and break them down into things you have to know and do.

You need to plan for you. Some people are very detail oriented and they will be able to follow an intricate plan closely. Others are a little more “free-wheeling” and not really “detail” people. That is okay too. Many ask the question, “what plan is the right plan?” And my answer, is the plan that fits you. Your plan, the one you develop that is unique to you and for you. You see, each of us is unique and motivated by different factors and you’ve got to develop one that is right for you and fits you. Some plans will not be as intricate as others but we all must have a plan, along with goals in that plan, to move us along.

Tip 1 – Start Accomplishing Your Personal Success Goals By Selecting Them Today

First step, make a list of everything you want to accomplish. I mean everything- make a million, see the Pyramids, learn to play the piano, everything. A complete “Bucket List” (as in the movie by the same name) of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket”. This may take awhile, but its best to do it in one sitting. Keep working till you’ve captured everything.

Be sure to read the next post which  discusses the second step in developing your personal success Master Plan.

Wishing you a larger life
BB

Technorati Tags: Eddie Rickenbacker, goals, personal success, success, tips for personal success

You Need Your Own Definition Of Personal Success

During a mentoring session this week, the issue of defining personal success came up. It’s a  self-evident truth that personal success means different things to different people. Although the mentoring session was centered around career issues, personal values kept coming up. The person I was working with clearly had a conflicts between her values and her definition of career success. So I’m going to suggest the same assignment to you, that I gave to her.

Develop your own definition of personal success. Look at all the major areas of your life. Finding your own definition of success requires you to dig deep within yourself and question your values. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are the things that are important to you? By answering these questions you can come closer to your own definition of success. Please know that this can be a long process. You may not get the answers quickly. But it’s alright — this is a life long journey not an overnight trip. Define your measures of success, one at a time.

Let’s take your career as an example. How would you define success for your career? To be promoted to  manager by a specified time? To make a specific amount of money. To start your own business? To find a position that makes the most of your talent? Once you decide on the definition, dig deep to see what your own strengths and weaknesses are. Which strengths help you achieve the success you desire. Which of your weakness is a barrier, and which goes against your values? If you love coaching your child’s sports team, I guarantee you’ll be miserable taking a position which requires frequent travel. We need to adjust our definition of success to match our values.

Wishing you a larger life,

BB

Technorati Tags: Arthur Ashe, goals, personal success, success

Do It Now

It’s funny how when we were kids we convince ourselves that the adults in our life are in charge everything. Surely we’ll experience tremendous personal success and accomplish all our goals when we finish school and leave home.  After all our dull old parents won’t be in the way.

Nature takes its course, we grow up and leave home and find life can be hard. But we know, once we find that certain special person life will be fine … and it is for a while. Of course, then we marry and have children. Once the children come we discover the children really run things and dictate our actions as parents. We find ourselves frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough to take care of themselves and we’ll be more content when they are. After that, we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We’ll certainly be happy when the kids are out of the house and off on their own. Then we tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, when we’re able to go on a nice vacation, or when we retire.

The awful truth is, the only time to be happy is right now. What other time do have other than now? There are always challenges – after all challenges help us grow. It’s best just to know this and make up your mind to be happy anyway. Treasure every moment that you have and share it with someone special. Remember, time waits for no one.

Wishing you a larger life,

BB

Technorati Tags: Dennis Waitley, goals, personal success, success

You Must Focus To Achieve Personal Success

Old Zig Ziglar is right on target isn’t he? It’s funny how we humans are willing to trade the immediate good for the later great.

No matter what is you want, you need to remain focused on your target and walk a straight line to it. Want to get more done? Focus on the things that are important, delegate or forget those that are not. Want to loose weight? Keep your focus on habits that produce a healthy, fit you. Want to have financial freedom? Stay focused on decreasing outlays and increasing income.

Reaching your goals leads to happiness. To be successful reaching you goals – stay focused. Therefore, stay focused and you’ll achieve personal success.

Wishing you a larger life,

BB

Technorati Tags: goals, happiness, personal success, success, Zig Ziglar