The Jim Rohn Fundamentals

Time management

1. The Dignity of Choice

• Success is not a stereotype. Success is the continual unfolding of the design of your own life and pulling it off.
• Being successful in whatever you want to do that makes sense to you, for you and your family. Take on responsibilities or refuse them, it’s all up to you. We’ve been given the power of choice.
• Every life form except humans stives to the max of its potential. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. You’ve never heard of a tree growing half as high as it could.
• Every life form extends to the max, except human beings. Now why not human being? Because we’re not robots. We’ve been given the dignity of choice.

2. Do it all or Don’t

• Be part of or all of what you have the potential to be. You’ve got the choice, Fo a little to make yourself comfortable and forget the rest or do it all.
• Take advice but don’t take orders. Take information, take training, take teaching, but don’t take orders from anyone that tells you how you need to live and what you need to own and what you need to do.
• Giving a design to your life and pulling it off to make progress in the direction that satisfies you. if it doesn’t satisfy you, make alternatives and change.
• If you get some better ideas make sure you may follow someone’s suggestions and ideas but not orders.

3. Design You Own Life

• Design your own life like you want it. Now if you take on some responsibilities, you’ve got to consider those.
• Yes, you can ignore your responsibilities, but you won’t feel good about that.
• We all must suffer one of two pains: the pain of disciplines or the pain of regret.
• What we suggest to everybody is to consider the disciplines because disciplines weigh ounces; regrets weigh tons.

4. Weigh The Cost

• Time management might be to step down to something easier that doesn’t stress you with the constraints of time.
• Don’t put yourself in the straitjacket of something that’s not to your choosing and not to your liking. Now if you really want the prize. to become a multimilionaire and run a company, fine. Then you’ve got to pay the price. But hey, it’s strictly up to you.
• There are no requirements here. There is no law. the key is to try to design your life.
• If you haven’t got time for your kids, you should consider a slower group. it’s not the money. it’s not the success. you’ve got to make sure everything works, Not something at the expense of everything.
• At the expense of everything turns out to be too costly.

5. Balancing Act

• Life at its best and most fulfilled, I thing, is a balancing act to make everything work.
• In the management of time, step down to something easier, rearrange your program, pick up someone else’s advice — not orders.
• Here’s the real time management: Make yourself more valuable.
• Get more from yourself so that you become much more accomplished in an hour that used to take a week.
• That is the easiest of time management, to make yourself more valuable.

6. Major vs. Minor

• Either you run the day or it runs you. Getting in charge, mastering the situation, this is the big challenge.
• The key is you’ve just got to take charge and say, “ I’m going to start getting a handle and taking charge of my day and not let it get out of control.”
• Because it’s so easy to be persuaded and distracted by things that use up time, and then the first thing you know, it’s all out of control.
• It’s not the hours you put in; it’s what you put in the hours that count.
• Some people are busy all day long doing figure eights. They’re not making much forward progress. they keep coming back around where they started.
• Learn to set goals so that you have some priorities. Then, constantly review your priorities to make sure it’s what you really want.
• Learn to separate majors and minors.
• Here’s what we teach in sales:
  • The most important time in sales person’s career is time in the presence of the prospect. that’s the most important time. Time in the presence of the prospect — that’s called major time.
  • Here’s minor time — on the way to the prospect. Making plans to see the prospectm that’s called minor time.
• Make sure you don’t spend major time on minor things.

6. Concentration

• Next key to time management is concentration.
• You zero in if you concentrate. Many times it takes a lot less time when you concentrate. If you get distracted, it takes a whole day because of the distraction.
• But if you concentrate, it could take an hour instead of a day. It could take a few minutes instead of a half a day.

“Wherever you are, be there.”

• Next, learn to say no. It is so easy, especially now in a social society to just be pulled everywhere with social obligations.
• So learn to say no politely.
• It’s easier to say, “I don’t think so, but if that changes I’ll call.” than to say, “Oh, yes” and then try to figure out ways to make the call and not to make it.
• You can get pulled in too many directions by saying yes too easy too frequently and finding yourself in a box.

7. When You Work, Work

• When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t mix the two.
• Here’s the big one: Don’t paly at work. here’s why: work is too serious. Guess what economics is? Serious business.
• Economics is a serious subject because you’re trading part of your life being economically sustained and providing protection for you and your family for generations to come. This is serious deal.
• the one place you don’t horse around or fool around is at work. somewhere else, yes. At work, no.
• So develop that reputation not just for other people but for yourself, for your own self-esteem, that says when you work, you work. So don’t play at work.
• Now here’s the rest of it: Don’t work at play.
• At the office be at the office, and at the beach be at the beach with your family. Don’t mix the two. When you work, work. When you play, play.

8. Analyze Yourself

• Analyze how you are and see if you can at least be covered. If you’re not good at something, then get somebody to take care of it instead of delaying all of the time doing it yourself.
• Just put the money on some accountant’s desk and say, “Look, take care of this for me.” It doesn’t have to be very much, just so it’s taken care of.
• Either you do it or you can let somebody cover for you and get it done so that you can concentrate on more essential, more important things.
• But whatever you are, just analyze how you are. whatever you’re not good at, see if you can get it covered.

9. Beware of the Phone

• You’ve got to shut everything off and have dinner with your family.
• It doesn’t matter if the president calls. it doesn’t matter who calls. they’ve got to wait for at least an hour till I’m finished with my family.
• Your family will take great deligh in you shutting out the world. Just shut everything off for a while. There’s plenty of time to get back to it.

10. Read the Books

• There have been many books written on time management. tahe their advice, but still make your own plans.
• Become more aware and alert to all the new technology now available that can save your time. Stay in touch.
• Learn to ask questions before you launch into some tirade or launch into some personal seminar.
• Sometimes you don’t find the problem until you go two, three questions deep. Because most people don’t just blur out what’s wrong first question.
• Most problem are two, three questions deep. Right away, somebody wants to know if they’re going to tell their problem to somebody who doesn’t really care, so you’ve got to establish some connection.
• Learn to ask question up front. that’s the key.

11. Think on Paper

• Learn to think on paper. You solve problems on paper.
• Let me give you some ways to think on paper:
  • Keep journal. → a collection of your notes and a bit of a diary and what’s going on in your life. it;s just a way to capture it in abound volume.
• Just start keeping more records of ideas that come your way, whether it’s a receipe or a colossal business idea or the schedule for the next few ball games that are comming up.

12. Projects Book

• Whatever project you’re working on, get a three-ring binder and keep litle notes on that project and how it’s going. when you finish the project, you file it somewhere. But as long as that project is active and going, keep that projects book.
• If you’re working with person, you record that person’s name and just keep a little running account of how it’s going between you and the person.
• When you’re about to speak to them, do a little review of what you talked about last time. Now you’re better prepared to talk to them this time. It becomes a briefing book.
• These briefing books provide an interchange og both project and person. Even with your children, you can track how they are pregressing.
• Don’t forget a cheduler or day timer. You’ve got to keep track where you’re supposed to go and who you’re supposed to meet.
• Rather than keep all this stuff loaded in my head, I just find a convenient place to put it whare it’s all available.
• Keep your head open for bigger projects than what airline.

13. Game Plan

• Develop game plan where you schedule all the things you’ve got to do, laying out six months or a year or longer.
• A game plan is pretty simple because it has a list of all your projects that you want to accomplish, and then you put them on the calendar.
• It can work for whatever program you’ve got going, whatever you want to accomplish.
• You’ve got to put your family on there too. The family wants to know where they fit in the game plan.
• Even though some emergencies or whatever rearrange the deal? “as long as I’m on the plan” we simply call this a game plan.

14. A Final Thought

• it’s an obvious — yet often overlooked — truth: rich people have 24 hours a day and poor people have 24 hours a day.
• The difference between the rich and the poor is in the management of that time.
• Successful people often work harder and longer than most, but they almost always work smarter.
• If we get more from ourselver, if we can make an hour as valuable as 10 hours used to be, we can get as much done in a day as we used to get done in a week.
• Imagine the potential compounding effect of working smarter.
• By practicing the few simple disciplines discussed here every day, you can use time like the rich — with focus and effectiveness.

Personal Development

“If you want to be wealthy and happy, learn this lesson well: Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” - Earl Shoaff

• What you become is far more important than what you get. the important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming?”
• What you become directly influences what you get. Most of what you have today, you have attracted by becoming the person you are today.
• Income rarely exceeds personal development. “To have more than you’ve got, become more than you are.”

Skills For Success in the Marketplace

• The marketplace is a demanding place. there is plenty of opportunity, but you’ve got to get ready for it and prepare for it.
• So, a big share of life is spent getting ready, getting preparedm and part of it is the development of skills.
• First, it starts with personal development, selft-improvement, making measurable progress.

Personal Development Is Not An Easy Matter

• Personal development is a push. It’s a struggle. It’s a challange. “there wouldn’t be any winning without a challenge. that’s what life is all about.”
• It’s the struggle and the challenge to develop ourselves and our skills to see what we can create in the way of value in the marketplace.
• Life is all about creating skills and value and taking those skills and value to the marketplace and seeing what it will return for you.
• New habits don’t come easy, but they can be developed. Sometimes when you develop a lot of momentum in one direction, it’s not that easy to change but it is possible.
• Somebody once said, success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.
• You’ve just got to read the books, learn the skills, put yourself through the paces, do the mental pushups and get yourself ready.
• Inspiration is fine, but inspiration must lead to discipline.
• It’s one thing to be motivated, but it’s another thing to be motivated sufficiently to take the calsses, do the reading, do the repetition, fo through it over and over, until it becomes part of you. and those are challanges.
• They’re not easy, but they’re challanges that if you win and develop and grow, that’s what determines your place, your return, your equity, the worth you get from the marketplace.

Three Parts of Personal Development

1. Spiritual

• Humans are not just animals, humans are unique. spiritual qualities make us different form all other creations.
• Whatever you have to read and assimilate to develop in that area I would strongly suggest you do.

2. Physical

• The mind and the body work together, so we’ve fot to give some attention to both, mind and body. Development of mind and body.
• The only house we have to live in currently is the physical body we have and that’s part of success in the marketplace. That’s phisical well-being.
• It’s feeling good about yourself physically, so that you stride into the marketplace with a sense of self-worth, self-confidence, having taken care of that end of it.
• Do the best you can, and let that get the job done. Be conscious of yourselves, but not to the point of being self-conscious.

3. Mental

• Stretching your mind, developing good thinking habits, good study habits, pursuing ideas, and trying to find ways to apply them to human behavior and the marketplace.
• You can’t live on mental candy, so you’ve got to have the full range of mental food in order to grow. We call that mind-stretch.
• Your willingness to tackle subjects that are difficult and that most people have decided to let slide gives you an extraordinary edge in the marketplace.
• How can you master part of the high skills, the extraordinary skills that make you an unusual performer in the marketplace? It takes mind-stretch.
• If you always back away from something that seems a little difficult at first, you leave yourself weak. You leave yourself unprepared in the marketplace.
• So, don’t be affraid to tackle the heavyweight stuff. It may be a lot easier than you think once you get into it and learn skill after skill.

Learn the Other Side of The Argument

• Whether you’re debating spiritual, political, physicalm behavior, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of the other side of the argument.
• If you’re going to be a good debater, you’ve got to know the other side of the argument. so that’s what I’m asking you to do.
• Don’t be afraid of the other side of the argument. If you’re strong mentally, you can handle it, and you’ve got to give people points for their side of the argument.
• Give credit to somebody who’s got a good point. Even though you don’t agree with their argument, you must agree that they came up with a good point. That’s part of mind-stretch, study the other side of the argument.

Your Personal Development Library

• Education is a lifetime process. We keep putting ourselves through the paces to learn.
  • That’s how you get into the higher number income.
  • That’s how you get into the higher brackets enterprise.
  • That’s how you become a more useful, productive, valuable citizen, making a contribution to family, community, country, enterprise.
• Work hard on developing these skills and be self-educated.
• “Standard education gets you standard results.” Why not go beyond the standard and the average and the acceptable and bexome the advantage, the extraordinary, or the extra-capable? I picked up that.
• Why don’t you master some extraordinary skills? Why don’t you move upto the higher level and see if you wouldn’t find the taste better in the results you get from that excercise?
• Your library needs to be balanced like the pantry in your kitchen. You can’t be strong just on the easy stuff. You’ve got to tackle the full range. You can;t live on mental candy alone.
• We should study history, biograpies and autobiographies. Study people who have done unique things, both admirable and despicable. We need to be students of both.
• Sometimes novels are great ways of sharing dialogue, ideas and philosophy woven into the story.
• We need the full rang of culture: dance, the arts, literature. then we need books on geography and language.
• We need study bit of law. No matter what you’re going to do in life, we all need a bit of fundamentals on law, contracts, what to sign, what not to sign. Almost averything now has legal implications.

Four Steps to Success

1. Good ideas

• Ideas are the life seeds of enterprise. a better life comes first of all by the search for good ideas.
• Never ceease your quest for knowledge. Finding ideas can be life-changing.
• Business ideas, social ideas, personal ideas — nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
• Be a searcher of good ideas: timely ideas, political ideas, family ideas, ideas for health.
• Keep a journal. Keep a log of good ideas. That’s for the serious students.

2. Good Plans

• Be a student of good plans. Plans are important because they take ideas to the marketplace.
• Plans give birth to ideas. Plans well executed bring ideas into enterprise and bring ideas into the better life.
• Ideas without plans forever hang like an artist’s rendering on the wall. They never become reality, they never become substance.
• Develop good plans, good disciplined activity plans. riches do not come by crossing your fingers and walking through the day hoping. Riches and wealth come from well-laid plans.
• Opportunity without good plans misses all the worth and wealth you could have. So be a student of good plans.

3. The Passing of Time

• All of us have to learn to handle time. It’s one of the challenges of life, how to handle the passing of time. Sometimes waiting from spring to fall is difficult to handle.
• We have to leran to wait. Part of success is patience.

4. Solving Problems

• Success is simply solving problems. Now there are all kinds of problems: business problems, family problems, personal probelms, financial problems, emotional problems. Everybody’s got a list of problems.
• Problem solving is where enterprise comes from. This is how you build worth and wealth, solving the problem.
• Sure, some things are complicated, but if you take it one piece at a time — solve the problems, put it back together — you can’t believe the enterprise you can build, the life you can build, the skills you can build.
• Take it a piece at a time, master it, and then put it back together to solve it.

Put It On Paper

• Learn to solve the problems on paper. You’ve to commit some of your thoughts to paper.
• If you just deal out of your head all the time, it’s easy to make too many errors. You wouldn’t build a house out of your head.
• You take what’s in your head, put it on paper and work it out. Then you work from the document. Work form the paper.
• Take a piece of paper and just spend a little time outlining the problem. Instead of just thinkin about it, put your thoughts down on paper.
• Most of the executives I work with around the world use this kind of strategy. Putting a problem on paper. It helps you to focus. It helps you to zero in.
• Now when you state the problem to the best of your ability, you just add this one question.
  • “Is that all of it?”
• You can’t solve the problems until you clearly define them.

Three Simple Questions

1. What Can I Do?

• What can I do to solve the problem? What can I do? Then you start developing what we cal working papers.
• Working papers simply are doing your best.
• Start developing working paper by listing possible solutions one by one then analyze the solutions and get the best solutions to solve the problem.

2. What Can I Read?

• There may be a book, there may be a text, there may be an audio program, there may be a video, there may be some form of an outline on your particular problem.
• Just fo through all the books, developing your analysis of what you’ve read.

3. Who Can I Ask?

• When solving problem, who can you ask? Don’t hesitate to ask.
• Don’t ask first, If you always just ask, usually you don’t develop the skills in solving problems.
• What’s more valuable than the solution to a problem? Answer: The skill of solving problems.
• The skills offer more value than the answer. the answer to a problem is temporary. Skills in solving problems are permanent. So it’s not just answers we need. it’s nkills we need.

The Five Abilities

Learn to concentrate on these five abilities. I call these the five abilities that help you skillfully attack the marketplace to do well.

1. Absorb

• Develop the ability to absorb, the ability to soak in, take in, be like a sponge.
• “Wherever You Are, Be There.” I thought that was excellent. Be there. Concentration. Sports stars will tell you all you need is just a slight miss of concentration and they put one by your feet and there goes the championship. Just a slight slip of concentration.
• It’s really important in learning extra skills to really pay attention. Absorb, take in.
• Most people are trying to get through the day. I’ve got a better objective for you. Learn to get from the day. Not just get through it, get from it. Soak it up.
• Each day is a piece of the mosaic of your life. don’t waste any. treat it with care.
• See how much you can get from a day — how much advice, how much information, how much color, how much sight and sound to add to your worth and your wealth and your equity of mind.

2. Respond

• Develop the skill to respond, the ability to be affected by what you see and hear and sense.
• Success is not just knowledge. Success is response to knowledge.
• Success is not just experience. Success is emotion created from experience. It’s the emotional part that plays such a major part in our life and our future and our success.
• Responding to life means to let sad things make you sad, to let happy things make you happy, to let puzzling things puzzle you. Let things that are difficult create difficulty for you. Respond

3. Reflect

• Learn to reflect. Reflecting is an extra way of getting more value from what you know and what you’ve been through. Reflecting is going back over.
• Find a place, if you can, to be alone, and just go back and think through the day. Where have you been? What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? If you’ll just relice it, go back through it, I’m telling you it will add multiplied value to you.
• The day you’ve just been through will be more valuable for your future if you just go back through it.
• Take hours at the end of the week, and minutes at the end of the day.
• Take half a day at the end of the month, and a weekend at the end of the year.
• Those are called times to reflect. to make the past more valuable.
• If you’ll take the time to review what’s going on, review the decision-making, review all that stuff, go back through the feeling, I’m telling you, the color enhancers of your own mind will make your life more valuable.
• Why try to make your life valuable? Simple answer: to invest it in the future. We call that bright.
• We call that skillful, to make more out of your past, to have more value to invest in the future, instead of just trying to get through one more day,trying to get through one more week. It’s to get more out of your past and invest it in your future.
• That’s and extraordinary thing to learn, how to take more of you and invest it in the next conversation, invest it in the next decision, invest it in the next activity.

4. Act

• Develop the ability to act, the ability to take action on your feelings and your knowledge.
• Disciplined action is what gives birth to ideas, enterprise and values.
• Without activity, ideas and dreams have no life.
• Disciplined activity is the most demanding of arts to take you where you want to go.
• Daily or weekly disciplines are those small changes of intelligent activity that take you in a better direction.
• Ten years from now you will surely arrive. The question is, where? Now is the time to fix the next 10 years.
• The book you read, the action you take, the disciplines you engage in on a daily basis, those are the activities that are taking you somewhere, and all of us need to take a look at where our daily activities are taking us.
• The activity of learning, the activity of mind, health disciplines, wealth disciplines, culture disciplines, all values come from disciplines.
• Ideat put into disciplined activity create value.

5. Share

• Sharing is a unique human capacity. Sharing ia a phenomenon, especially in the human experience.
• It seems when we share we are the bigger and better for it.
• What you share creates more for you. that’s why we call it a paradox. You’re not diminished by shareing. You’re increased.
• There are many ways to share. One is by language, the gist of language. One of the most important studies for you is the study of communication, how to affect other pople with words.

Have Something Good to Say

• You can’t speak what you don’t kno. Talking is like writing a check. you want to make sure you’ve got a verbal check that will cash when you get ready to talk.
• When what you cay is only the tip of the iceberg of what you know. We call that power.
• Do your homework. Have something good to share. have something good to say. Communication is part of sharing.

Say it Well

• Part of the gift of language is saying it uniquely.
• Winston Churchill had the unique ability to take the english language and send it into battle.
• The words he composed and the speeches he gave and the language and style gave such hope and uniqueness and stucture to the free world that soon the enemy was defeated.
• But part of it was the structure of the language, the skill, the gift of saying things well.
• It is one of those incredible skills, saying it well.

Read Your Audience

• When you talk, you’ve just got to be interested enough to look and see how you’re doing.
• Learn to read, to see, to study the reflection of whoever you’re communicating with. That’s an art, a skill.

Say it With Intensity

• Words with strong feeling behind them change the meaning.
• Words can have power if they’re loaded with emotion and belief, courage, love, understanding, awareness, sympathy, concern, being touched by somebody.
• If you put more of that into what you say, it’ll have an incredible effect.
• What you pour out creates a capacity for more. So pour out what you know. Pour out what you feel.
• Let go in a sharing way the good things that have come your way. That’s a major part of the skill in the marketplace of developing success, wealth and value.

The Person You Wish to Become

• Develop skills that make you attractive to the marketplace.
• Develop the temperament and the attitude that make you attractive to the business world, the attitude and the temperament that make you a splendid husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, friend, coworker, business partner.
• It’s not what you get that makes you valuable, it’s what you become that makes you valuable.
• Promise is on the other side of price. For the promise, you must always pay the price.
• If you want the glory of success, the glory of a unique family, the glory and the recognition of a unique enterprise, the glory of a job well done, then you’ve got to pay upfront.
• And the discipline of developing skills for the marketplace ispart of the pay. But once you get a taste of value, you don’t mind paying the discipline.
• I wish for you all these good things that come from paying the price.

Leadersip

• Leadership is the great challange of today, in all fields: science, politics, industry, education, sales. And leadership will continue to be among our greatest challenges in the future.
• One of the greatest challenges of leadership is parenting. Unless we take our children by the hand and strengthen the family foundation, the nation is shaky. Parenting is where it all begins.
• Somebody will take up the task of being the example of leadership. But this is a challenge for parents to take up themselves, to become leaders.

The Challenge of Leadership

• The challenge to be something more than mediocre. be somebody. That’s a good challenge.
• Be somebody, be somebody wise, be somebody strong. Strength is attractive. Be somebody kind. All of the attributes of leadership are a unique challenge.
• Leadership is the challenge to step up to a new level, a new dimension. Here’s what this new dimension has: Opportunity and responsibility.
• But who wouldn’t want the responsibility along with the opportunity if it builds an extraordinary life? You wouldn’t want it any other way.
• There’s a whole new level of leadership, a new method. Here’s what it is called: Leadership by invitation
• Not leadership by threat, not leadership by aggravation. Not leadership by intimidation — that shows the weakness of the leader or shows ego at work instead if skills.
• Leadership by invitation. Invite somebody to a better way of doing things.
• Here’s what else it’s called: Leadership by inspiration. Inspire somebody to make the necessary changes to move up or to get the job done.
• As leaders, we inspire. As leaders, we entice. As leaders, we invite. Invite, entice, inspire, but not threaten.

Be Strong but Not Rude

• Now here’s a real key: Learn to be strong but not rude. There’s always a thin line that you have to watch and make sure you don’t cross.
• Learn to be strong but not rude. some people mistake rudeness for stringth.
• Rudeness — we don’t need. Strength — we do need.

Be Kind But Not Weak

• The challange is to be kind but not weak. some people mistake kindness for weakness. and it’s a great mistake.
• Kindness isn’t weak. kindness is a certain unusual strength. But don’t say, “I must be weak in order to be kind.”
• Sometimes you have to be unusually strong to be kind. Somebody coined the expression “Though love.” and that’s love that really tells the truth.
• Whatever has to be said has to be said. Kind but not weak.

Be Bold But Not A Bully

• Learn to be bold but not a bully. We nned to boldly seize the day, boldly seize the opportunity, boldly seize the chance.
• But we don’t need bullies. We don’t need anybody to push anybody around.

Be Humble But Not Timid

• The challange is to be humble but not timid.
• Some people mistake timidity for humility. Humility is virtue. Timidity is illness. It can be cured. It can be managed. If you’re timid, you’ve got to work on it. It’s weakness, it’s not a virtue.
• Humility is a virtue. Expand your ability to understand the vastness of it all and how small we are in relation to everything.
• It’s huility that causes you to get on your knees and talk to a child without any fear of how you look.
• Humility is to understand that we humans are unique, but in the vast space of it all, we’re all pretty small. What we don’t know is so much greater than what we do know.

Be Thoughful But Not Lazy

• We need to give thought, but we also need to take action.
• You need to dream without just being a dreamer.
• Head in the clouds, yes, dreaming loftly dreams, but feet on the ground.

Be Proud But Not Arrogant

• Learn to be proud but not arrogant. That’s challange.
• There’s something to be said for team pride and community pride, company pride, personal pride. But don’t cross the line to where being proud becomes arrogance.
• Pride we need, arrogance we don’t. Arrogance is usually the childish attempt to make up for lack of selt-worth.
• the childish attempt to make up for lack of self-worth has a tendency to create arrogance.
• You know the worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. That’s the wort kind.
• If a guy’s smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if a guy’s dumb and arrogant, that’s hard to take.

Have Humor Withour Folly

• Learn to have humor without folly. It’s okay to tell funny stories, but the key in leadership is don’t be silly.
• There’s a difference between being silly and having humor. That’s the challange of leadership.

The Basic Laws of Leadership

• All leaders must learn the basic laws of leadership so they can use them as illustrations as well as use them for productivity.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping

• The first of the basic laws of leadership: Whatever you sow, you reap. → In order to reap, you must sow.
• Reaping is reserved for those who sow, who plant. To deserve the harvest, you must plant the seed. Take care of it in the summer. Carefully harvest it and then do wise things with the harvest.
• If you sow good, you reap good. If you sow bad, you reap bad. → You can’t sow bad and hope for good.
• You don’t reap only what you sow. You reap more than what you sow.
• If you plant a cup of corn, how much do you get back, a cup? No, a bushel for the cup. You get back much more than what you plant. That’s the reason form planting — for the increase.
• The law of sowing and reaping ⇒ Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Everybody has to understand.
• The farmer plants the crop int he sping and takes care of it all summer. He’s an honorable man. Loves his family and is a decent citizen. But the day before he sends the combines into the field, a hailstrom comes along and beats his crop into the ground. And it’s gone. It’s lost.

The Law of Averages

• If you do something often enough, you’ll get a ratio of results. Once you understand that, the world is yours.
• We now have what we call the beginning of a ratio. Talk to ten, nine say no, and one says, yes. I’ll buy your product. I’ll take your service. Somebody says, “Well, one out of ten isn’t that good.”
• Once it starts, it tends to continue. If you talk to ten and get one, chances are excellent that if you talk to ten more you’ll get another one.
• Even if you’re only getting one out of ten, you can now start to compete. If you’ve been at it a long time, you can get nine out of ten.
• Here’s what I do if I’m new. I make up in numbers what I lack in skill. I make up in numbers what I first lack in skill. Now when my skills increase, I don’t have to do a hundred to get ten.
• Once you understand the law of averages, the chances are excellent that the ratios will work for you.
• The law of average can be increased. At first you only get one out of ten. But the better you get, the more skills you develop, and you can get twho out of ten, and then three out of ten, and you don’t need more than two or three out of ten to get rich.
• The law of averages is one of the greatest studies to make. It’ll serve you well as a leader in your business career, your sales career, any of career.

The 80/20 Rule

• Twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the business, and eighty percent do twenty percent.
• This is something you don’t try to change or rearrange. it’s part of the deal.
• These law are just something you work with, something you understand and work with.
• How do you work with the 80/20 Rule?. Part of it is time management.
• You can only give twenty percent of you time to the eighty percent because they’re only producing twenty percent. Now, you can give eighty percent of your time to the twenty percent.
• Remember, the pull is in the opposite direction. Guess who wants eighty percent of your time: The wrong group
• You can work individually with the twenty percent, but you can onlyu work in a group setting with the eighty pwecent.
• But guess who wants your induvidual time: the eighty percent! and you can’t do that.
• Give eighty percent of your time to the twenty percent.

The Law of Faith

• Faith is the ability to see things that don’t yet exist.
• Faith, though, can turn difficulty into reality, positive reality.

1. See it as it is

• Faith is the ability to see it as it is.
• Faith doesn’t mind seeing it as it is because faith is a miracle worker.
• Faith does not ignore the negative. Faith uses the negative because if there was no negative then there’d be no need for faith.
• If everything is okay, what do you need faith for? You need faith because it isn’t okay.
• if it’s ugly, then it’s ugly. If it isn’t working, then it isn’t working. If it’s a mess, then it’s a mess. it doesn’t hurt to cll a mess a mess.
• You don’t need to fancy it up here. If it’s broke, then it’s broke. If it’s miserable, then it’s miserable. Faith doesn’t mind admitting that. Gaith doesn’t mind seeing that. Seeing it as it is. that’s the beginning of faith.

2. See it Better Than It Is

• Faith is the ability to see it better than it is.
• Can you see beyond the mess? The mess is for today. Can’t you look into tomorrow?
• Humans have this incredible ability to look into tomorrow, to look into next week.
• So we not only have the ability to see it as it is — the beginning of faith — but also to see ti better than it is.
• Dream the dreams, make the plans, visualize, use your imagination and see it better than it is.

3. Make It Better Than It Is

• Third part to turns faith into reality: make it better than it is.
• Faith now ust be invented in the muscle. If you invest faith in the action, you can take any situation and make it better than it is.

4. Don’t See It Worse Than It Is

• Here’s something to watch out for in the beginning of faith. “Don’t see it worse than it is. Don’t blow it out of propotion.”
• Some people have this tendency to blow it all out of propotion. You say,”Well, it can’t be that bad.” If it’s bad, that’s how bad it is.
• You don’t need to multiply how bad it is by ten. That’s not necessary. See it just as it is. that’s the deal: as it is. don’t see it worse than it is.

5. Don’t See It For More Than It Can Become

• There’s a thin line between faith and folly. yes, it’s possible to see yourself as a millioniare, but not overnight.
• Don’t see it for more than it can become in areasonable period of time. Sure, if it dropped out of the skiy overnight, but that’s no likely.
• But it’s still possible to be a millionaire and it’s still possible to be rich and wealthy, given a certain amount of time working with the law of averages and all the rest of the laws we’ve discused.
• Don’t see it for more than it can become so that you move into folly instead of faith. Plenty is possible without eing foolish in you faith excercise.

6. It Might Be Worse Than You First See It

• Keep in mind that it might be worse than you first see it.
• Sometimes you just look at the surface. You’d better look underneath. You’d better take a deeper look so that you can really see it as bad as it is. Not to overblow it now, but to make sure yu see it as bad as it really is.

7. It Might Be Far More In The Future

• Don’t forget to give yourself a chance to see that it could be far more in the future than what you can first see.
• Take the first step of what you can see, but give yourself the chance to see it for more than what you first see.
• On a foggy night, if all you can see is a hundred feet, then walk that first hundred feet. Now you can see another hundred feed.
• You can’t see two hundred feed, but if you can see a hundred feet you walk the first hundred feet, then you can see another hundred feet.
• So take the early steps of faith. Whatever you can see as possible to become, start believing that, have faith in that.
• I’m telling you as that starts to take hold, you’ll be able to see it for more and for more and for more, and the possibilities will start to increase in your own imagination.

Work With The People Who Deserve It

• Life opereates by deserve. So, in leading people, learn to work with the people who deserve it, not the people who need it.
• Now, you’ve got to set up objectives ahead of time to determine who deserves it. When you bring somebody into your enterprise, you just set up the ground rules.
• Make sure all the guidelines are clear when you set them up. Monitor results, accomplishments, then you know who deserve it.
• Don’t respond to need. respond to who deserves. Now, remember the 80/20 rule, the pull is in the opposite direction.
• Guess who wants your help: usually the wrong people. It’s usually the prople who need it, not the people who deserve i.
• But in an enterprise, you must learn to respond to the people who deserve, not the people who need.
• There are plenty of other places for your benevolance. But in your enterprise you must respond to the people who deserve.

1. Teach People How to Deserve it

• Teaching poeple and moving them from need to deserve starts to accelerate their self-esteem.
• You can’t believe what a high the beginning of new self-esteem is.
• If a person hasn’t had it for years and years and they’ve been beaten down by their own philosophy and they’ve been beaten down by everybody else, if you start them on the early steps of learning to deserve then that starts this process of self-esteem.
• Lead people step by step into self-esteem. And self-esteem leads to action, action leeds to progress, and progress leads to fortune.
• So work with the people who deserve it. And teach people how to deserve your help.

2. Let People Grow and Develop

• Let people do whatever they can do. and let them change their mind. Let them grow and develop.
• You cannot change people, but they can change themselves. The best you can do is to inspire, teach, pray and hope. That’s the best you can do.
• You can’t get in there and change them, but you can do your best to deliver the message that can create change if someone will accept it.
• If someone will do something about it, then take the early baby steps to get them started. Be happy with the smallest progress, give some rewards and a pat on the back and big smile.

Know That There is Both Good and Evil

• All leaders must teach the fact that there is both good and evil. We are all challanged to become the most of the good in us and the leas of the bad.
• Character is core element of leadership.
• Story of frog and scorpion: Make notes of this ⇒ You can’t take a chance. You’ve got to know the scorpion
• I learned in building an enterprise that there are some people you don’t need their productivity. You’re better off without their productivity because they’re scorpions in the fold.
• You’ve get to learn the story of the frog and the scorpion and the foxes that spoil the vines.

Six Essential Traits of Good Character

The following are what I believe to be the basics of good character. Miss one of these, and you’ll find a weak link in your character — one that may be your leadership’s undoing.

1. Integrity

• Integrity is a good catchword that is similar to charcter but provides us with a different way of looking at the idea of character.
• The root of integrity mens “whole” or “undivided,” and that’s a terrific way to hwlp us understand what integrity is — undivided life.
• For example, you don’t act one way in one situation and another in a different situation
• There is integrity and wholeness to your life. Living this way will build trust in your followers.
• Another use of the word integrity that provides insight for us is when the word is used in regard to a physical stucture.
• A wall or a building that is strong and has no cracks is said to have integrity. The same could be said for great leaders.

2. Honesty

• Honesty is the only policy for great leadrs.
• A lack of honesty results in the fact that you destroy the turst of those who follow you.
• Even if you tell them the truth, but they know you have lied to others, it will destroy the trust you had with them.
• Your reputation is what your leadership is based on, though. When we’re honest and live transparently before our followers, they’re able to see us for who we are and make solid decisions to follow.

3. Loyalty

• People of good character are loyal people. they have a “stick-to-it” attitude when it comes to others.
• Anybody who knows humand nature knows that pople fail. it’s just matter of time, no matter how talendted someone is. A person of good character stays with their friends even in the downtimes.
• Anyone can be friends with others when times are good. People of good character stay with their friends when they need them most.
• People want to follow a leader who will stretch them beyond where they are now, but who’ll also allow them to try — and to fail.
• When we are loyal to our followers, they’ll be loyal to us and make every effort to succeed on our behalf and on behalf of the organization.
• There are few things that strengthen the leader-follower bond more than when a leader shows their loyalty to a follower in need.

4. Self-Sacrifice

• What is it about selfosacrifice that breeds followers? Followers don’t mind putting in the hard work. they don’t even mind a leader making more money or reaping benefits from their work.
• What followers do mind, though, is when the leader is using them for personal gain.
• People of good character don’t use other people, period.
• So when a leader shows sacrifice of personal gain, it says to the followers that they are willing to come alongside of them — and followers reward that almost universally.
• A person of good character shows that they can give up personal gain for the food of the whole.

5. Accountability

• People of good character don’t mind accountability. In fact, thay welcome it. This is the act of allowing others to have a say in your life, to speak to you straight about your life and conduct.
• The brutal truth is that we have blind spots and need other people to be in close to us so we can advance down the road of success.
• The need for accountability doesn’t prove lack of character. Rather, it proves the presence of character.
• Followers grow tired of leaders who will have nothing to do with accountability. They don’t mind leaders who make mistakes, but they do mind leaders who don’t take responsibility for their mistakes by being accountable.
• When we allow ourselves to be held accountable, our followers know that we are serious about keeping our own house in order, and thus will do a good job in leading the rest of the organization.

6. Self-Control

• The ability to make decisions — good decisions — about what we will and will not do with our actions is at the core of what we become in regard to our character.
• There will be plenty of options to participate in things that are not moral. Everybody has temptations, but a person of good character knows to excercise self-control-literal control over their choice.
• When people don’t excercise self-control, they sabotage their ability to lead. People lose respect for them and will follow less, if at all.
• Self-control is the ability to choose to do the things we should, and to refrain from doing the things we shouldn’t.
• When we exhibit self-control, we again build trust in our followers. they respect us and want to follow us.

Strengthen Your Character

• We are all born with clean slates. As we grow, there are many influences that shape our character — our parents, teachers, friends and choices ll mold that inner character.
• The good news is, no matter where you are right now, you can decide that your character will grow stronger.
• You can choose to put positive materials into your mind and heart. You can begin making choices that reflect a change in lifestyle, and thus, in character.
• No one is “stuck” you can change — if you want to.!

Skill Development

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average. That requires developing our skills. Skill development is important in and of itself, if for no other reason than the fact that as humans, we were designed to grow.

Skill development is important because:

1. It brings us fulfillment. As we grow in our skills, we develop a deep sense of personal satisfaction knowing we’ve learned something new, and that not only did we learn it, but we also applied it successfully.

2. It will advance our career. As much as manu modern-day people would like to believe that there shouldn’t be competition, there always will be. Believe or not, the winner is usually the person who has honed their skills. Be it on the field or in the boardroom, the winner is usually the person with the higher level of skills.

3. It will help you help others, and this is what life is all about, isn’t it? One of the things a skilled leader can do is to help people see themselves better than they are. When you develop skills, you’re able to help others, and that helps you in the long run.

   “You can get everything you want out of life if you help others get what they want out of life.” — Zig Ziglar.

The Skills Great Leaders Must Master

1. The Ability to be Inspirational

• A leader needs to be able to inspire others. Yes, we need to hit the mind with our messagemm but we also need to stir the heart and its passions.
• The leader who is only rational will have bored followers who aren’t inspired to go anywhere.
• The leader who is only emotionalwill have excited followers who don’t know where to go! It take both.
• Develop your ability to inspire you followers and make them excited to be with you and the organization.
• Help them see the big picture that shows they are making a difference.

2. Good Communication — Especially Vision

• Great leaders are those who can take the vision they have and communicate it in ways that their followers can easily understan, internalize and own.
• Many leaders have great vision but fail to lead their organizations anywhere.
• Vision that is only kept in your mind is not vision, but a dream.
• Vision communicated clearly, memorably and passionately, so that people can grasp it and follow, is what will take your group, whether large or small, to the next level and beyond.

3. The Ability and Will to Delegate

• Great leaders know that they can’t do it all on their own. They may be able to do a lot on their own, but they’ll never achieve the powerful impact that is possible until theyu learn to delegate, and then choose to do so.
• When we delegate to capable people, we increase our effectiveness and impact exponentially.
• Unfortunately, too many leaders don’t attain greatness because they refuseto let anyone else do anything.
• Learn to delegate — to the right people — and you’ll be moving in the right direction.

4. The Ability to Teach Important Principles

• When you look at great leaders in history, you see men and women who are able to teach.
• A good example of a modern-day business leader who used teaching is Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric.
• When Welch began leading GE, it had a market cap of $4 billion. Before he retired, it had reached as high as $400 billion.
• What was at the core of his leadership? Teaching. GE had its own university long before it was vogue for companies to do so.
• He knew that people needed to be taught, and Welch spent many hours teaching there himself.

5. The Ability to Set Goals, Strategies and a Course of Action

• The leader is responsible for a few key ares. Vision is one.
• The leader is also responsible for setting the goals of the organizatio. They must determinewhat the team will shoot for.
• They needd to be big enough to stretch the followers, but realistic enough so as no to discourage them.
• The leader must also set strategy, again, with the help of others. Ehen they see where the organization must go, they must also plot the map to get there, at least in a big-picture sense.
• Managers can take care of the rest, but the leader is responsible for giving the general strategic direction.
• Lastly, the leader must set the course of action, defining behaviors of the organization that will be acted upon.
• Setting the goals will give your teamwhat it needs to shoot for, defining the strategy will show them how toget there, and setting the course of action will show them what to do while carrying aout the strategy.

6. Keep People Focused on the Goal

• Followers operate on a day-to-day basis. They get tasks done that need to be done for that day or week, or even quarter.
• Leaders are different. They are big-picture people. They know that the organization will outlive them, and bacause of that, the perspective must be for the food of the organization, not just the individuals. They must see where the end is.
• The japanese business community is renowned for setting 100-year goals? incredible.
• So, leadership involves not only setting a course for today, but also further into the future.
• Skilled leaders have learned no tonly how to inspore those following to catch a vision and pursue it, but they’ve also learned how to paint a vivid picture of the results that will continue to motivate them to accomplish the goals of the organization, long after they are gone.
• When they have created a beginning and defined the end, then they are ready to plot the road between.
• You can always increase your skills. Even if you just increase them a little bit, you will invrease your effectiveness and your impact as a leader significantly.
• Even the smallest of change in a trajectory will mean a large change in distance.

Goal Setting

It is fantastic skill to develop, how to design your own future. A life best lived is a life by design. Not by accident, and not by just walking through the day careening from wall to wall and managing to survive.

That’s okay, But if you can start giving your life dimensions and design and color and objectives and purpose, the results can be absolutely staggering.

Use Your Imagination

• Goal setting gives you the chance to experience the power of your imagination. Think about it.
• Imagination builds cities. Imagination conquers disease. Imagination develops careers. Imagination sets up relationships. Imagination is where all tangible values and intangible values begin
• So what you’ve got to learn to do is use this powerful resource.
• Tapping this resource of imagination for goal setting involves thinking about your future, thinking about tomorrow or the rest of the day, thinking about the rest of the year or five years or 10.
• You can use your imagination to start prospecting for the future, for what could be possible for you.

Five Things That Affect Us

1. The environment
   • A little contribution costs nothing. If everybody contributed, what a difference it would make!
2. Events
   • Events affect us — some small, some big, some personal, some national, some global.
   • There are small events and daily events and family events and community events. We’re all affected by events.
3. Knowledge
   • We’re affected by whatever we know or don’t know.
   • What you don’t know will hurt you. What you don’t know will tragically affect your life. What you don’t know will leave your life empty. What you don’t know will leave you without a relationship.
   • We’re all affected by knowledge, whether we know or whether we don’t know. That’s why you’ve got to read the books.
   • Remember the book you don’t read won’t help.
4. Results
   • We’re affected by results. Whether it’s financial results or personal results or social results, we’re all affected by results.
   • Disciplines undone in the future give us poor results. disciplines managed well give us good results.
5. Our Dreams
   • We’re affected by our dreams, our vision of the future.

The Pull Of The Future

• You want to make sure that the greatest pull on your life is the pull of the future.
• Some people live in the past and let their life be continually pulled and influence by the past.
• Yes we must remember the past and review the past to make it useful to invest in the future.
• But here’s the key: Make sure that the greatest pull on your life is the pull of the future.
• So in order to save yourself from being pulled apart by distractions or pulled back to the past, you want to start, right now, really designing the future so that the greatest part of your attention and focus pulls you forward into the future to accomplish your goals.

Strong Dreams

• Goal are like a magnet — they pull. And the stronger they are, them more purposeful they are, thebigger they are, the more unique they are, the stronger they pull
• Excellent goals and high dreams pull you through all knid of down days, down seasons. The pull you through a winter of discontent.
• A bad day can almost overwhelm you if you don’t have something really purposeful to go for on the other side of that day, on the other side of the difficult time, on the other side of the down time.
• If you’ve got plenty out there to attract and pull, it’ll pull you through all these things and very little of it will attach itself to you.
• You’ll be able to get through some of the most difficult times if you have this spectacular vision ahead of you of where you’re going and what you’re going to accomplish.
• Getting through will be easier.

Learning to Set Goals

Powerful to set those goals, reach out there into the future, design something to the best of your ability, refine it as you go, tear it up periodically if you want to, set a whole new list. It;s your life. Its your future.

Three Components of Powerful Goals

• I’ve often said that the major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes you do to accomplish it.
• This will always be a far greater value than what you get. That is why goals are so powerful. they are part of the fabric that makes up our lives.
• Goal setting provides focus, shapes our dreams and gives us the ability to home in on the exact actions we need to take in order to get everything in life we desire.
• Goals are exciting because they provide focus and aim for our lives. goal couse us to stretch and grow in ways we never have before. Inorder to reach our goals, we must become better. We must change and grow.
• Powerful goal have three components:
  • The must be inspiring
  • They must be believable
  • They must be goals you can act on
• When your goals inspire you, when you beliece and act on them, you will accomplish them!

Long-Term Vision

• Goals also privide long-term vision in our lives. We all need lots of powerful, long-range howls to help us get past short-term obstacle.
• Life is designed in such a way that we look long term and live short term.
• We dream for the future and live in the present. unfortunately, the present can produce many hard obstacles.
• Fortunately, the more powerful our goals (becaouse they are inspiring and believable), the more we will be able to act on them in the short term and guarantee that they will actually come to pass.

Key Aspects of Goal Setting

1. Evaluation and Reflection
   • The only way we can reasonably decide what we want in the future and how we will get there is to first know where we are right now and what our level of satisfaction is for where we are in life.
   • With our focus on goal setting, the first order of business is for each of us to set aside some serious time for evaluation and reflectio.
2. Dreams and Goals
   • What your dreams and goals? Not related to the past or what you think you can get, but what you want.
   • Have you ever really sat down, thought through your life values and decided what you really want? This isn’t what someone else says you should have or what culture tells us successful people do or have.
   • These are hte dreams and goals born out of your own heart and mind, goals unique to you and that come from who you were created to be and gifted to become.
3. SMART Goals
   • Specific: don’t be vague. Exactly what do you want?
   • Measurable: Quantify your goal. How will you know if you’ve achieved it or not?
   • Attainable: Be honest with yoursefl about what you can reasonably accomplish at this point in your life while taking into consideration your current responsibilities.
   • Realistic: It’s got to be doable, real and practical.
   • Time: Associate a time frame with each goal. When should you complete the goal?
4. Accountability
   • Think of the word accountable. It means to give an account. When someone knows what your goals are, they help hold you accoundtable.
   • Whether it is someone else trying to reach the same goal with you or judt someone you can give the basic idea to, having a person who can hold you accountable — an accountability partner — will give you another added boost to accomplishing your goals.

Key Learned

So, evaluate and reflect. Decide what you want. Be SMART. Have accountability. When you put these four key piece together, you put yourself in a position of power to catapult toward achieving your goals and the kind of life you desire.

Evaluation and Reflection

The basis for knowing where we want to go is knowing where we came from and where we are. It is also knowing how well we have done achieving things we have previously set our eyes on. This is the essence of evaluation and reflection. We need to understand how to look at what we have done and then use that as a platform for what we want to do next.

Here is the basic process for evaluation and reflections:

1. Find a Quite Place
   • Reflection is best done away from distraction. It gives you mmind space to think.
2. Take a Regular Time
   • Whether it is once a week, every other week, once a month or quarter, be sure to set aside a regular time at regular intervals to evaluate and reflect.
3. Look Back
   • Look at what you have accomplished and where you are. Be specific. Be truthful. Be ruthlessly honest.
4. Write it Down
   • Keep a record. This gives you the chance at the next stage of evaluation to see exactly where you were last time and keeps it as objective as possible.
5. Look Forward
   • Set your next goal. Stratch yourself according to what works for you.

Whay Evaluate?

• The purpose of evaluation is twofold:
  • First. it gives you an objective way to look at your accomplishments and your pursuit of the vision you have for your life.
  • Second. it shows you where you are so you can determine where you need to ge. In other words, it gives you a baseline from which to work.
• Only when we take time out of our busy schedules can we get into the state of mind and quitness of heart we need in order to find that inner place where we see what we are and what we can become.
• Those who neve time to evaluate and reflect will blow to and fro through this life, living by the forces of culture, circumstance, societal pressures and, unfortunatelym personal weaknesses.
• Those who take the time to evaluate will find they are like an oak tree in a storm: they have a firm foundation, they know where they are going, they know how to get there, and ultimately, they will get there no matter what comes their way!

Establishing Dreams and Goals

• One of the amazing things we have been given as humans is the unquenchable desire to have dreams of a better life. Even better, we also have the ability to establish goals to live out those dreams.
• Think of it: We can look deep within our hearts and dream of a better situation for ourselves and our families, of a secure financial future and healthy emotional or physical states, and certainly of deeper spiritual lives.
• But what makes this even more powerful is that we have also been given the ability to take action and pursue those dreams.
• Not only can pursue them, but we possess the cognitive ability to actually lay out a plan and strategies — to set goals — to achieve those dreams. Powerful!

What Are Your Dreams and Goals?

• Now let me clarify something here about your dreams and goals: This isn’t about what you already have or what you have done. this is about what you want.
• Have you ever taken the time to truly reflect, to listen quitely to your heart, to see what dreams live within you? Your dreams re there, everyone has them.
• They may live right on the surface or be burried deep from years of others telling you they were foolish, but they are there.

Listen to Yourself

• so how do we know what our dreams are? This is not listening to others; it is listening to yourself.
• If we listen to others, we hear their plans and dreams, and, at time, others will try to put their plans and dreams on us.
• If we listen to others, we can never be fulfilled. We will only chase elusive dreams that are not rooted deep within us.

Take Time to be Quiet

• Taking time to be quiet is something we don’t do enough in this busy world. We rush, rush, rush and are constantly listening to noise all around us.
• We must not get faked out by just being busy. Instead, we must constantly ask ourselves the question, “Busy doing what?”
• In other words, are the activities you are participating in moving you toward your goals? If not, then work to eliminate those things and replace some of that time with quiet.
• The human heart was meant to have time of quiet feflection, allowing us to peer deep within ourselves. It is when we do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams.
• Schedule some quiet “dream time” this week. No other people. No cellphone. No computer. Just you, a pad, a pem and your thoughts.
• When you are quite, thing about those things that really get your blood moving.
  • What would you love to do, either for fun or for a living?
  • What yould you love to accomplish?
  • What would you tru if you were guaranteed to succeed?
  • What big thoughts move your heart into a state of excitement and joy?
  • When you answer these questions, you’ll feel terrific because you’re in the “dream zone.”
  • It is only when we get to this point that we can truly realize and begin to experience what our dreams are.

Make A List and Prioritize

• Write down all od your dreams as you have them. Let your thoughts and pen fly as you take careful record.
• Now look at your list andprioritize those dreams.
  • Which are most important?
  • Which are most feasible?
  • Which would you love to do the most?
  • Put them in the order you will actually try to attain them.
• Remember, we are always moving toward action, not hust dreaming.
• Life is too short not to pursue your dreams. At the end of your life, all you will beable to do is look backward. You can reflect with joy or regret.
• Those who dream, who set goals and act on them, are those who live lives of joy and have sense of peace when they near the end of their lives.
• They will have finished well and possess a sense of pride and accomplishment, not only for themselves but also for their families. That feeling is priceless!

Remember:

These are the dreams and goals born out of your heart and mind, goals unique to you, and they come from who you were created to be and figted to become. Your specific goals are what you want to achieve because they will make your life hoyful and bring fulfillment for both you and your family.

Set Smart Goals

• I really like the acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive), one of the key aspects of goal setting I mentioned earlier, because we want to be smart when we set our goals.
• We want to intelligently decide what our goals will be so that we can actually accomplish them.
• We want to set the goals that our heart conceives, that our mind believes and that our bodies wil carry out.

1. Specific
   • Goals are no place to waffle. They are no place to be vague. Ambiguous goals produce ambiguous results. Imcomplete goals produce incomplete futures.
   • When we are specific, we harness the power of our dreams and set forces into action that empower us to acieve our goals. We then know exactly what it is we are shooting for — there is no question.
   • As we establish our priorities and manage our time, we do it for a specific goal, to achieve the results we expect.
   • There is no wondering or quessing. The future is licked into our minds, and we see it —specifically— and that is powerful!
   • Never underestimate just how important is to have very specific, concrete goals.
   • They act as magnets that draw you toward them. A SMART goal is specific.
2. Measurable
   • Always set goal that are measurable — I would say “specifically measurable” to take into account our principle of being specific as well.
   • Our goal should be such that we know when we are advancing and by how much.
   • Whether it is by hours, pounds, dollard or some other dcale, we should be able to see exactly how we are measuring up as we journey through life using our goals.
   • Imagine if you didn’t measure your goals. You would never know which way you were going, or even if you were goaing anywhere. A SMART goal is measurable.
3. Attainable
   • One of the detrimental things many people do — and they do it with good intentions — is to set goal that are unattainable.
   • While it’s very important to set big goals that caouse your heart to soar with exitement, it is also imperative to make sure they are attainable.
   • So what does it mean to be attainable? An Attainable goal is one that is both realistic and doable in a shorter period of time than whay you have to work with.
   • Our goals should be set so that they are just out of our reach, so they challenge us to grow as we reach forward to achieve them.
   • A SMART goal is attainable.
4. Realistic
   • The root word of realistic is real. A goal has to be something that we can reasonably make “real” or a “reality” in our lives.
   • there are some goals that are simply not realistic. You have to be able to say, even if it is a tremendously stretched goal, that it is entirely realistic — that you coul make it.
   • A SMART goal is realistic
5. Time
   • Every goal should have a time frame attached to it.
   • Life is much productive for us as humans because there is a time frame connected to it.
   • One of the powerful aspects of a great foal is that it has an end, a time in which you are shooting to accomplish it.
   • You start working because you know there is an end, and as time goes by, you work because you don’t want to get behind.
   • As deadline approaches, you work diligently because you want to meet that deadline.
   • It’s a good idea to break a big goal down into measured time frames.
   • Set smaller goals and work them out in their own time.
   • A SMART goal has a timeline.

Accountability

• Now let’s look how to apply the SMART test to your goals and ensure they are powerful.
• Accountable means to give an account of your actions to yourself or other person.
• Accountability is a very broad word, yet accountability is essentially follow-up.
• When someone knows what your goals are. they follow up and hold you accountable by asking you to “give an account” of where you are in the process.
• Human nature is such that when we know someone else is going to ask us about it, we are much more motivated to get it done — if for no other reason than we don’t want to look lazy and uncomitted to those we are accountable to.
• There are two kinds of accountability: internal and external.

Internal Accountability

• Internal accountability is essentially the level of integrity you maintai no tonly throughout the evaluation process but also in life.
• It means that when you look at yourself, you judge yourself with honesty.
• this is where you hold yourself accountable to doing what you said you would do.
• We take charge of ourselves. How do we do that? Here are a few ideas:
  1. Write down your goals so they become “objective” You can’t go back and say, “That wasn’t really my goal.”
  2. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself when you assess whether or not you have met the goal.
  3. If you fall short of your goal, or if you are falling short while on the way, knuckle down and hold yourself accountable to do what it takes to make up the ground so that you can hit that goal!
  4. Set a time frame in which you will evaluate your progress and hold yourself accountable.

External Accountability

• Find someone else or a group of others to hold you accountable.
• When we commit to giving an account to someone else for our actions and goals, we take it to the next level.
• The external part of accountabililty will not work without internal aspect. If you are not honest with yourself, then you will probabli not be honest with others.
• Asking someone to hold you accountable and then knowing you won’t be completely honest with them will never work.
• Having an accountability partner or an outside source of accountability is a poweful force if done right.
• Here are a few things to keep in mind as you set up an accountability partner:
  1. Choose someone who cares about you but can be tough and honest with you.
  2. Tell them specifically what your goals are.
  3. Commit to being honest with them.
  4. give them permission to speak words of encouragement, as well as words of challange when the situation calls for it.
  5. Agree on a reasonable time frame in which you will allow them to evaluate your progress and hold you accoundtable.
  6. Follow up on their words when they challenge you or call you to action.
• When we have someone holding us accountable, we bring others onto our team who will make us stronger, who will make us soar higher and who will couse our lives to be mush richer because of their involvement.

The Challenge

• Let your goals challenge you to become a unique person of incredible dimensions, not necessarily in anyone else’s eyes, but in your own eyes.
• It doesn’t metter whether someone thinks I’m short or tall, but it matters if I stand tall in my own eyes — because I know my disciplines, I know whether I’m doing it or not doing it.
• That’s what’s exciting. That’s why this goal setting is so important. It challenges you to grow. It challenges you to become more than you are, to move up to the next level. And that’t the key.