ENTREPRENEUR TIP
As you set your goals, remember to keep them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
The average person in setting their goal plays games with himself or herself. So, you need to have someone help you in your goal-setting process. That someone then becomes a part of your support system. Share this first goal with a friend, a co-worker, or a relative. Tell that person when you would like to see this first goal completed, maybe in several weeks; how you would like to tell them about this [phone, text, email] and when you will share this information.
Now, why do you need this? Well, three basic reasons: First, this process helps you to clarify your goals in order to explain to yourself and to someone else. You can think more clearly about what it is you want to do. Next, when you select someone and say, “I would like to share a goal with you,” that usually makes that person feel good because you thought enough of them to be invited into the goal-setting process. Next, it gives you that added incentive because you have shared this with them, you don’t want to disappoint them. So, next, you will be thinking about when you can share the good news [that you’ve reached your goal]. There is a certain excitement on your part in preparing a report of good news to share with someone else, which makes you even more excited about getting the goal accomplished. And in that way, you are helping yourself by planning these activities, sharing them with others, and helping others to become a part of the excitement of the change in your development towards your successful future.
INSIGHTS FROM W. CLEMENT STONE ON GOALS, SUCCESS, AND HOW TO THINK
I feel healthy. I feel happy. I feel terrific. Every living person has one thing in common, regardless of the continent on which he is born and that includes women, as well as men, and it includes children. It’s a machine, a brain, and a nervous system from which the mechanical computer was designed. And we’ve spent millions and millions and billions of dollars over the years, throughout the world, training people how to use computers, design programs, and build machines, but there isn’t one of you that was taught how to use your brain and nervous system, the human computer.
When it comes to extracting the principles, [you have] the power within—I’m referring to passions, emotions, tendencies, moods, feelings—how to form desirable habits at will; how to eliminate undesirable habits at will; how to set goals; how to set high goals; and most importantly, how to achieve them.
Keep in mind that you have the powers of the mind that every other living person has in principle, but you may not know how to use it. You can learn how to use those powers so that you can achieve anything at all in life you desire. It doesn’t make any difference what it is or how high it is, provided you are willing to pay the price to engage in thinking and planning a good use of your time. But you’ll never do it unless you learn how, and that is why it would pay to read and then study and then understand the principles in such books as Think and Grow Rich, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, and The Success System that Never Fails. How many of you take the time to really study the important things of life about yourself, about how you can help your children, how you can help your community, how you can help your nation, or whatever it may be? You don’t have to start big; you start with yourself. Learn how to use your own learning power. You’ve got the power, whether you recognize it or not.
Keep in mind the power of your mind, a God-given quality if you know how to use it. For example, my strength lies as a writer or as a sales manager in being able to share with others the how-to, what to do, and how to do it.
You are an important person and when you recognize that, and when you recognize that you have a brain and nervous system, and when you recognize that you are the product of heredity, environment, experience, your physical body, the use of your conscious mind and its impact on the subconscious, and your particular position in time and space, and something more (and this is important) including powers known and unknown and that you can harmonize with any one of them, for you are a mind with a body.
You may have attended great lectures and heard great speakers and nothing happened. The true test of how well a meeting works is that it results in action, not what you say, but what you do.
Think. Think in terms of what the meetings you attend [or books you read or podcasts you listen to] could mean to you. Are you the person you want to be? Think, concentrate. Are you the person your spouse, your children believe you to be? Think, think, think. Are you the person your loving parents prayed and hoped you would become? Think, think. Now change your line of thought and think in terms of your family. Are you as thoughtful, as loving, considerate as you were in the early days of your marriage? Think, be truthful with yourself. Think, think.
For those of you who have children, do you really love your children enough to learn how to discipline them intelligently? Think, think, think. Do you think enough of your family and yourself to learn how to use the greatest gift to man, namely the use of your brain and your nervous system? Think, think, think, think.
Now think of someone besides your immediate family. Are you as kind and thoughtful to your in-laws as you would want to have others be kind and thoughtful to you if conditions were reversed, because some day they may be reversed? Think, think, think.
ENTREPRENEUR TIP
You can apply this “think” process to colleagues and employees as well. How do you treat those with whom you work every day? How can you improve those relationships?
Now think in terms of someone besides those related to you. Is there anyone to whom you’ve been unkind when you should have been kind, some unfortunate person, someone who may have a displeasing personality? Think, think, think.
Now think in terms of this great nation of ours, the freedoms that you inherited, the opportunities that you have received. Think in terms of what you can do to pass onto your posterity these freedoms, these opportunities. And think in terms of what you have not done that you could have done. Think, think, think. And paraphrasing Edmund Burke, remember all that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good people like you do nothing. And then paraphrasing it, you can paraphrase that all is essential for the triumph of good is that good people like you get into action and do something about it. Think, think, think.
ENTREPRENEUR ACTION ITEM
This Is What It Takes to Spark Change in Your Life
Dr. Lacy Hall’s take on goal-setting as it relates to advancing and improving your life is a practical, actionable way to put change in perspective. As we identify our needs and our goals, a clear picture of what we want the change in our lives to look like emerges. Change is recurrent in all aspects of life. Seasons change, technology changes, people change. Change is both necessary and unavoidable.
People often say that they want to change their job, their loved ones, even their bodies. But what sparks change in relationships, businesses, and life in general? As you begin each new year or new phase in your business, take time to see what needs to change in your life.
Change happens when a decision is made. Now is the time to create a framework for decisions that will initiate the action necessary to facilitate that change. Here are some thoughts to consider if you want to make a change in your life.
Be Willing to Change
We all know someone who wants to get in shape but keeps eating McDonald’s and refuses to go to the gym. What about the friend who says they want a stable relationship but keeps dating troubled or emotionally unavailable people? If we want to make a change, we have to be willing to put in the work. Wanting to change is not enough. The pain of not changing has to be so severe you have no choice but to take action. Think about the consequences of not changing vs. the excuses you have not to.
Create Your Own Circumstances
We all have histories that make us who we are. Sometimes these stories serve as crutches when we allow them to prevent us from taking necessary action to make the changes we need in life. We can easily blame the market, our cli
ents, or our spouses for not supporting our vision, but if we want to make a change we need to take ownership of our circumstances. In any situation, there are things we don’t have control of, but there are also things we can control. To overcome your circumstances, you must identify opportunities to take responsibility and create the change.
Change Your Mindset to Change Your Life
Mindset dictates behavior. To create change we need to become aware of the actions we take daily and shift our perspective. Trying to do it overnight is the most common reason we fail to implement behavioral change. First, we need to change our mindset. We need to prove to ourselves that our current behavior doesn’t serve us anymore, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Following that, change happens one day at a time. Eventually you will create a new pattern of behavior to replace the old one. When you strengthen your mindset, you empower yourself to take action.
Control Your Reactions
Statistics show that most people give up on their new year’s resolution just 45 days into the year. Creating change is not easy. Like everything in life, you will experience setbacks. How you react to these setbacks determines your probability of success. Understand that it takes time, both in your business and in your life, to create meaningful change. Think of a time when you’ve encountered a challenge and reacted negatively. Did it help you solve the problem? See every failure as an opportunity to one up yourself.
Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
Image a businessperson 25 years ago who, after first hearing about the internet, decided: “I will not change the way I worked all my life—the heck with the kids and their computers.” That person probably is not in business today. You will achieve success if your drive to change is greater than the need to stay comfortable. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone.
Change Comes from Within
Believe that change is possible, and always keep that vision to propel you forward when times get tough. If you do not have that belief, and if you can’t see the finish line, chances are that you are going to give up. Before expecting change from others, you have to spark and create the process of change and improve yourself first.
CHAPTER TEN
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life
Alan Lakein with an introduction by Og Mandino
What does it take to manage your life? Alan Lakein knows, and the answer is time. More to the point, the answer is time management. Lakein, a bestselling author who focuses on time management, has several books to his credit, including How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, which has sold well over 3 million copies. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities, Lakein obviously had to find a great way each day to tackle the stress. In this essay, he shares some of his best tips and tricks for getting better control of your time, which (not surprisingly) also affects your life in general. Sales expert Og Mandino, bestselling author of The Greatest Salesman in the World, provides additional insight in his introduction below. His books have sold over 50 million copies in 25 languages.
AN INTRODUCTION BY OG MANDINO
Time: What is it? Look in any anthology of great thoughts under the word time, and you will learn that just about every wise man in recorded history has made some sage commentary about time.
Arthur Brisbain said, “Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains and the time that remains is time enough, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.”
John Howe wrote, “What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.”
On Queen Elizabeth’s deathbed her last words were, “All my possessions for a moment of time.”
I like what Benjamin Franklin said best of all: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
Like many other writers in the self-help field, I borrowed from Franklin and Queen Elizabeth in my book The Greatest Salesman in the World, when in Scroll 5 I wrote, “I will live this day as if it is my last. I have but one life, and life is naught but a measurement of time. When I waste one, I destroy the other. If I waste today, I destroy the last page of my life. Therefore, each hour of this day will I cherish for it can never return. It cannot be banked today to be withdrawn on the morrow, for who can trap the wind. Each minute of this day will I grasp with both hands and fondle with love for its value is beyond price. What dying man can purchase another breath though he willingly give all his gold? What price dare I place on the hours ahead? I will make them priceless! I will live this day as if it is my last.”
Time is the only commodity in the world which is allocated equally to all: rich man, beggar, white man, black man, president, housewife, salesman, writer. All of us receive the same 24-hours a day. There are no favorites to that ticking clock.
Alan Lakein is a bona-fide expert in the planning of time. His clients include such corporate giants as American Tel & Tel, Bank of America, IBM, Lever Brothers, and Standard Oil of California.
I first saw this bright guy on the Johnny Carson Show. Soon after his book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life had been published. I listened and watched with fascination. Ten minutes later, I was convinced that I really didn’t know as much about controlling my time as I thought I did. I bought Alan’s book. It was tremendous. We began to correspond, and the ultimate result is this magic essay [originally produced as an audiobook] containing the essence of his techniques. But let me warn you: If you’re waiting to hear any far-out, super sophisticated or complicated techniques to master time, you’ll be disappointed.
What Alan Lakein shares with you instead are some simple, basic, but still little-known methods of controlling your time to get the most out of it. Learn them, and as Franklin said, you will be controlling far more than your time, you will be controlling your life.
LEARN HOW TO DO LESS
Many people on the way up allow their family and personal lives to be heavily impinged upon by work demands. Others are so achievement-oriented that they feel guilty taking time out for anything that’s not in some way related to their work.
Horror stories abound of people who work so hard that they hardly ever see their families and who end up with ulcers and heart trouble. One study several years ago of successful and unsuccessful executives indicated that many men who ultimately fail had let their personal lives go by the wayside while keeping up with the rat race.
My experience with clients has convinced me that when executives find themselves on a treadmill, they tend to lose perspective on what’s important. They spend time unnecessarily on secondary matters and let many important ones go undone. This often tends to be cumulative. The more overtime they put in, the more exhausted and less efficient they become. The answer is not to spend more hours on the project, but to work more effectively within the time allotted, to work smarter rather than harder.
I recall one architect who came to me suffering from too much work and not enough play. He had only recently recovered from a bleeding ulcer and again was working 60 hours a week. His complaint was that he never had time to see his wife and young children. I suggested that he take off at noon on Friday, and since summer was just beginning, take his family away to his favorite spot at Lake Tahoe. He rented a cabin where he and his family spent each weekend during the summer. Not surprisingly, he got to know his family again and his health improved. Since he knew that he couldn’t make up for low productivity by long hours, he concentrated on getting the important things done in the time he had. He actually got more done than he ever had working 60 hours, even though he shaved more than 15 hours off that total. As a bonus, he got some of his most creative ideas while he was relaxing at the lake. So, his leisure time paid off handsomely. All he really lost by cutting back those 15 hours was the detailed drafting that he compulsively had felt the need to do himself.
Can you work effectively if you’re too fatigued fr
om excessive hours? Probably not. Maybe a better solution would be to quit early, take the afternoon and evening off, and come back the next day refreshed and physically able to work twice as hard. Get more done by doing nothing. I think you’ll find that if you arrange things so that you find time to relax and do nothing, you’ll get more done and have more fun doing it.
One client, an aerospace engineer, didn’t know how to do nothing. Every minute of his leisure time was scheduled with intense activity. He had an outdoor activity scheduled in which he switched from skiing and ice hockey to camping and tennis. His girlfriend kept up with him in these activities, although she would have preferred just to sit by the fire and relax once in a while. Like too many people, he felt the need to be doing something all the time. Doing nothing seemed a waste of time. His relaxing by the fire consisted of playing chess, reading, or playing bridge. Even his lovemaking was scheduled.
For an experiment, I asked him to waste time for just five minutes during one of our sessions together. What he ended up doing in those five minutes was relaxing, sitting quietly, and daydreaming. When he was finally able to admit that emotional reasons caused him to reject relaxing as a waste of time, he began to look more critically at that assumption. Once he accepted the fact that relaxing was a good use of time, he became less compulsive about being busy and started enjoying each activity more. Previously, he had been so busy doing that he had no time to have fun at anything. He began to do less and have more fun.
CHANGE YOUR SITUATION BY MAXIMIZING YOUR TIME
Sometimes the only way to get more leisure time is to reduce the demands of the job. If you attempt to get more relaxation and don’t succeed, you may have to make some basic changes in your work situation.
Napoleon Hill's Success Masters Page 15