Lifestyle Mastery Boxed Set

by Scott Allan

  Be Strategic in Planning the Success of Your Mentorship

  How do you want to be remembered? What are some of the words you would like people to say about you at your funeral?

  What actions will you take from now on that will move you in the direction of leaving behind a worthy legacy? What is the message you would like to pass on to future generations?

  Take the time to think about this carefully and know exactly what it is you want to portray to the world, and then seek to become that person.

  Identify the kind of person you want as a mentor. What personal qualities does this person have that you admire? What kind of a relationship are you hoping to develop with them?

  What are the primary roles and responsibilities of a mentor?

  What would you expect from such a relationship? How would you contribute to making this a successful relationship with your mentor/mentoring apprentice?

  Think about what your life means and the role you are fulfilling, and how you can use your experience and knowledge to help others.

  What are some of the personal challenges you will encounter on your way to becoming a mentor?

  What are your character weaknesses? What are your character strengths?

  Write down three weaknesses holding you back and brainstorm ideas for overcoming them.

  What kind of an influence would you like to have in the lives of other people?

  What is the legacy you want to leave for others to follow?

  What will your legacy stand for? What will it say about the kind of person you were?

  Guidelines for Effective

  Leadership and Mentoring

  The mentor leads by a set of principles that serve as guidelines for establishing the role of an effective mentor and leader. If you follow these principles, you will be successful in helping others achieve their goals and long-term successes.

  As mentors, we must strive to attain certain vital characteristics if we are to become effective leaders.

  The mentor is someone who:

  Helps to clarify and determine goals, and to build a vision that supports the success of those goals

  Shows the partner various methods to overcome life’s obstacles, such as fear, procrastination, deeply rooted negative character habits, work-related stress issues, and relationship issues

  Helps to identify self-destructive habits and negative beliefs by offering suggestions or a course of action to take the mentee from a place of weakness to a place of personal empowerment

  Helps the partner in discovering and nurturing unique talents and interests so they can merge with their chosen path and fulfill their role in this world

  Listens with genuine interest to the partner and guides them to discover solutions to problems through asking pertinent questions related to their area of concern

  Encourages people to expand their horizons—that is, to stretch out into the world, pushing beyond their comfort zone so they are more comfortable with taking risks and trying new things

  Assists the mentee to build strong character values in line with the person they most desire to become

  Leads people to discovering a set of principles and ethics they can live by in order to become of greater value to society

  Shares their own unique experiences with the mentee, offering helpful insights while demonstrating a genuine enthusiasm and willingness to be there when needed

  Focuses on the individual, the complete person, and builds a relationship based on the principle that the health and well-being of the mentee comes first

  Teaches another how to become a good mentor

  Is committed to the relationship and the well-being of the mentee for as long as the relationship is active (this commitment forms a solid bond between both individuals)

  How many of these traits are you strong in? Which traits need improvement? Take note of what you could work on to upgrade your mentoring leadership skills.

  SECTION IV:

  The Master of Developing

  Creative Ideas

  “Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.”

  — Jim Rohn

  Ideas That Build

  the Future

  “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

  — David Allen

  In this book so far, you learned how to handle difficult obstacles holding you back. By becoming aware of the obstacles in your way, you can create a roadway to greater freedom. By struggling with less, you create more.

  Then, the section on managing your time taught you how to put your energy to good use. By learning to value your time, you become less distracted and your thoughts act as better vessels to bring good opportunities your way.

  We looked at mentoring and the impact this can have on future generations. By learning to discipline the core self, you approach people from a position of self-confidence that becomes a “want” for many. When others are drawn toward your confidence and genuine compassion, you can help them to discover the nest of themselves.

  Now, let’s look at the power of creative ideas and how a disciplined system for capturing and implementing these idea goes a long way to helping you get anything you want. How is this possible?

  Ideas are the spark of all creativity. By removing your obstacles, you free up your mind to think more creatively. By managing your minutes, you spend more time being creative and less time wasting your most precious resource: time. Then through mentorship, you can instruct other people to tap into their greatest ideas and come up with innovative ideas to reinvent and transform their lives.

  Creating an Idea Organization System

  By putting your best ideas into action, there is no telling what could happen on this journey. With this system in place, you will be able to forge greater ideas to create anything you want: mastering a skill, building a business, or implementing innovative products and services to help people lead better lives. Your ideas can build a gateway to a better future, your future, and the future of generations to come.

  I love coming up with new ideas. As I write books and blog articles, so many of the ideas I dream up with every day are either about stories, outlines, or even book titles for new material.

  If I were a painter, I’d come up with ideas for new pictures; if I were a fashion designer, I’d be working on ideas for a new clothing line; a game programmer would have tons of ideas for new games, or ideas for improving existing ones.

  An online entrepreneur generates ideas to connect with people and build new products. A business leader comes up with ideas for launching a new product. A mother generates ideas to teach her children from home. Entrepreneurs develop ideas to expand their business and reach a larger audience with their message.

  When you put your imagination to work, you have endless possibilities and opportunities for personal development. When you are passionate about the work you do or project that you’re working on, ideas can flow with ease.

  If you are stuck in a job you hate, your negative thoughts surrounding work make the creating process more difficult. You might be less motivated to put your ideas into action. So, find something you love to do and put your ideas into action to find a way to make a living from doing what you love.

  Whatever your passion is, that is the platform you should focus your ideas on. But, as you will see, it is good to spread your ideas across other categories and platforms as well. You don’t have to restrict yourself to just one specific area of interest. My ideas tend to cover a broad spectrum: one day I’ll have an idea for a book, and the next day it could be something for a new online business.

  World-class Ideas That Matter

  Why are ideas an integral piece to success? A strong idea carries the potential to develop into a world-class work of art, a book, a business, or the solution to a problem that helps thousands of people.

  Have you ever had an idea that you just had to take action on? Do you have so many ideas every day that you feel o
verwhelmed and don’t know what to focus on first? Or maybe you struggle to come up with unique ideas and you want to make it a habit to create more?

  Remember this: your ideas matter. People are waiting for the next thing to help them add greater value to their lives. You don’t have to come up with the next best light bulb or have thousands of ideas like Edison or Einstein. But with a clear mind focused on solving a particular problem, solution development, or building your “dream lifestyle,” you do have the potential to come up with the answer for just about anything.

  “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon

  you have a dozen.”

  — John Steinbeck

  You have a world of ideas and thoughts that you haven’t discovered yet. More than just a “good thought,” a great idea could be the right idea to open the doors of your dreams. Everything you have ever wanted could be on the other side of your greatest idea if you have the courage to pursue it.

  Mark McCormack, the founder and chairman of IMG and a best-selling author, said, “If new ideas are the lifeblood of any thriving organization—and, trust me, they are—managers must learn to revere, not merely tolerate, the people who come up with those ideas.”

  Ideas are infinite. They create the future. Good ideas can create your future! Build a business, enjoy your work, or plan out your goals for the next ten years and generate ideas for putting an action plan into the works.

  The world was created based on the ideas of people with the courage to take action on them. In fact, with the information age here and new technology being developed every day, creative ideas are needed more than ever. And you never really know what you can turn out when you start to piece things together with your imagination and when your creative subconscious bottled up inside you decides to make its presence fully known.

  Building Your Own Reality

  When you stop believing in the world’s version of reality, and you set out to create your own reality that fills you up with a deeper sense of passion and purpose, a new life starts to take shape. Just look at all the entrepreneurs out there who have fashioned whole new careers and businesses because they had an idea and put it into action. You can create a similar experience if you know what it is that you want to create and you put your ideas into action.

  Taking definitive action is imperative. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if it just sits there at the back of your mind waiting for “someday,” nothing will come of it. Action makes results happen. If you are not happy with the path you are on, it is up to you to change directions or take a new road altogether. It is never too late and you are never too young or too old.

  A lot of people lack confidence in their ideas. We hear names like Einstein, Edison, Jobs, and Disney and immediately think genius. Yes, these innovators were geniuses in their contributions to the world. This doesn’t mean that you and I should shy away from creating an idea platform full of mind-blowing inventions that others might pay money for. Is it really too hard to believe?

  Mai Lieu was a hair stylist in a salon twelve years ago when she had an idea for a self-styling gadget that would save people a ton of money. She quit her job and worked on her invention, the CreaClip. Now she is a successful millionaire entrepreneur, speaker, and author.

  Susan Gregg Koger turned her passion for thrifting and vintage clothing into a thriving business by selling the finds she could no longer keep around her home. The company called ModCloth is growing at the rate of 40 percent a year with over 450 employees.

  Imagine what you could do if you put your ideas to work. What ideas have you had that you dismissed as silly or unimportant because you didn’t think it mattered?

  A good idea is not always surrounded by an “aha” moment or feelings of euphoria. Many times, they are like nuggets buried in the earth that go unnoticed for thousands of years until someone sees the value in these nuggets, pulls them out of the dirt, and puts them into action.

  You have a “nugget” within you right now, an idea that could change the direction. Of everything. You just haven’t discovered it yet. Or maybe you have, and you’re afraid to talk about it. Some ideas pull at us for years, which could be referred to as a calling to do something that cannot be ignored. You have the powerful urge to do something different with your life that serves a greater purpose. Your ideas are like stones leading to that higher calling.

  You can make a difference right now by sitting down for one hour and sketching out all the ideas you’ve had over the past week. Try it and see. Do it right now. Grab a pen and paper and brainstorm the ideas that have been roaming around in your mind. I’ll bet you’ve had several good ones since this morning. Don’t cast aside your ideas just because they seem “out there” or too unbelievable.

  By exercising your idea muscle, you will make idea generation a habit. Soon you will have so many ideas that you won’t have time for idle chitchat or small talk that leads nowhere. You’ll be too busy building a better future for yourself.

  One reason many people fail to succeed is because they fail to trust in their own imagination. Relying on cheap entertainment and distractors to fill in the time, they become lost in the hustle of looking busy but they’re not. You must begin to believe and then to trust. Can you remember a time when your creative flow was in high gear? How long ago was that?

  Return to that moment again in time and relive the dream you had at one time in your life. What ideas were you working on? What did you want to do and be? By going deep and doing a self-exploration of your inner world, you will see the ideas, the nuggets, hiding there waiting to be called for.

  The Idle Mind and Banishing Excuses

  An idle mind without a purpose will develop all sorts of bad habits: excessive TV watching, compulsive shopping, addictions such as gambling or worse. Without this focus in your life, you will look for distractions to fill up the time or create trouble for the sake of doing something. Don’t get sucked into the boredom life trap. Focus on turning good ideas into a creative funnel that adds value to people’s lives and you’ll be taking the first real step toward bringing your uniqueness into the world.

  When people say they are bored, what they really mean is they want to do something but don’t know what to do. If they can’t occupy the mind with a creative project or put an idea into action, it opens the door to a host of negativity.

  “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”

  — Greg Anderson

  Getting focused and keeping your goals in sight will keep your ideas flowing continuously. They will be overflowing and you won’t be able to keep up. You have lots of good ideas and some great ones. Now, you are going to explore various ways to capture, organize, and integrate these ideas.

  But first, you need to get your excuses out of the way. Instead of creating the excuses below, you could be creating your future.

  My ideas are not original, creative, or mind-blowing. (That’s okay; you can build from existing platforms. You don’t have to come up with something totally unique. Just find a better way to do it.)

  All the good ones are already taken. (No, they aren’t. The world needs ideas now more than ever. This is the worst excuse I hear the most often.)

  I’m not an inventor. (Learn how to invent and patent; Mai did.)

  It takes me a long time to come up with a good idea for anything.

  Most of my ideas are crap. (Yes, maybe they are, but most ideas are until you find a good one.)

  I’m not good at writing ideas down; I get them and then I forget about them. (Don’t worry; we will cover the idea capturing system soon.)

  I need an MBA in order to launch a successful business. (Steve Jobs never finished college, and Einstein never finished high school. So?)

  Whenever I have a good idea, it turns out somebody has already taken it. What’s the point? (True, a lot of ideas out there are similar, and it's not uncommon for people
to have the same idea. But that’s okay. The fact that you came up with a really good idea that someone else did says something: you can do this!)

  People laugh when I tell them about an idea I had. I don’t have much confidence in myself to really come up with anything that’s worthy. (You might be telling the wrong people. Join a mastermind group that supports your ideas. People don’t laugh at you but laugh with you.)

  There are lots of excuses people use to talk themselves out of doing something. We seem to think that all the good ideas are taken, or that only inventors, scientists, and creatives have the right to come up with all the good stuff that changes the world.

  You don’t have to come up with an idea that is going to change the world. If you do, that’s great, but take the pressure off yourself to come up with something that is so unique nobody else has ever thought of it.

  Most ideas these days are built from existing platforms that other inventors and creatives have already established. This means you can look at something that is working for other people and try to find an edge; look for a way that it can be done better. That is where your ideas exist!

  One of the best ways that you can do this is to create a business, product, or service that solves problems for people. When was the last time someone helped you with a problem? I’ll bet it was a book, blog, or product that you purchased? Or maybe a friend of yours gave you some advice that you followed through on.

  Keep a positive mindset and you’ll stay focused on putting your thoughts and ideas into action. From there, you can funnel your plan into a business of your choice.

  In the next section we will look at the various apps you can use to capture your ideas on the move. After that, we will look at organizing ideas into their right categories and then putting these ideas into action when ready.

  After all, what is the point of having ideas if we can’t take action with them? We need to capture these thoughts as they happen before they are gone.