Unlocking Your Creativity

I began studying creativity more than 20 years ago. I thought it was an ability that was possessed by a few, especially intelligent people, such as artists and writers and scientists. But as I delved further into the subject, I came to a remarkable conclusion: I am a genius! Not only that, but you, too, are a genius! In fact, probably 95 percent of the population has the capacity to function at exceptional levels. Creativity is as natural to human beings as is breathing in and out. Everyone is creative to a certain extent. People are highly creative because they decide to be highly creative. It’s no miracle. Creativity is like any human faculty; it can be developed with practice and strengthened with constant use.

If you improve things in small ways, you are engaging in small acts of creativity. If you make major breakthroughs, and improve parts of your life in extraordinary ways, you are demonstrating high levels of creativity. And the amount of creativity you use in your life is largely up to you.

If creativity is improvement, in what areas do you want to use it? The answer is simple. You want to use your inborn creativity to improve the parts of your life that are most important to you. You can use your creativity to improve your relationships, to increase your income and improve your business, and to assure yourself higher levels of health and happiness. With that definition, you can see clearly that you have opportunities to be creative from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night.

Creativity is like a muscle. If you do not deliberately and consciously flex your creativity on a regular basis, it becomes weak and soft. It loses its strength. If people criticize you for your ideas, or if you have concluded that you are not particularly creative, you will tend to be more passive and submissive and look to others for new and better ways of solving problems and achieving goals. However, if you start to practice creative thinking, along the lines that I’m going to share with you, you will be absolutely amazed at how smart you really are.

I used to think that you had to be highly intelligent to be creative. Then I found that intelligence is not just a matter of IQ. There are many people with high IQs who got excellent grades in school but who are doing very poorly at life. They are working at jobs they don’t like and earning salaries that are far below their potentials. They probably haven’t come up with a creative idea in years.

Intelligence is a way of acting. If you act intelligently, you are intelligent. If you act stupidly, you are stupid. That’s all there is to it. You can decide to be highly intelligent and highly creative simply by doing the things that highly intelligent and highly creative people do. If you do these things over and over, you’ll soon get the same results. People around you will be talking about how bright and full of ideas you have become.

There are three basic qualities of genius. Since you are a genius, you should know what they are and apply them regularly.

The first quality of genius is open-mindedness. People who are fluent, flexible and adaptive in their thinking are far brighter than those who are rigid, mechanical and straitlaced. The more open you are to new ideas and possibilities, to new approaches and solutions, the more creatively you will function.

Most people tend to fall into what are called "thinking traps." They assume that there is only one right answer to a problem; in reality, there could be several right answers. They jump to conclusions, assuming that because one thing happens, it is the reason for another thing’s happening; there may be no relationship at all between the two events. Sometimes people think that the problem has to be solved immediately; often, the problem can be deferred for some time, and often it will solve itself if left alone.

People think that certain problems have to be solved without spending any money; often, if the solution is important enough, it is a good idea to spend money on it.

Another thinking trap people fall into is thinking they have to solve the whole problem; sometimes, solving just one part of the problem is enough for the time. A final thinking trap is thinking that it is your problem and you are the one who must solve it; often, it is someone else’s problem, and the very best thing for you to do is to turn it over to that person and refuse to get involved.

My Mentor,
Brian Tracy

To Have An Amazing Life You Have To Take Amazing Risks!

Walt Disney's first company went bankrupt. Instead of giving up he headed to Hollywood with twenty dollars and a suitcase to start a new business. He believed in himself and his ideas. It turned out to be a really good risk.

Michael Jordan was cut from his sophomore varsity basketball team for being too short. He stuck with the game and ended up one of the best basketball players in the world.

Terry Fox started his Marathon of Hope, running across Canada after having one leg amputated due to cancer. He wanted to raise money for cancer research. Terry never finished the run because cancer took his life. To date more then 400 million dollars have been raised for cancer research in his name.

Winston Churchill did poorly in school for which he was punished. He also had a stuttering speech impediment. Churchill went on to become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a Nobel Prize winner.

One of the greatest baseball players of all time Reggie Jackson struck out 2597 times at bat.

Each of these individuals teach us that in order to have an amazing life you have to believe in yourself and take extraordinary risks even when everything and everyone around you sends the message that you can't do it.When you take risks you can start big or small according to your threshold of comfort. Some people take giant leaps and others feel more at ease with baby steps as they build their risk taking muscle. It doesn't matter which category you fall into, as long as you are taking risks.

Sometimes you just have to jump into things instead of dwelling or meditating on them for days on end because hesitation may result in a missed once in a life time opportunity. Just use logic and make sure you aren't putting your life or someone else's life in danger.If you find that you want to take more risks but something is holding you back; or maybe just the thought of taking risks has you shuddering, get to the root of issue. Maybe you are holding onto a fear or belief in your mind that is limiting and negative. Perhaps you don't even know what is stopping you from taking the risk, you just know every time you want to step out and try something new, you find yourself frozen and rooted in place.

This is the perfect opportunity to examine your beliefs about risks, failure and making mistakes. Also notice and become aware of your beliefs and thoughts about yourself and your abilities.A person might take a risk and make a mistake, but it isn't a failure until he or she decides that it is a failure and starts beating themselves up about it.

Are you worried about what other people might think of you? How do you measure success? Do you fear success? Are you dealing with lack of self confidence, self worth and deserving? Negative and limiting beliefs in any or all of these areas need to be uprooted, re-engineered and replaced with positive beliefs in order to start moving forward.It's important to believe in yourself and to take risks.

Holding a mind full of positive beliefs will support, encourage and propel you forward. When you start taking risks, jumping on opportunities and accepting challenges amazing things begin to happen; an amazing life unfolds and at the center of that is an amazing person. That amazing person is you.

Esther Bartkiw is a Core Belief Engineering Practitioner, Motivational Speaker, Nutritional Cleansing Coach and Author. She can be reached at 905-630-4471 or by email at esther@changefromwithin.ca Visit her website at http://www.changefromwithin.ca and follow her tweets at http://www.twitter.com/changeisgoodArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Esther_Bartkiw

Controlling Your Mind Power - Stop Allowing Adversity to Bully You

Each one of us at some point in our lives is faced with adversity. It might be an adversity that is so monumental and horrific as to defy description. It has been my experience that so-called small adversities never seem to come knocking. All of them, at least for a time, seem so large as to look insurmountable. Nearly all of them in some way have a financial basis.

For most people, the response is automatic and predictable. As soon as an adversity appears the ever lurking fear, in which Robert Kiyosaki says is deeply ingrained into the non-rich 95% of the population, seizes the opportunity, takes control, and projects the adversity as a larger than life presence. Other emotions that are closely associated with fear also show up. Thinking becomes cloudy. The bodily fight or flight systems activate to some degree. Physical discomforts are also a possibility.

Have you ever asked yourself why people are so greatly effected by what are mostly irrational fears? I certainly did not ask myself that question for many, many years. I just thought it was the natural thing to do. Even more years passed before I received my answer. It came to me one day while I was doing some clean up on my car with the trunk of the car open. My four year old grandson was serving as my help mate. In the trunk was a pair of binoculars that my help mate wanted to explore. As he looked through them, he said what he was seeing was fuzzy. He asked me to help him see clearly. I chose a target and adjusted the zoom until the target was clearly in view.

It was then that my answer flashed into my mind. Focus. While I was focused on my target through those binoculars, the target was all that I could really see, and the target is what occupied my conscious mind. I did not consciously see anything else but the target because anything that was fuzzy or only slightly perceptible, I disregarded. Focus is the key that led to my understanding of why adversities loom so large.

Allegorically, the self image uses irrational fear as its binoculars when adversity appears. As you focus on the adversity through fear, all other thoughts and ideas become fuzzy and are pushed into the background. Only the adversity is crystal clear, looming larger than life. The longer you focus on it, the larger it seems. Various scenarios, driven by the fear, probably flash across your mind, each of which has a seemingly dreadful outcome.

Here is a question for you. Since none of these fear-driven destinations is what you desire, why would you continue to focus on any of them? What prevents you from changing your focus? In truth, nothing can prevent you from re-directing your focus if you decide to do so. By controlling the power of the mind, you have the power available to focus on any thought, idea, or mental image you want!

Stop focusing on the adversity. Instead, focus on what you desire. By presenting to your mind an end result that you desire and by choosing to use PMA (a positive mental attitude) as allegorical binoculars, your desire takes center stage in your mind. The longer you focus on it, the larger it grows. You will be amazed how quickly the fear and its related thoughts fade farther and farther into the background.

This I know for sure. You can claim or re-claim control of your own mind power. You are the most miraculous of all living beings on earth. You are the owner of a mind that is so stupendous, that as you truly begin controlling your mind power and consciously using it, there is no dream that you can dream that you cannot achieve.

Harold L Lowe retired at age 62 when his six-figure income position was eliminated. He now wishes to share some of what he has learned since then and some of his experiences as well through articles. He is now studying The New Think And Grow Rich with the author, Ted Ciuba, a founding member of the World Internet Summit. To Claim A FREE Copy Of The Book That Inspired The Movie/DVD/Book, The Secret, Go To: http://www.MasteringYourMindPower.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harold_L_Lowe

It is Up to You!

One of the first things successful people realize is the old adage, “if it is to be, it is up to me.” That is, for you, the fact that your success and your course is up to you. This doesn’t mean that you do it all alone. It simply means that you take responsibility for your life and your career.

Too many people today look at opportunity and figure it is up to someone else to make sure they get it. They look at financial security and hope that the government will make sure they live safely in retirement or in case of disability. They wait and wait, figuring that it is up to someone else. And then the wait is over, and it is too late to do anything. Their life is over and they are filled with regret.

This isn’t true for you however. You know that you must take responsibility for your life. It is up to you. The fact is that nobody else is going to do it for you, you must do it yourself.
Now, some people may say, “Jim, that’s a lot of responsibility.” Friends, that is the best news you can ever hear. You get to choose your life. Hundreds of millions of people all around this world would give anything to live in the situation you dojust for the chance to have the opportunity to take control of their destiny. “It is up to you” is a great blessing!

Here’s why:
1. You get to chart your own destiny. Maybe you want to start a small business and stay there. That’s great because you can choose that. Maybe you want to create a small chain of stores. Maybe you want to have a net worth of $100 million. That’sokay too. The idea is that you get to choose. You can do whatever you like. Different people have different dreams and they should live them accordingly.

2. You can reap what you sow. Sleep in and go to work late and reap the return. Or get up early and outwork the others and earn a greater return. Place your capital at risk and earn a return or place it at greater risk and perhaps reap a greater return. You decide what you will sow and thus what you will reap.

3. No one else can stop you from getting your dream. Yes, there will always be things that come up and people who may not like what you are doing, but you can just move on and chart your own course. There is great freedom in that.

4. You experience the joy of self-determination. There is no greater pride than knowing you set your mind on something and accomplished it. Those who live with a victim mentality never get to experience the joy of accomplishment because they arealways waiting for someone else to come to the rescue. Those who take responsibility get to live the joy of seeing a job well done.
Let me ask you a question: Where will you be in 5 years? 10 years? Or 25 years? Do you know? DO you have an idea? Have you ever dreamed about it or set a goal for it? Are you willing to take responsibility and recognize that, “It is up to you?”

You will be wherever you decide to be in those timeframes. You decide. It is up to you.
And that is very exciting!

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Attitude is Everything!

The process of human change begins within us. We all have tremendous potential. We all desire good results from our efforts. Most of us are willing to work hard and to pay the price that success and happiness demand.

Each of us has the ability to put our unique human potential into action and to acquire a desired result. But the one thing that determines the level of our potential, that produces the intensity of our activity, and that predicts the quality of the result we receive is our attitude.

Attitude determines how much of the future we are allowed to see. It decides the size of our dreams and influences our determination when we are faced with new challenges. No other person on earth has dominion over our attitude. People can affect our attitude by teaching us poor thinking habits or unintentionally misinforming us or providing us with negative sources of influence, but no one can control our attitude unless we voluntarily surrender that control.
No one else “makes us angry.” We make ourselves angry when we surrender control of our attitude. What someone else may have done is irrelevant. We choose, not they. They merely put our attitude to a test. If we select a volatile attitude by becoming hostile, angry, jealous or suspicious, then we have failed the test. If we condemn ourselves by believing that we are unworthy, then again, we have failed the test.

If we care at all about ourselves, then we must accept full responsibility for our own feelings. We must learn to guard against those feelings that have the capacity to lead our attitude down the wrong path and to strengthen those feelings that can lead us confidently into a better future.
If we want to receive the rewards the future holds in trust for us, then we must exercise the most important choice given to us as members of the human race by maintaining total dominion over our attitude. Our attitude is an asset, a treasure of great value, which must be protected accordingly. Beware of the vandals and thieves among us who would injure our positive attitude or seek to steal it away.

Having the right attitude is one of the basics that success requires. Thecombination of a sound personal philosophy and a positive attitude about ourselves and the world around us gives us an inner strength and a firm resolve that influences all the other areas of our existence.

To Your Success,Jim Rohn

Make A Life!

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

Little babies just born into this world are a perfect example of selfishness in the highest order but theirs is pardonable. At least they don’t have any sense yet enough to know that others are to be considered. All they ever know or want is to collect and collect until you no longer have any left and yet they will not want to hear of that. Theirs is, just provide.

Many of us are like babies or should I say worse off. My argument is that we have grown enough to know that others should be considered in what ever action we take. Yet all we ever do, have continued to do and will most likely continue to do is to take from this life without ever considering giving something back. There is actually a greater fulfillment in giving than in taking. This many have never realized. If you haven’t too, try do something for someone who will never ever be able to repay you. Give yourself to a worthy cause and see how accomplished you will feel.

Consider the electricity that we now enjoy, communication of all kinds, transportation systems, advances in medicine etc. They were not introduced by angels but by men and women like you and me. Nothing was seriously extraordinary about them except the fact that they had a burning desire to give humanity something to cheer.

You can however never give to life if you don’t discover what your purpose is. It must be something definite which will cause you to focus. Concentration on a single task brings about easy fulfillment and a great sense of accomplishment.

Once you have discovered that purpose, dig for every information about how you to go about it. Do not leave anything to chance. Dig for it like you would for gold. Be very diligent in this as failure to do this might just be your Achilles’ heel.

Plan your execution now that you have knowledge on the purpose. Take time out to utilize every little bit of information to your advantage. You must get yourself organized for proper execution of the plan of actions.

Do not expect everything to go so smoothly despite the planning because most time you just might have over- looked on tiny detail and of course you have to be open to accept failure and learn from them. The Thomas Edison story is a great challenge.

On the whole, I believe everyone has a quota to contribute to life and failure to do so means that you have sent your contribution to the grave where it will be of no benefit to anybody. Have it at the back of your mind that you don’t want to die ashamed of yourself. Posterity should speak well of you.

Go The Extra Mile!

It is so sad but true that many people on earth rely on ‘luck’ or just mere chance for their achievement. There are others though that actually give in the minimum or just enough effort to guarantee their success. The latter are the average achievers while the former are failures who only live out mediocre lives.

The truly excellent persons, the great achievers would never be found leaving anything to chance or settling for good enough. They are always searching and aiming for the best; always pushing their way to the top and once at the top they don’t rest but go over the top. They make the top their new ground zero and begin a fresh for a new peak.

What great achievers do or demonstrate is their desire to always go the extra mile. Great achievers never settle for just enough; they dig deeper, they pull harder and stretch higher. It will do you well to note that nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished any where else but on the extra mile. Check it out: is it a great book? Is it a scientific discovery? Is it a wonderful sermon or a sporting victory? For answers ask William Shakespeare or Thomas Edison or Rev. Billy Graham or Wilma Rudolph.

Great achievers do not have any business with the average. They hate the status average with a passion which in turn gives them a drive for excellence; with a passion. Great achievers never think in terms of good but always ‘it can be better.’ Once something is better, they begin to see it as good and now another drive to better it sets in.

Under- achievers are people who see or set limits on what they can achieve. They are so much contained by these limits that all they ever do or achieve lie within the confines of that limit. They never dare to push forward but rather are always being pushed back by the limits or boundaries they set for themselves.

Someone has said that, ‘there are no hold ups on the extra mile.’ This is very true which is why the world is so full of under- achievers and unsuccessful people than there are great achievers and successful people. On this great high way that has enough space to take all of the world’s successes, only a few dare to drive on. Only a few actually Go The Extra Mile.

This piece is written to help you be an achiever by showing you key areas of your life you should go the extra mile on.

Think Well and Take Firm Decisions- Many people so easily say (without thinking) that, ‘I didn’t even think about it, I just did it.’ This is how those who do not want to go the extra mile behave. Your decisions show what your choices are and your choices shape your life. They determine whether you are traveling in the direction of success and so you have to choose well every time you have to.
Great achievers take time to make their decisions. They think always in term of their decisions’ long and short term consequences; how it will affect their lives and others especially their loved ones. Good decisions save a lot of time. They are cost effective and relief a lot of stress. ‘Look before you leap’ is an old adage that is new to great achievers.
This should not be mistaken to mean that great achievers are slow thinkers or that they do not take risks. As a matter of fact they take more risk than the under- achievers only they take calculated risks.

Write Down Your Goals- Zig Ziglar said, ‘until you commit your goals down on paper you have intentions that are seeds without soil.’ From research only three percent of people ever write down their goals and just one percent reviews them. The people in the elite one percent are the great achievers that go the extra mile. Make every effort to be on the extra mile in goal setting. Not one of the people you find on this sacred one percent is average achievers. They are all Super Achievers in their field of endeavour.
What is that thing you so dream of or fantasize about? You want it to come to pass? Set it as a goal and continually review it and see yourself achieve it.

Plan Thoroughly- Naturally, failing to plan means planning to fail. How very easily you see people set out to execute a project without any form of planning. They simply think about the project, fantasize about their success without taking into consideration the tiny little bits of information that could be fatal to ignore. The fact is, more time and attention should be given to planning than to execution. This is what great achievers do. They go the extra mile, take the pain of going over and over every detail in the blue print to ensure they are in order but setting out. Planning for the great achievers may take almost forever only for the execution to be undertaken in a few minutes, hours or days. Ask the ace athlete. They put in hours and days and months of training only to run a 100m race in under 9 seconds.

Until you learn to go the extra mile in every thing you do your results will be anything but great. The choice is yours.

Kill That Belief System and Let It Die!

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. – Napoleon Hill.

For hundreds of years, “seeing is believing” has been held with high regard especially by those we would easily refer to as doubting Thomases. This however had been countered by several experts to be “believing is seeing”.
It has been noted that every change in your life comes with changing your beliefs about yourself. Your positive growth and improvement will naturally come from changing your belief system about what you can or cannot do. Many claim they have changed their belief systems but keep on hanging to them by indulging continuously in those things that they have been doing.
The following points will guide you to see the need to and how to change your belief system.

· Work on your self – concept: Psychologists have said that your self concept is the total of all your beliefs. Everything you achieve or fail at is as a result of your self-concept. All of your attitudes, feelings and views about yourself and your surroundings make up your self-concept.
So whatever self-concept you build in the inside, whether limiting or uplifting, in such manner will you act on the outside. It will be as if you are acting on a set of facts. The truth is you are.

· Don’t always give in to expert opinion: We have many classic cases of expert opinions that turned out exactly opposite. For instance, Albert Einstein was sent home from school as a young man with a learning disability. His parents were told he could not be educated. His parents refused that judgment and he went on to obtain his doctorate degree before age twenty.
Thomas Edison was sent home from school in the sixth grade on the reason that it would be a waste of money to try and have him educated. His mother home-taught him and he went on to become the greatest inventor of modern age. There are many of such stories. Don’t always give in to such opinion.

· You are unique: Many times people are always caught in the web of drawing conclusions on their ability as a result of some other individual’s experience or out come in life that look exactly like theirs. Let me remind you that the fact that no two individuals, even identical twins, have same finger print is enough evidence for you to know that you are YOU.
It then brings me to another fact that negative habits are very easily picked up. If not, why do humans easily key in to self- limiting beliefs than to success stories? The fact that the other person whose situation is similar (note: similar can never be same) to yours has failed does not mean you must also. If you have, it is because you accepted it on the inside as a fact. You are YOU and YOU alone.

· Find a field you are an expert in: Look earnestly for something you can do; and do very well. There always is that field in which you are very good. Everybody is capable of achieving excellence in an area of life. You are however responsible in discovering this field that you have extraordinary talents in. You just need to tap into your ability pool and fetch out some of which you can use.

· Beliefs learned? Of course!: No man was born into this world with a belief system. All were acquired here by learning. The good news however is that whatever is learned can be unlearned. If you have belief systems that are self- limiting all you have to do is unlearn it. Motivation speaker John Mason’s book titled “Letting go of what is making you stop” aptly describes what you should do with such belief systems. Let go of them so you can have space for that which will lift you up.

· In every negative find a positive: This is the habit of successful people. No matter how a situation turns out, they always expect a good from it. They never fail to pick up a lesson from any of their experiences. Always, believe that something good is in the offing for you.

Managing Your Time!

Have you ever been swamped with schedules, appointments or activities that you felt additional six hours in your day might just be the solution? You are not unique in this. Most productive and functional people feel this way and it is because they have goals or targets they want to meet up with. This however will remain but a mirage if time is not put under control.

Robin Sharma said that, “Time slips through your hands like grains of sand, never to return again. Those who use time wisely are rewarded with rich, productive and satisfying lives.”

Many people have lived their productive years out with little or nothing to show for it due to poor time management and you might be heading the same way if time management is not an integral part of your life either as an individual , a student, a sit-at-home mother, a manager or even a Chief Executive.

There is cheering news however. Time management is a skill and like every other skill, it can be learned. No matter how disorganized you have been in the past or how much you have tended to procrastinate or get caught up in low-value activities, you can change.

The following tips will help get you organized and fired up to always keep yourself on track no matter the type and amount of distractions that come your way. Before I break these tips down, I will like you to know that time management begins with your being able to set out your goals and on a short-term, medium term and long term scale. Time management actually begins with clarity. You must be clear about what you want to accomplish in every area of your life. Once you are clear, come back to the present and plan every minute and hour in everyday of your life; on paper, so you can accomplish what you desire.

Make a list- You must start your time management practicing with a list. The list must be anchored on priorities. The fact about time management that most people are ignorant about is the fact that you cannot manage time. You can only manage yourself and your priorities, better put. This is what makes time management hinged on self- discipline and self- control. It actually requires that you make well informed choices and decisions that will enhance the quality of your life and work.

Have an action plan- Now that you have the list of your goals, you must begin to plan each day in advance; each week in advance and likely the months ahead in advance. The things you plan to do the next day should be written down the night before. When you do this, experts say that your subconscious mind works on the list as you sleep all night long. When you wake in the morning, you will often have ideas and insight to help you accomplish the item on your list.

Do worst things first- You must make a divide while trying to manage your time. Place urgent task on one side and important ones on the other side. Most times, people spend most of their day responding to urgent task that normally include telephone calls, interruptions especially from colleagues, emergencies etc. Important tasks are those that bring positive impacts to your long-term plans. They include planning, organizing, studying etc.

Now when you have a list of the things you want to do the next day, one task will contain more value than everything else put together. Against all odds, ensure that you do it. How will you identify such a task you might be asking? Normally, it is that thing that puts you off easily. That one thing that pains you the most to think of. That one thing that even if you have accomplished ten other tasks, you will still go home and feel you had a bad day and it will keep flashing in your subconscious. That is the worst thing you should do first. You will most naturally feel accomplished and will have a burst of energy to overcome the other tasks.

Concentrate and practice focus – The difference between rays of light and laser beam is that while the rays are scattered and cover a larger area, the beam converges and cover a very small area. The results? The rays only light up while the beam can be used to light up, burn and even cut through a particular area. In time management, it pays to single-handle a task, work on it with a single minded concentration until it is a 100% complete. Thomas Edison once wrote, “My success is due more to work continuously on one thing without stopping than any other single quality.” That’s the power of focus. When you try to catch up on so many things, you tend to spend much more time than you should have. Many more time management tips abound from several experts that will propel you to being an achiever when you finally get time under your control.

Stand Alone! It is Better Than Being With A Worthless Crowd.

The saying that, “Show me your friend and I will tell you who you are” can never be more true. The Book of Proverbs concurs that, "A mirror reflects a man’s face but what he is really is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.”

Many experts have said and I personally have come to agree that, two things (the books you read and the friends you keep) determines to a great extent more than all other factors put together, the direction of a person’s life.

It is common knowledge from experience that you become more and more like the person you are closely associated with. I often tell people when I speak or during one- on- one coaching that many do not exercise fully their right to the choice of who becomes their friend. I would normally go on to point that when you don’t choose the type of friends you want, then just anybody will choose you as a friend.

Without mincing words, I had often told people to dissociate themselves from certain categories of people they related with if they wanted to see an improvement in their situation or life. Of course, it is not always that easy for them but the truth remains that good things don’t come easily. There would always be a sacrifice to make.

Another fact is that the more you associate and tolerate mediocrity around you, the greater the mediocrity in you. I have come across people who from their statements truly (?) desire to be like certain successful individuals but the kind of company they keep does not say anything positive to that effect. I saw an advert once which said, "those that pay peanuts end up with monkeys." See, mediocrity will always give birth to mediocrity, period!

The saying that If you want to fly with the eagle, then you must stop scratching with the ducks completely describe the attitude of one who is striving for excellence. Choose your company carefully: “He who lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.”

Good company will always want to increase you in the right direction while a wrong one on the other hand will not want you to go on. They will always want you to remain where you are or even reduce you.

One way to know the right or wrong type of friends is by what they say or think about your vision or dream no matter how outrageous or insensible they may be. Good friends, no matter what will advice you on how better to go about it but not so with bad friends. They are always ever critical of ideas you come up with even when they seem very good. They are dream killers. Always keep your dreams away from them. Not everyone is entitled to give you advice.

One last thing though: before you start looking out for good friends, consider if you are a great one yourself because the best way to make a true friend is to be one. Those friends will surely be on the look out for what you too can offer them.

You Must Fail!

I know you must be taken aback by the topic of this post to the extent that it has pushed you to want to see what I am talking about here. Yes I repeat it, “You must fail.”

I must confess that when I first came across a statement of this manner sometime ago, I was not in agreement with it. “How can he write such a thing”, I retorted to myself. “With all my positive thinking and preparation, I just could not fail”, I continued. But how wrong a perception I had as I have now out- grown that.

With all the successful people around, one can just easily assume that they just went from one victory to another victory over challenges. The experience from the study of successful people, mostly from their biographies and auto- biographies show that they moved from one failure to another failure until they finally found success.

For example, the life of one of the world’s most renowned leaders, America’s President Abraham Lincoln’s was described as a biography of failure; one the World’s most remembered inventors, America’s Thomas Edison experienced what may be tagged as The World’s Most Persistent Failure when he went on to invent the light bulb. That’s just but the few I want to put down here for now. Think through this story:

A high school commencement speaker was the president of a large corporation. He was actually chosen for the occasion because of his success. Yet his speech came with a most unusual wish for the graduates. The speaker told the students sitting before him in their graduation gowns, “if I could have one hope for you as you go out into the world, it would be this: I hope you fail. I hope you fail at something very important to you.” He went on to say how his own early life had been one failure after another, until he learned to see failure as an effective teacher.

That’s just the point I want to make. Many people out there don’t just want to think about failure. They see failure as a God- forsaken monster that they should have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with. Some according to certain doctrinal teachings don’t even believe such a word should exist.

Most people will always want to run to the place of success while treating the place of failure with disdain. One thing they don’t realize is that on the road to success, one must pass through the den of failure. Someone said that whenever you fall down (fail), pick something up (learn a lesson).

I was listening to a successful entrepreneur being interviewed on TV and when asked what his message was for up- coming entrepreneurs, he said, “know it that you must fail at one point in time or the other.” It was really a hard one for me to chew let alone swallow but it was really a truth of a message.

Failure is good I always tell people when ever I speak formally at seminars or during coaching sessions I give to people. Embrace failure, learn everything you can from it; pick out why you failed and what should have been done to prevent such failure; what were those things that shouldn’t have been done that contributed to your failure and on the whole find a positive from the negative. What do I mean by that? In every failure, find a success.

A popular football coach Vince Lombardi always told his teams, “if you cant stand failing, then you will never be able to understand the true meaning of success.” How about that?

Get on the fast-track to success!

Ever wondered why some people keep suceeding and moving on in life while others are nothing but failures or are stagnated? Several factors have been considered even as uncountable researches have been conducted but one clear cut fact stand out: the successful and the unsuccessful have both made a choice of their present status; either conciously or unconciously.

The tips below and many more will serve to guide you to becoming an achiever. The choice is yours.

• Lean on God-In Him lies the secret of all success because without Him everything will amount to nothing.
• Read good books, attend seminars, watch and listen to educative programs- Your mind, it has been found out, acts on what you feed at. You must then be mindful that the information you take in are those that will build you up positively.
• Be a person of character- Note here that character refers to the person you are when you are alone and is contrast with reputation which is what other people think about you. i tell you a good character will always give birth to a good reputation while teh reverse is not always the case.
• Launch out without fear of mistake but rather befriend your mistakes- All sucessful people make the most of their failures. They always looked out for what wasnt done right and make amends. The number of mistakes made should not be an issue but teh number of lessons learnt. In a few words, enlarge your mistake quota.
• Work for everything you desire and dont grab anything you did not work for- Be sure to check that your desire to go round the back door to obtain anything no matter how insignificant it may seem as this will biuld a get- it- the- right- way- attitude in you. Mike Muddock said, "you do not deserve anything you did not pursue."
• Have a vision or dream, a focus and a sense of mission- It has been discovered from the study of people that people who have a direction go farther and faster and actually get more done in every area of their lives than those who have none. Setting goals is the first major step in achieving success in life. You must plan ahead for your life by setting goals for yourself. Shop for Brian Tracy's book, Goals! on www.briantracy.com
• Keep an enlightened circle of friends- Two things have been said are most responsible for the level of success we attain in life: one is the type of books we read and the other, the class of friends we have around us. Someone has said that if you want to fly with the eagle, then you must stop scratching with the ducks.
• Love whatever you are doing- Put into your job much more than the required effort. Have a passion, a motivation from within and a heart that looks not out for immediate rewards or accolades. ‘Be ready to Live for what is worth Dying for and to Die for what isworth Living for.’
• Strive to be effective and not efficient- Efficiency is doing things right while effectiveness is doing the right things.
• Make time work for you and not you working for time- This is the most precious of all commodities because it is offered in the same quantity to all. Never say I don’t have enough time ‘cause you will never have enough of it till you die. Create time for every important task!
• Work with your convictions- Ignore the “this is how it has always been done” syndrome. He that commands a great orchestra must back the crowd; go against outward conventions and go for inward convictions.