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.