Focused Action

Many times people spend countless amounts of energy but seem to not realize the results they envision. Like a magnifying glass when it is held still and focused it can create a beam of light that can start a fire. So can we when we realize our top priorities and focus on them. When you truly know where you should be headed, your priorities become clearer and your actions start to take on major significance towards your desired result.

GREAT PASSION + CLEAR MISSION = FOCUSED ACTION

When things come up in your business, which they will, follow this plan:

1. Determine the validity of the need.
2. Look for a leadership opportunity to be able to incorporate someone new. Your focus should be on only a few things and delegate the rest.
3. Make sure to delegate to the right people.
4. When bringing on new leaders make sure to publicly give credit to them. Build confidence and trust in them.

Many of us have heard before of the Pareto Principle. It states that 20% of your priorities will give you 80% of the production. In our business we need to focus on recruiting. If our desire is to help non-profits how many more could we help with 1,000 people in our team? If we want to earn money from shopping, wouldn't it be easier to have 1,000 business builders helping us find the customers? Many times because it's easier and possibly "sexier" we think we should focus on other things than going through the numbers necessary to find interested talented people to be in our team. The reality is that this effort is what the Pareto Principle reflects that our time focused on these activities will not lead to the 80% of our desired result. I did not love recruiting. In fact I was terrible at it in the beginning. I learned to love it because instead of focusing on the work I focused on the result. I then began to tie the work emotionally into the passion for the desired result. I soon loved to do the work. Everything works this way. For many new people they have not placed enough passion and enjoyment to reaching their goals and attaching that desire to the work necessary.

Leadership must be determined and developed

Qualifications:

1. Known for their sphere of influence
2. People who can be part of a team
3. Trusted among the other people
4. Hungry for the task at hand
5. Competent and intelligent
6. Responsible

To Develop Commitments

1. Commitment starts in the heart. Before achievement.
2. Commitment is tested by action. Talk is cheap.
3. Commitment opens the door of accomplishment.
4. Commitment can be measured. Evaluate it as often as possible. Check your calendar and checkbook.
5. Commitment enables a leader to make decisions.
6. Commitment flourishes with public accountability.

It's the little things that matter

If you're on the river of life it's likely you are going to hit a few rocks. The key is when you do go aground, notice not "if", instead of beating yourself up for being such a failure remember there are no failures in life. Learn from the experience. Use whatever life gives you in the moment.

In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus. Most of our problems like overeating, drinking, smoking, feeling overwhelmed and giving up on our dreams come from a short term focus. Success and failure are not overnight experiences. It's all the small decisions along the way that cause people to fail. Failure to follow-up, failure to take action, persist, manage our mental and emotional states. Failure to control what we focus on.

Conversely, success is the result of making small decisions, holding yourself to a higher standard, deciding to contribute, feeding your mind rather than allowing the environment to control you.

What controls our actions?

1. Core beliefs and unconscious rules
2. your life values
3. your references
4. the habitual questions that you ask yourself
5. the emotional states you experience in each moment

We must overcome our fears of making the wrong decisions. No matter what decisions we make, be flexible, look at the consequences, learn from them, and use those lessons to make better decisions in the future.

Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is the result of bad judgment. Failing over and over again and reaping the benefit from all the experience. These seemingly bad experiences are sometimes the most important. When people succeed they relax and party when they fail they think and begin to make new distinctions that will help them grow further.

A role model or expert is essential because we can learn from someone else's mistakes and how to navigate the rapids that are sure to come.

JUST DO IT

Most decisions are more like wish lists, stating preferences. The word decision comes from the Latin roots de, which means "from", and caedere, which means "to cut". Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility. The challenge for many of us is that we haven't made a true decision in so long we forgot what it feels like.

The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. This will help provide valuable distinctions to make evaluations and therefore decisions in the future. That information is the power of the future when acted upon. Repition is the mother of skill.
It is in the moments of decision that your end result is shaped. 3 decisions that you make every moment control your destiny.

1. What to focus on
2. What things mean to you
3. What to do to create the results you desire

People who are doing more than you are making these decisions differently.

Today is the day!!

Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you've been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of the person you are by proclaiming, "THIS IS WHO I AM. THIS IS WHAT MY LIFE IS ABOUT. AND THIS IS WHAT I'M GOING TO DO. NOTHING WILL STOP ME FROM ACHIEVING MY DESTINY. I WILL NOT BE DENIED!!!!"

It's not important initially to know how you will achieve a certain result. What is important is to decide you will find a way no matter what.

1. Decide what you want
2. TAKE MASSIVE ACTION
3. Notice what's working and what isn't
4. change your approach until you begin to achieve it

Deciding to produce a result causes other events to be set in motion to make it come about. As soon as you truly commit to making something happen the "how" will reveal itself.

Take Control

Most people overestimate where they can be in one year and underestimate what can be achieved in 10 years.

How am I going to live the next 10 years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I am committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What's important to me now and will be in the long-term?

The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they've done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results. If we want to direct our lives we must take control of our consistent actions.

What precedes and determines the actions we take? The power of our DECISIONS!!! Our decisions, not conditions, determine our destiny. Many people are interested in success but that is not a decision. There is a big difference between being interested in something and committed to it.

Set a standard for your life and don't slip below it. Make a decision now and it will change in an instant.

Focus

When we really start to focus our energy on finding and creating a desired result we will start to see new patterns and strategies to make that desired result become a reality. Our brain has a part in it called the reticular activating system that helps sort our unnecessary stimuli. When something starts to become our focus it now kicks in this ras and we start to see it clearer and more often. Have you ever felt the itch of a bug crawling on you and then after started feeling them all over? These itches were always there but our ras was not focused on them till we saw the bug. Without the ras we would be overwhelmed with too many stimuli. This holds true for why when we start to focus on success we open the door to things that were unnoticed before.

These are some questions I asked myself on my way to success. How can I take immediate control of my life? What can I do today that will make a difference-that could help me and others to shape our destinies? How can I expand, learn, grow and share that knowledge with others in a meaningful and enjoyable way?

The sad thing is information is so available to us and we don't take advantage of using it. The average American that buys a book only 10% read past the first chapter.

To Make A Lasting Change

1. Raise your standards. What do I demand of myself? All the things that I will no longer tolerate and accept. All the things that I aspire to become.
2. Change your limiting beliefs. We can't only change the standards we must also change our beliefs to meet them. Beliefs tell us what we think is possible. We certainly can and will meet the new standards belief needs to be possible first.
3. To attain our new standard we must change our strategy. Find a role model that is already doing it. Don't do what we think is the strategy but do what they think is the strategy. They are the one's who have done it so who should we model, us or them?

Many people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not good enough we must take action!!

Don't leave ourselves trying to control outside situations which we have no control over. We control the inside, our emotions and that is where we need to focus.

There is no quick fix.

Think Wealthy

Here's a rule for you. If you want to become successful, find out what failures do and don't do it. If you want to be wealthy, find out what poor people think about, and avoid thinking in those ways. Instead, find out how wealthy people think. Find out what they read. Find out how they spend their time. Study their lives, read their stories and autobiographies and listen to their words when they are interviewed and on tape. The more you find out what financially successful people think and talk about most of the time, and do the same things, the more rapidly you will enjoy the same rewards that they do.

Closing

Chances are good that salespeople can close too soon for some of their potential clients. When and how to close the sale is a matter of instinct that's developed from experience.

When potential clients get a little uncomfortable and start to back off verbally or non-verbally (body language), here are the pressure-relieving words you need to say:
Phraseology: “Let me apologize, John. I didn't mean to push you. I know you may still have a lot of questions; however, you wouldn't have let me discuss (your product or service) with you to this point if you weren't at least somewhat interested, would you? (Pause briefly for a sign of their agreement.)
I may have covered the details a little fast, but we have agreed that (go back to a benefit summary, one that has been agreed upon thus far), haven't we?”

When you start to get “yes” responses, you have begun to rebuild the momentum carrying you to the final agreement. You can now gently go back into closing the sale. If you receive any negative responses during your benefit summary, you'll discover concerns that haven't been properly addressed. Handle them, and continue moving toward the final agreement.

The Power of Now

If you are going to jump up and down for every success, or drag yourself down in pity for every conceived failure we are going to ruin the power of now. When we can freely flow into the next presentation, learning from our past attempts that is when we are on top of our game. Many times our emotions taint the future outcomes that were sure to come if we just kept focused. It's almost like having 2 selves. 1. the instructor who is critiquing every shot good or bad and 2. the player who actually goes out and plays. There are plenty of times and ways to learn without us personally being dragged down by self 1 when we just need to be growing and doing with our self 2.

To produce at our best we must live every second in the present. Will we be learning things from past mistakes? Of course. But the moment we let our emotions control our future moments we are not advancing from these great lessons but slowing down our "flow" of natural progression forward to success.