Do You Need to Stop Moving Sideways?

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Our Story Begins with the Dog Chasing His Tail

• He was born in Haiti to the son of a French sea captain in 1785, but spent his growing up years in France.
• He was sent to military school at the age of fourteen.
• He did not make it there, because his real passion was hunting and drawing birds.
• At eighteen, his father and family moved to the United States.
• He had an abysmal career in business. His business partner possessed tenacity for trade, but this man of our story preferred to roam and hunt. In the end, the business went bottom up, and he had to sell his wife's share of her wealthy family's estate to pay off creditors.
• Finally, his partner bought our his share of the business, and our character went in search of another opportunity, never thinking that his affinity for shooting, mounting, and drawing birds would be a serious vocation.
• Over the next 10 years, he failed in business after business, but by 1819, he was bankrupt.
• Necessity forced him to utilize his 'hobby' of hunting birds to put food on the table. He also sold his bird drawings on commission to bring in money.
• Finally, in 1820, this gentleman had a 'big idea' to paint beautiful, detailed pictures with detailed research which became a masterpiece all over Europe and the United Stated.
• His name? John James Audubon, founder of the Audubon Society. His book finally gave him financial security, and a legacy that extended far beyond his lifetime

Lessons To Be Learned: Key Success Factor: Introspection With An Aim Toward Change and Action

John Maxwell, in his book, Failing Forward, dissects this story, and comes up with a simple process that can help you from spinning out on the track to moving forward with new energy, vitality, and purpose.

1. See Yourself Clearly. Garry Marshall, a very successful television producer (of such shows as Laverne and Shirley, the Odd Couple, and the movie Pretty Woman, also produced many failed shows before succeeding). "Most people try to beat down their flaws or deny them altogether. I've found it best to say, 'Here are my flaws. Now I have to find something I'm good at.' Don't use your flaws as an excuse to quit. Move forward or sideways."
2. Admit Your Flaws Honestly. You must take responsibility for your actions. You must also take responsibility for who you are as a person. That means owning up to what you are not good at (based on skill), should not do (based on talent), and ought not to do (based on character).
3. Discover Your Strengths Joyfully. No one ever achieved her dreams working outside her areas of gifting, talent, and motivation. To excel, do what you do well.
   
4. Build on Your Strengths Passionately. Like Audubon, you will improve only if you enthusiastically develop your God-given abilities. To reach your Tomorrow's potential, you must commit to growth Today. As Ghandi stated, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

Action Plan:

• Take inventory of your weaknesses, through your personal observations, listening to the observations of those closest to you (listen with an open and humble mind), and listening to the observations of other people. Write these weaknesses down. If they fall into the category of an attitude or character flaw, work with a close friend for the accountability to change that pattern. If the weakness you listed has to do with an absence of talent or skill, you may need to assess whether you need to shift your work toward working with your strengths, or whether you need to make a plan to gain the skill sets you need to compensate for those weaknesses.
• Take an inventory of your strengths, again through your personal observations, listening to the observations of those closest to you (listen with an open and humble mind), and listening to the observations of other people.
• Write down your strengths under these categories: giftedness, skills, opportunities, resources.

Develop a plan to both correct and minimize your weaknesses, and to build passionately upon and expand your strengths. Change your world, and your whole world changes.

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Discover the Best Way to Talk To Yourself

Did you know that you are talking to yourself? No, you are not cracking up! However, you are continuously communicating to yourself through the way you think to yourself, view things, and the images you create in your mind. I don't know about you, but most of the messages I get from media and people around me tend to be more negative and optimistic.

One of the biggest differences between successful people and unsuccessful people is the tendency to be reactive rather than proactive. In other words, they are passive listeners, receiving the messages from TV and radio in an unthinking fashion, so that they tend to absorb those messages and incorporate them into their thinking.

Successful people, on the other hand, take charge of the information that goes into their minds. They know that they can feed on junk food and produce junk food results, or they can consciously filter and choose what they decide to put into their mind: they feed on mental power vegetables.

As you go into the next week, I would encourage you to take an inventory about what you listen to and read during the days of your life. Do you passively view and listen to junk food TV programs, radio shows, and negative opinions. Or do you seek to read quality content, listen to optimistic messages, and view valuable shows that will add value to your thinking and positive results to your life?

An example of positive sources of mental food that I choose to "eat" during the week: daily time in the Bible; 15 minutes of personal development at Morning Coach; reading quality books both in my field and fictional works as well, and quality blogs (for example, Zen Habits, Life Optimizer, and Cultivate Greatness, although there are many more).

One key success factor resource you will want to add to your mental war-chest is positive affirmations that will empower your brain. Think of it as filling up on high grade gas in order to drive effectively throughout the week. I borrowed these positive affirmations from Zig Ziglar's Success for Dummies. As Zig states, "You should look yourself in the eye as you make these positive affirmations. Don't be shy; go ahead and get started! I would challenge you to print these out, laminate them, and read them aloud in the car on the way to work in the morning, and prior to retiring at night:

• I clearly understand that failure is an event, not a person; that yesterday really did end last night; and that success isn't final and failure is not fatal because I only fail if I quit.
• I have the courage to admit a mistake and to say that I was wrong.
• I have vision in my life.
• I utlize every minute well to maximize my ability.
• I am successful because I believe that to be truly educated, I must be mentored--either in business or in my personal life, by reading or by association--by superior minds with greater skills and mature spirits.
• I discipline myself to do the things that I need to do when I need to do them, because I know that doing them will enable me someday to do the things I want to do when I want to do them.
• I clearly understand that if I develop yearning power and apply learning power, I will increase my earning powers.
• I have written, specific goals for my life, and I review them daily.
• I have a great sense of humor, and I have the ability to laught at myself.
• I am like an eraser. I recognize my mistakes, I learn from my mistakes, and then I erase those mistakes from my memory.
• I move forward every day, even if it's only a tiny step, because I know that great things are accomplished with tiny moves, but nothing is accomplished by standing still.

One other powerful set of Zig Ziglar affirmations I have used over the years with great success is found here. I encourage you to incorporate these into your life. I challenge you: if you use positive affirmations on a daily basis, you will see some very positive results after 30 days. Write me and let me know about the positive results that you bring into your life.

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How To Get Off Your Butt When You're In a Slump

We all know that we need to set goals. We all know we need a mission statement. We started out so gung-ho at the beginning of 2009. But now it's June, and summer's on, and....well....we just don't have the same amount of gumption that we had at the outset of this year. We just...feel...so....lazy.

Or, you may have started out on your goals, and you find that your strategies just are not working. You may have started a business that has not taken off. You may have taken a promotion, but found that it was not a good fit for you. You may have gone out on a few dates, just to find out that the other person does not feel the same about you as you feel about them, or the reverse.

Adjust Your Attitude.

Failure, disappointment, and laziness can have a way of influencing our thought patterns. Over time, if we think negatively enough and become sour enough, our attitudes will attract the very misery we say we do not desire into our lives. Acknowledge your disappointment, but don't wallow in it, or it may be a slippery slope downward, and you may never get back up to the top.

Don't Compromise Your Integrity.

In times of failure and disappointment, our character can be tested, and it can be easy to take shortcuts in order to attempt to reach our goals. Be sure to remain true to your core values, and to practice ethical behavior and decision making. In the end, if you have remained true to ethical behavior, you will experience the peace and serenity that only doing the right thing can bring.

Stay With It

Example: in the 1940's, a young inventor took his idea to 20 different corporations over a period of 7 years. All of them turned him down, until he finally got a tiny company in Rochestor, New York, the Haloid Company, to purchase the right to his electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became the Xerox Corporation.

Keep Looking For Opportunities

A young man, Mr. Booth, was sitting on his porch enjoying a Midwestern sunset. As he watched the dust swirlling in the wind, he thought to himself, "What if man could reverse the wind, so that the wind could suck the dust, instead of blowing it?" Thus was the idea for the vacuum cleaner born. Ideas are all around us, but we need to have the postive, curious, engaged mindset to be open for the opportunities to present themselves, and to take advantage of those opportunities.

Finally, Forget Those Who Say You Can't

This hall of "failures" turned to "fame" should encourage you, when you face negative people around you who say you cannot do the things you dream of doing:

• Benjamin Franklin and psychologist Carl Jung were poor mathematicians.
• Albert Einstein did not speak until age 5, and was considered 'mentally slow'
• Inventor James Watt was declared to be 'dull and inept'
• Cartoonist Walt Disney was fired from his first job because he had 'no imagination'
• Inventor Thomas Edison was asked to leave school at age 9 because he was at the bottom of his class
• Writer Edgar Allen Poe, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and painter James Whistler were all expelled from school.
• Grandma Moses was not exactly successful in her youth: she developed her talent, and achieved all her fame and success after age 80.
• Abraham Lincoln had the equivalent of three months of school, and people ridiculed him for his appearance.

This post was borrowed, in part, from Zig Ziglar's Success for Dummies. There are a bunch of other great ideas that I found at Zen Habits, which can serve as a quick reference for you when you need a quick pick me up.

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