Your Past Will Come To Haunt You

Here are some thoughts to think about. People mouth clichés all the time. They use it even without thinking.
Today I will challenge you to think through what you say. So listen to this carefully.

1. When something is "new and improved," which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it.
2. When people say, "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too." What good is a cake you can't eat? Should I eat someone else's cake instead?
3. When people say, "It's always in the last place you look." Of course it is. Why would you keep looking after you've found it? Do people do this? Who and where are they?
4. When people say, while watching a movie, "Did you see that?" No, I paid P120.00 to come to the theatre and stare at my popcorn. What did you come here for?
5. People who ask, "Can I ask you a question?" Didn't really give me a choice, did they?
6. Experience is the best teacher. Not really. As a country we’ve had a lot of experiences before but why do we never learn? Only evaluated experience is the best teacher.
7. Practice makes perfect. I don’t think so. Just ask a golfer with a faulty swing. Practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent.

Consider the following oxymoron and think through it.
Act naturally – How could you do that? Act and then be natural? Now think through the following words:

• Found missing
• Resident alien
• Advanced BASIC
• Genuine imitation
• Modern Antique
• Safe sex
• Airline food
• Good grief
• Same difference
• Almost exactly
• Government organization – were they ever organized in the first place?
• Sanitary landfill
• Alone together
• Legally drunk
• Silent scream
• Living dead
• Small crowd

Some times we speak words that were never well thought through. And many times we do things without thinking through it either. This story will illustrate what I mean.

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello. He's rather taken aback because he can't place where he knows her from. So he says, "Do you know me?" To which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."
Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party I slept with while my buddies and I were stoned crazy and getting drunk?"
She looks into his eyes and says calmly, "No, I'm your son's teacher .."

Oh-oh. Somehow your past will come to haunt you.
Maybe because you never thought through what you did.
Here’s the key.
We’ve done some pretty stupid things in our life and this is the honest truth. We’ve said some stupid things we were not supposed to say. Things we said and things we did that we are not proud of today. These things may come to haunt us today.
Deal with it. Ask forgiveness, make restitution and then move on. No one can live victorious lives if they are anchored on the past.
Everyday offers a brand new start. God is the God of second chances and this is why I love the part of Scriptures that says “His mercies are new every morning because great is His faithfulness.”
Don't live in the past... you have already been there. Don’t just move forward. Move upward!

Giants Begin With Baby Steps

Giants Begin With Baby Steps

There are celebrity sales people who bring in tons and tons of sales and as a result they make tons and tons of money. They are the giants in the industry. And then there are those who would make a sale once in a while and then wonder, what is it with these people who continually rake in the sales and make the money?
Is it luck? But no one gets lucky all the time the way they do. Is it connection? Maybe. But how do I get myself to increase my own network too? There must be something behind it. And so the question pops out in your mind. “How do these people continue to make six or seven figures and here I am struggling month by month just to reach my quota and make ends meet?”
I have been in the human potential development for so long I see things in common among all successful performers whether they be people in sales or in any field of business.
First of all, successful professionals see themselves as who and what they really are. They are professionals and they hold their craft. They have confidence and they know they can achieve greater things.
Secondly, these giants of the industry continue to learn and stretch themselves. They network with people. They serve in their community. They join service clubs, they serve in church and the more they are in touch with people the more they build their network of friends who may just become their clients one day.
I have handled sales people, I have a network of people who are in sales. And it’s extremely rare for me to find person in this chosen field to actually read a lot of books. Rarer still do I find sales people who would invest in attending non-company sponsored seminars. And in many occasion, the same people who do not perform well are the same people who complain that their companies are not providing them support. Amateurs carry this kind of mindset. They have mastered the art of blamestorming.
Not so the giants because they are professionals. Professionals are of a different breed. They’ve got classy upbringing because they bring themselves up. (pun intended) Sales professionals invest in knowledge, they read magazines, they can’t get enough of web portals dedicated to sales and they do invest in attending seminars and conferences. They buy books and they actually read them. And then a wonderful thing happens. They sell more, they earn more and they are more fulfilled. Here’s the common thread woven in the fabric of the professional’s success journey. They work harder on themselves than they do on their jobs. The hungrier you are for knowledge, the wiser you become. Your self-respect increases, your confidence built and opportunities come by your door waiting for you to open.
Your desire to be successful has to be bigger than a 9-5 job. Giants begin with baby steps and you should begin right now. Invest in knowledge; put the seeds in the small steps and continue to water your skills with actual experiences and information you seek. And when the time of harvesting comes, you will have the fruits of your efforts in front of you. Do not waste time. Always find something to do that would add value to what you want to achieve in life. Whatsoever you sow, you shall reap. This is Scripture Truth that continues to operate everyday of our lives.
Never forget. The road to success is marked with many tempting parking places. Say this to yourself all the time: “NO PARKING!”

Business Leadership Advice

The Qualities Of Skillful Leadership by Jim Rohn

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills and opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a parent. I call leadership the great challenge of life.
What’s important in leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective. Here are some specifics:
1) Learn to be strong, but not rude. It is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good substitute.
2) Learn to be kind, but not weak. We must not mistake kindness for weakness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell somebody the truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.
3) Learn to be bold, but not a bully. It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble.
4) You’ve got to learn to be humble, but not timid. You can’t get to the high life by being timid. Some people mistake timidity for humility. Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re part of the stars. So humility is a virtue, but timidity is a disease. Timidity is an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.
5) Be proud, but not arrogant. It takes pride to win the day. It takes pride to build your ambition. It takes pride in community. It takes pride in cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a good leader is being proud without being arrogant. In fact, I believe the worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. It’s when you don’t know that you don’t know. Now that kind of arrogance is intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that’s just too much to take.
6) Develop humor without folly. That’s important for a leader. In leadership, we learn that it’s OK to be witty, but not silly. It’s OK to be fun, but not foolish.
Lastly, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony. Just accept life like it is. Life is unique. Some people call it tragic, but I’d like to think it’s unique. The whole drama of life is unique. It’s fascinating. And I’ve found that the skills that work well for one leader may not work at all for another. But the fundamental skills of leadership can be adapted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the community and at home.
To your success,
Jim Rohn
______________
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* Key points: 1. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective. 2. To become a great leader one must learn to deal in realities. Deal in truth.
-What was the most important lesson you learned in the above article? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Why Change is Hard

Why Change is Hard

“Ah… change is hard and it’s not easy.” A famous line from the children’s movie that teaches adult lessons entitled: “The Lion King.”

Why is change hard? One would wonder.

SOCRATES says: "No man will change for the better until he sees the need for it."

Famous athlete and motivational speaker Dr. Ola Madsen sent me a material that is very interesting. Listen to this:

People who succeed perceive failure as feedback. They use this feedback to change their strategy and take action again. They repeat this process over and over till they get what they want.

Dr. Ola is right. I have met leaders who would never admit mistakes. They pass the blame all over the place. Pointing fingers at people, pointing fingers at circumstances and never looking at themselves in the mirror. These are people who have pre-determined in their minds that they will defend the status quo to the death.

Here are some questions to ponder:

• Why is it that so few people are willing to keep changing and taking action until they get what they want?
• Why do so many people quit along the way?
• Why do so many people even procrastinate in initiating action?

The reason is that while everybody desires to succeed, only a few are truly COMMITTED to their goals. People whose goals are nothing more than desires will only do whatever is within their comfort zone to achieve it. Beyond that, what they give themselves all kinds of excuses for not doing it.

Dr. Ola says:

5% of people are COMMITTED to succeed.

95% of people WISH, HOPE, WANT, LIKE TO succeed.

5% they make it a MUST to DO whatever it takes.

95% act within their comfort zone and give lots of excuses.

When a goal becomes a MUST we operate from a different mind-set.

I speak with HR people all the time. They say that change is difficult to achieve. It is actually not an organizational problem, it is a challenge that you and I need to face every day.

Do you know that there are 3 Certainties in Life:

1. Death
2. Taxes
3. Change

And most of us can handle the first 2 better than the 3rd one.

Sometimes I think that the only change people like is dirty diapers.

Change is impossible unless people believe it is possible.

Now here is what I have discovered.

The reason why change initiatives in organizations do not succeed most of the time is because you cannot rally people to change through a wonderfully prepared PowerPoint Presentation. People change only when they could FEEL the need to change. This is why knowledge alone cannot accomplish goals. People need to buy in to the idea that the change initiative will be for their own benefit.

It’s amazing to see that what a person knows in his or her head does not translate to action unless the felt need is there.

This is why most people I know talk about their personal relationship with Christ and when I listen to their testimonies, the new found knowledge is there but there is a great emotional expression in there as well.

So, are you equipped with the knowledge to change but more importantly, do you feel the necessity to change as well?