Persistence

Persistence

I believe there are three kinds of people. There are winners, who know what they want and understand their potential and the possibilities. They take life on. Next are losers, who don't have a clue as to who they are. They allow circumstances to shape their lives and their self-image.

I believe there is a third group as well. This consists of potential winners whose lives are just slightly out of alignment. I call them wayward winners. It may be that they just need to learn how to be real winners. Perhaps they've hit a bump or two that has knocked them off course and they are temporarily befuddled. A failed relationship, a lost job, financial problems, unformed goals, a lack of parental support, illness... many things can send us off course temporarily.

Wayward winners are not lost souls; they just need some tweaking and coaching and nudging to get them back on course. A map might be nice. Many of these wayward winners are easily identifiable because they are always searching.

Right now, there are many wayward winners out there braving rain, sleet and snow because they, too, still believe that they have untapped talents. They attend motivational seminars and listen to inspirational tapes and they plunge onward, believing that sooner or later they will find their way again.

Other wayward winners have temporarily given up. They are damaged and disoriented, their confidence badly eroded. They tend to drift through life numbly. The friends and relatives and loved ones of wayward winners see that they are out of sync and wonder why they can't be satisfied, why they don't settle down. They wonder how people who have such obvious abilities and great potential can be so disoriented and unsure.

It is difficult for others to understand the rawness of a broken heart or the aching emptiness of an unguided spirit. You and I know. We have been there. Wayward winners know that there are possibilities out there, but too often they feel locked out from them. Some are afraid to risk any more because of what they have risked and lost already.

I know now that as difficult as it may be for you wayward winners to do, it is necessary to continue to test yourselves. Even though you have been hurt before, it is the only way to grow. We all have the capacity to change, to lead meaningful and productive lives by awakening our consciousness.

You know there are going to be tough times as you go about changing your life, so brace yourself and you will be able to handle them. When you get into your seat on an airplane, what is the first thing they tell you to do? Fasten your seat belt. Brace yourself for the turbulence.

When you decide to move your life to the next level of accomplishment, you must fasten your mental and spiritual seat belts because it is going to be a while before you reach that comfortable level again. You will reach it, but you must endure the turbulence of change in order to grow.

Try this technique to help you through the difficult times of change and growth. Find four reasons why you cannot succumb to your fears and your troubles. Find those deep sources of motivation that can lift you out of the turbulence and above the clouds. You must change your life because, for example:

You have not yet tapped the talents given you.
You want to leave something more for your children.
You want to live life rather than letting life live you.
You want to do what makes YOU happy.

It is in these rocky early moments of bringing change to your life that you discover who you are. In the prosperous times, you build what is in your pocket. In the tough times, you strengthen what is in your heart. And that is when you gain insight into yourself, insight that leads to self-mastery and an expansion of your consciousness as a life-force in both your personal and professional lives.

Well-set goals

"If you have plenty of goals well-designed and plenty of goals to stir your imagination, here's what they will do, they will become like a magnet. The bigger they are and the stronger they are and the longer the list, the stronger they pull. Here's the other advantage...goals will pull you through. You can much more easily survive the next crisis, the next winter of your life, if you have well-set goals."

--Jim Rohn, excerpted from the 2004 Weekend Event, Goals Workshop, CD 15, Track 10

http://dvdset.jimrohn.com/default.asp?kbid=5500

Quarterly Quotas - 90 day plan

In my work with Olympic athletes, astronauts, top business executives and other winners, I've discovered that most of them have approached their success in ninety-day seasons. In many areas of life, ninety days is regarded as an appropriate growing cycle. The business world operates on a quarterly basis.

The sports world, to a great extent, operates on a seasonal basis in which the majority of league games are played during a ninety-day cycle, not including post season playoffs. The academic world, in many universities, is set up on a quarterly basis, with the fourth quarter usually being summer. Even academic institutions that operate on a semester schedule usually have nine-month terms, or three quarters of the year spent in class.

I've found a ninety-day cycle of success to be a wonderful unit of time. It's a time period that is long enough to plan for, begin, work hard at, and accomplish certain objectives. At the same time, it isn't a year from now or forever. It is a short enough time to generate a sense of urgency. One of the problems with focusing on monthly goals is the gap in a month caused by events and holidays.

Tax time in April, vacations in June, July or August, Christmas and other religious holidays, the World Series, the playoffs, and the Superbowl. These gaps present a problem in any given month. To simply sum up the concept of the ninety-day season of success: It is a long enough period of time to accomplish something significant, yet it is a short enough time that there is urgency to act now.

Your ninety-day season of success will build your motivation because, often, yearly or five-year goals are so distant that it's easy to get discouraged and give up on them in frustration. When your goals are proximate and positively pressing, you're more likely to muster the motivation necessary to achieve them. Before you begin your next ninety-day success season, take an evening to go through the following exercises. To do this, I recommend you download the text from this newsletter, and block out some time for yourself when you're alone and can think without being interrupted.

Exercise One: Review your life forming goals, and update your personal mission statement for your life or career.

Exercise Two: Take fifteen minutes and write down your most important priorities personally and professionally for the next ninety days. Get your calendar and planner out and start sequencing your action steps. Write down a list of "to-dos", phone calls, e-mails and appointments you need to make.

Exercise Three: Now review your list from Exercise Two and spend another fifteen minutes adding things to that list that you want to do for your own personal entertainment or enlightenment.

Exercise Four: Take five minutes and record three things that tend to slip through the cracks in your professional life; then do the same exercise for your personal life. These are things that you always mean to accomplish, but somehow never get around to doing.

Exercise Five: Create your "Seasonal Success Focus." Review the specific goals and images of achievement you want to accomplish during the next ninety days in order to further your life's mission. As you write these goals on paper or in your electronic diary, put a short statement as to the major benefit of accomplishing these goals.

Once you have done this review, determine what the present reality is. Where are you right now in relation to the accomplishment of these goals.

This week, start thinking about your goals as "quarterly quotas."