Make 2012 Your Year to Achieve Your Big 3

Stop pursuing success, believing that you can achieve any number of goals, if you follow and stick to all the principals described in the self-help books you have read. The principal for achieving all your goals is simple:

·         Clarify your vision and purpose

·         Create goals that are aligned with your vision

·         Build an effective plan to realise all your goals

·         Go about the business every day of carrying out the necessary activities to realise each goal.

If this all seems so simple, why have you reached the end of another year where you feel like you have been spinning your wheels and you are no closer to achieving your dreams than you were a year ago? The solution in 2012 is to add one more crucial element to the mix, namely prioritisation.

Action Idea: List all your goals and dreams, carefully recording them, ordering your thoughts and getting complete clarity about exactly what you want. You can call this your bucket list, where you keep a record of all your dreams. Now invest time to discover your three most important goals for 2012. These must be the three goals that you are going to supremely focus all your energy on achieving. These are the three goals that are the most important to you and could potentially have the most dramatic impact on your life and lifestyle, when accomplished. Resist the urge to become distracted during the year by other shiny objects or better opportunities that may come your way. Complete focus is the only way to turn 2012 into the year you finally make a lasting difference to your life.

Now choose one goal that is going to be the focus of all your energy for the next 90 days and begin the process of creating the framework you need to realise this goal. Remember though, that achieving this goal is not about the process of dreaming, writing down and planning, that is only a very small part of the puzzle. The way to realise any goal, is always about making the right decisions about activity every day, where you carry out consistent behaviours of doing what you said you would do, consistently, until you realise each goal.

The only way to ensure that you consistently carry out all the daily activities or behaviours you need throughout the year; is to develop a success habit set that allows you to perform all these activities each day, without even thinking about it.

Action Idea: The best way to develop new success habits is to first identify the new behaviours you need to develop and turn into your new success habit set. I call these new behaviours my “Code of Personal Achievement” or commitments I have with myself, each day, to carry out a minimum number of new behaviours. My head does not hit the pillow until I have applied sufficient willpower to perform these new behaviours each day. After applying my willpower to carry out these new behaviours or routines for about 90 days, they become ingrained success habits.

I have found that I get best results by scheduling time each day to carry out these new behaviours. I refer to this time as “Meetings with My Future”. This is time that I schedule into each day, to carry out my new behaviours.  Meetings with My Future are scheduled each Sunday and nothing short of a real crisis will ever force me to cancel or reschedule these daily meetings.

Whatever gets measured gets done

Track your performance daily to ensure that you are consistently measuring and improving your outcomes. Tracking also keeps your awareness of your goal in the forefront of your mind and helps you to stay focused. I refer to my daily tracking system as my “Performance Management System” Make tracking and managing your performance one of your new behaviours or success habits next year.

Action Idea: Constantly reinforce your willpower by joining or starting an appropriate mastermind group, identifying a peak performance partner to share your goals with once a week, identify a mentor to guide and inspire you or even use a public forum to post your weekly progress (Facebook, website, blog etc.).

Now all that is left for you to do in 2012 is to pull the trigger and have fun, as you travel through a fantastic year. Lighten up and enjoy the journey next year, by celebrating and rewarding yourself for all your victories and observing everything that crosses your path as part of the trip. Everything that happens, both good and bad,is ON your way to the success you desire.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

                                                           

Do you always finish everything you start?

The hardest thing for me to deal with from myself or anyone else is an undelivered promise. I always feel very uncomfortable when someone else lets me down, but it is the promises that I make to myself that I don’t keep, which hurt the most. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that I have made promises or commitments to myself that I failed to keep during 2011. At the start of this festive season for example, I made a commitment to myself, to not overindulge like I have in the past, over this silly season. That idea lasted only until Christmas Eve, when the wheels fell off and I am afraid to say has continued unabated until today.

The extra kilogram I am now carrying around my waistline and the disappointment I feel for letting myself down once again, bears testament to the level of discomfort I now feel, as a result of my not keeping my commitment. This seems like a very small lapse of judgement and when viewed within the big picture, is not really that big a deal. Well I believe that the way you do anything is the way you do anything. So even small lapses like this can set a trend in your mind and become the precedent you use when making and keeping any commitments you make with yourself and others in 2012.

Right it is now time to leave 2011 behind and to make and keep all your commitments in 2012 and beyond. Promises can be uncomfortable, simply because you have to keep them, but as they are a measure of who you are and what you value, they must be kept. Whenever you make a commitment to yourself or anyone else, it is crucial that you keep all of them. On occasion promises may need to be renegotiated, but ostensibly all promises are cast in stone and must be honoured.

To turn 2012 into your best year ever it is time to make a few big promises or commitments to yourself, depicting your expectations for next year. Stop hiding behind your fear of accepting accountability, by coming out from underneath your cloak of diminished expectation and put some realistic positive pressure on yourself to really perform next year. You will never become a super achiever and separate yourself from the average, if you continue to live in the half light of soft engagement and you don’t place any realistic, meaningful pressure on yourself, by having huge, but realistic expectations.

Meeting all the commitments you make with yourself next year, must be supported by new success habits. Direct one of your commitments next year towards developing between 3 and five habits each 90 days, which will support your efforts and commitments.

Action Idea: Choose an area of your life you want to improve over the next 90 days. Read 3 books, listen to 5 Audio Books and attend one seminar, all of which are focused on the specific subject you have chosen. Read only the three books you have chosen, as many times as possible during the 90 days, listen to only the five audio books on your commute every day and attend the seminar.

Draw three important ideas from each book, audio book and the seminar. You will now have 25 new ideas that you can apply in your life. Summarise these 25 ideas until you have come up with a super 5, which will become your CODE OF PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT, or commitment you will make to form 5 new behaviours or success habits, over the following 90 days.  Use your willpower to carry out these five activities every day. After 90 days you will have 5 new super behaviours or “Super Success Habits” to support your future success.

Turn 2012 into your year for greatness, by choosing to stop thinking small. It is time to accept that greatness comes from accepting that you cannot have complete control of anything. The greatest destroyer of dreams, every year, is living under the illusion that you will not encounter any challenges and that you will be in total control of everything in your environment. Nothing could be further from the truth, even developing better habits and success routines, will not ensure that breakdown or challenge do not occur, it most certainly will.

The secret to succeed on a big scale in 2012 is to have huge expectations, make huge, realistic commitments to yourself and yet know that there will be challenge and even though you will not meet all your commitments in the expected time frames. You will remain focused and driven to meet every commitment you make. Achieving greatness requires you to stretch yourself, to feel some discomfort and go ahead on do it anyway.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za                                     

Make 2012 Great by doing your Best Work Ever

Imagine the quality of work you would be able to produce, if you woke up every day challenging the way you did things yesterday, where you looked for ways to constantly improve your performance, by doing things just a little better each day. This philosophy of having a commitment to on-going and never ending improvement, where you strive to be just a little better today than you were yesterday. Will see you make tiny incremental improvements every day, which will add up to remarkable growth over time. This commitment to continually invest time into practicing and honing your skills, will allow you to consistently improve your level of competence, performance and productivity.

This continually improving version of you will be equipped to produce better and better results every day, which will, in time, add up to the positive outcomes you want to achieve. Now simply add in a healthy dose of drive, inspiration and passion to the mix and you have the makings of a remarkable 2012, in which you will perform at levels you did not think possible. A commitment to on-going and never-ending improvement is easy, the challenge you face though, is that as easy as it is to invest a small amount of time each day towards your growth and development, so easy is it to lose focus and neglect to invest the time needed

Action Idea: Wake up every day expecting to give your best, if you are working, give everything you have to perform the tasks you have planned each day. If you are resting and recharging your batteries, then ensure that you switch off from thinking about work for a minimum of 24 hours and focus on your family, friends or hobbies. This strategy where you give yourself completely to work when you work and rest when you rest will see you improve your performance and productivity in leaps and bounds.

2012 is the year to stop making excuses and to start making progress by investing time into doing important things every day. Stop spinning your wheels by prioritising your daily tasks and remaining focused on only a few priorities at a time. If you continue to try to spread your focus too thin, by trying to do too much at a time, you will remain trapped in the cycle of poor performance, which has dogged you over the past few years and kept you trapped in mediocrity

You are most certainly going to encounter numerous challenges during 2012 and beyond, which are going to knock you down. The secret to succeeding and turning 2012 into your best year ever is to expect challenges, accept them as an integral  part of the success journey, and then overcome each one that comes your way by standing up each time you get knocked down, better equipped and stronger than you were before you encountered the challenge.

Make 2012 your year for keeping every commitment you make to yourself and others. Always under promise and over deliver on every commitment you make. It is far easier to perform and deliver your best work from a foundation of integrity and a place where you feel worthy, than it is from a place where you are constantly making excuses to yourself and others about your lack of delivery.

It is time to take your unlimited talent and finally turn it into something great, believe in yourself, invest time into making yourself better every day, give your best, expect and overcome challenges, make 2012 your year for integrity and delivery and next year will be your best year ever.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

You are the CEO of Your Future

The magnitude of social and economic change in the world has sped up dramatically over the past few years. It is now crucial to have a focused vision, personal strategy and a crystal clear set of goals, if you want to step out of the crowd and live a life of excellence. This knowledge based world, where change is now the norm, has in fact made having a clear vision and focused personal strategy essential, not just for people that want to excel, but for anyone that wants to thrive and survive.

The days of operating on autopilot, where you go through life flying by the seat of your pants, comfortable and secure that the organisation or government will provide for and look after you are over. The only person that can secure your future stares back at you in the mirror every morning. You are 100 % responsible for how your future turns out, the success or failure that you will see, are directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into your on-going personal development.

Ignorance will be an even greater tyrant than it ever was in the past, anyone that lacks knowledge and the discipline to apply that knowledge in their lives, will be enslaved and left licking their wounds of regret.

Action Idea: Build a strategy and create a plan for your on-going personal development. This plan must include time to read for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, a commitment to listen to audio books on your commute to work every day, a plan to attend a minimum of 4 seminars related to your field every year.

Everyone Must See Themselves as Self-employed

You must make the shift in the way you think about yourself; you are the CEO of your own future, the head of a service company with a single employee. This notion that you are self-employed and the master of your own future; puts the power back in your hands, you are no longer dependant on any organisation for your success and security. You can sell your services to any company at any time, but that does not mean that you are any less loyal to the company that currently purchases your services. The company that is purchasing your services is your most important client at that moment and as such deserves all the loyalty, customer service and commitment you can muster. This shift where you see yourself as a separate entity to the organisation that purchases your services, allows you to offer great loyalty and service and at the same time to never equate your personal long term interests with that of the organisation.

This new proactive philosophy will allow you to see yourself as a business rather than as an employee. Any business that wants to thrive and prosper must constantly offer the best service possible, commit to consistent growth and keep updating and improving the products and services offered. Now that you have changed the way you think about yourself, ask these simple questions:

·         What are my current strengths and weaknesses?

·         What knowledge or skill do I lack?

·         What trends must I watch?

·         How vulnerable am I?

Answer these questions, thinking about yourself as a company. Set up a training department and ensure that your employee is constantly updating his or her knowledge and skills, in line with the issues that you highlighted by answering the questions above.

Change is as inevitable as death and taxes in the new millennium, so learn to be flexible in the face of any daily surprises that will cross your path. The challenge we face every day when dealing with the constant change in our environment, is our tendency to overreact when faced with the inevitable change. This is due to our over indulgent value system and our need for instant gratification, where we hold an unrealistic belief that we deserve privilege, without responsibility. Until we accept that we are responsible for everything that happens or does not happen in our lives and it is not the fault of the economy, high interest rates or due to anything external of ourselves, we are powerless to manage the inevitable change that will occur.

Wrestle back your power and know that change is here to stay, become flexible and accepting of change, use change to your advantage, commit to constantly learn, grow and improve and change will become the creator of the most incredible future possible.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

To Be Exceptional, You Must Act Exceptional

How do you want your future to turn out, do you want to be average or exceptional? If you continue to allow your life to be dedicated to leisure, I am certain that your future will be average and unfulfilling. If you want your future to be exceptional, then it is time to devote your life to learning and development. As you commit to expand and grow, aspiring to gain new knowledge and skill at every turn, new horizons will open up to you every day, the person you become and the success you will attract, will astound even you. Always prepare well and practice hard, as the quality of your daily practice will determine the calibre of your performance.

Stop waiting for your circumstances to be perfect, your energy levels to be ideal or things to improve in your environment, before you proceed. 2012 is the time for expansion and growth, it is the time to stop waiting until you get enough energy to proceed, it is the time to proceed and succeed, so that you can acquire the energy you need. Nothing is more energising than the feeling of satisfaction that comes from finally having the courage to pull the trigger and begin taking the action you know will help deliver your dreams.

Once you have pulled the trigger and begun travelling down the path towards the super achievement you desire, promote your success and allow your self-expression the freedom it needs to set your talent, ingenuity and creativity free, so that you can begin to explore all the possibilities that abound. Manage your energy effectively, as you explore all these opportunities and carefully select only the best ones to completely devote all your energy and time to exploiting. Prioritisation and focus is the only way to succeed, stop trying to explore too many opportunities at a once, focus all your energy and available time on one opportunity at a time and give everything you have to it.

Work hard every day, applying enough daily discipline to everything you do and stay committed to apply all the new knowledge and skills you will acquire along the way. True mastery and sustainable success, is the result of focused effort and consistent daily work. Consistent daily Industry, prioritisation, clarity and discipline are the cornerstones of super achievement, should any of these crucial elements be missing, you will be left spinning your wheels and achieve very little next year.

Move your focus away from turning your labour into money in 2012 and rather view your efforts as an opportunity to help as many people get what they want.  The more people you can help get what they want, the more everyone around you will help you to get what you want. This small shift away from money and self-interest towards, service and giving, will see you achieve far better results in 2012.

Be authentic and always be true to your real self. Speak your truth even when you feel that no one supports you. Acting in alignment with your authentic self and ensuring that your efforts are aligned with your purpose and vision for the future ensures that you remain true to your values. When you act in alignment with your values, you will subconsciously support all your efforts. When you do anything that is not aligned with your values, you will subconsciously sabotage all your efforts.

Surround yourself with great people in 2012. You mirror the behaviour of the people you surround yourself with; you eventually speak like them, act like them, read the books they read, dress like them and achieve the same level of success as them. Strive to surround yourself with more successful people and your own level of success will improve in 2012

Stop allowing your fears to turn into self-doubt. You are amazing and will achieve greatness in 2012 and beyond, if you would just dare to dream, have huge expectations and follow the few recommendations described above. You have so much to gain, what are you waiting for?

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Procrastination is the Thief of Dreams

I was so good at procrastinating at one point in my life that I managed to fool even myself into believing that I was productive. I was a champion at avoiding the difficult and challenging tasks that I knew were crucial to my success. Are you in a similar place where you seem to spin your wheels, doing bucket loads of work every day, but yet you just seem to remain trapped in a perpetual place of zero productivity.

I want to share some insights with you to help you to eliminate procrastination and perform at levels that will astound you. This is a very simple, yet incredibly powerful idea for dramatically improving your productivity and stripping away all the distractions that are keeping you trapped in a world of inefficiency and poor performance. Introducing and applying this technique into your life will help you to really get plenty of great work done every day.

Procrastination is the thief of our dreams and destroys our productivity every day. The reason we consistently allow ourselves to remain trapped in this never ending cycle of low performance is that deep down in our subconscious mind we sabotage ourselves, because we are filled with fear and doubt about ourselves. We are not afraid of failure as most people would believe; we are in fact afraid of success.

Society has programmed us to not stand out from the crowd, so our need to fit in and be accepted, forces us to subconsciously dress, think, talk and act like everyone else around us.  This behaviour was important when we lived in groups as hunter, gatherers. Anyone that stood out from the group was in danger of being attacked and eaten by predators. We no longer face the same dangers, but we still operate and subconsciously want to fit in and thereby protect ourselves.

This inherent, subconscious fear of success, being laughed at or ridiculed or our fear of standing out and being different, forces us to subconsciously sabotage our efforts every day. As we start to see progress and we start to move toward achieving our goals or achieving something big, we subconsciously feel like we are starting to stand out from the crowd and we then begin to behave in a ways that limit our performance. We have time available, we know what needs to be done, but instead of doing what we know we must do; we pick up our smartphone and begin scanning our emails or engage in some other distracting type of behaviour.

We know that we must invest long uninterrupted time frames +/- 90 minutes at a time, into working on our goals and dreams, but we constantly allow ourselves to be distracted by unnecessary things, like emails, phone calls or we walk away from our desk pretending we are hungry etc. All these unnecessary distractions like twitter, Facebook, emails are nothing more than self-sabotage. You must set time aside every day, specifically for handling emails, developing your social media strategy. Stop indulging in these time wasting and dream destroying activities during your most productive time each day.

It is a natural subconscious belief that we do not want to stand out from the crowd and be more effective and productive and so as we get closer to the success we desire, we engage in self-sabotaging behaviours that restrict and limit our performance. We consistently engage in unproductive days where we shuffle papers, answer emails, chat on Facebook, twitter and text messages so that we can distract ourselves, so that we do not have to face the prospect of standing out and being different.

Stop limiting yourself and sabotaging your success and take back your power. This awareness of what is hampering your progress and productivity is really only a result of your subconscious fear of success. Is a liberating moment and one that you can quickly convert in super achievement, if you are willing to consciously control your tendency to procrastinate, because of this fear.

Learn the art of running toward the things you are resisting most and confront your fears. Feel the fear of tackling a new life changing project and do the difficult tasks you know are necessary. Utilise your new awareness of the reasons why you constantly avoid doing the things you know are necessary and just get on with doing what needs to be done. Making time to work on your life every day and effectively utilising this time as productively as possible, is the best investment you can make in your future.

Author: Andrew Horton Time Management Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Great Preparation Makes Success Permanent

Success seldom, if ever arrives unannounced on your doorstep and breaks down your door, demanding that you accept it. Long term sustainable success, is the result of investing energy into creating a process, which starts with desire, is turned into possibility through planning and design and then made real through consistent effort and daily discipline. Stop looking for shortcuts and ways to circumvent this simple law, accept that success is the result of preparation and consistent effort and you will have discovered the key to unlimited achievement.

Preparation is an integral part of our lives and a crucial part of any success journey. We spend an inordinate time in preparation during our formative years. We invest a good chunk of our lives simply getting ready.

·         The first six years of our lives is spent getting ready to start our formal school education.

·         We then spend a further seven years, in primary school, getting ready to tackle high school

·         Another five years is spent, getting ready for college or university.

·         We then spend another three to ten years at college or university, just learning, preparing and getting ready.

We spend between 21 and 28 years preparing for life, but unfortunately this seldom prepares us to live according to our vision or purpose or to achieve the goals that will allow us to live a life of meaning and fulfilment. I want to offer you some tips and ideas to help you prepare for success, so that you can unearth your greatest dreams, desires and potential and turn them into your reality. My goal with these articles is to offer you a set of tools that will help you to accelerate your success and guide you to become a super achiever.

What does Success Mean to You?

The place I want you to start is to first discover what success really means to you. Invest time to discover this crucial step in the success process. Society puts huge pressure on us to perform in certain ways; our parents pressure us to adopt their standards regarding happiness and success. We look around our environment and we see people enjoying their unique version of what happiness and success means to them and we mistakenly believe the same thing will bring us fulfilment These unrealistic expectations about what success and happiness really mean to us, causes us to live a false life that feels empty and devoid of happiness.

When we are living in this modality, where we are often living a false life that is not optimal or even of our choosing, we can never find happiness. We are merely living an illusion, a life we unconsciously stumbled into because we believed our parents, peers or society’s concept of success and happiness was what we really wanted. No one can ever find true and lasting happiness, until they define what success and happiness really means to them and then they go about the business of bringing just that into their lives.

Action Idea: Invest some solo time into discovering what success really means to you and your unique circumstances by answering these questions below:.

·         Have you ever discovered what success and true happiness means to you?

·         Do you know what need to happen before you believe you are successful?

·         What will your life look like when you are happy and successful?

·         What will you be doing, experiencing and what will you be?

Now take this information and convert it into your success formula

·         Now that you have made time to sit back and decide what success really means to you. You will no longer be chasing after something that you may not even want. Does “success” mean fame and fortune to you or is it simply the freedom to spend time with the people that matter most in your life?  Discovering what success really means to you is a really liberating moment and ensures that you are working toward what you really want, rather than an illusion of what you think you want.

·         Believe in yourself and dare to dream. See the possibilities that abound all around and allow yourself to have huge expectations that are aligned with your unique concept of what “success really means to you”

·         Keep investing in your personal growth and keep preparing for the opportunities that are going to cross your path. As Oprah says’ “Success is when opportunity meets preparation”. We all have many opportunities cross our paths, throughout our lives. Make sure that you are investing enough time and resources, into your personal growth, so that you are adequately prepared when the next one comes your way, or better still, when you manufacture the next opportunity, which will completely change your life

·         Stop pursuing success and shift your mind away from “how can I get it?” and start asking yourself the question “What do I have to become to attract or deserve the type of success I desire?” This shift sees you invest your resources into becoming more and thereby attracting everything you desire into your life. Become a great steward of your existing talents and skills and invest energy into growing these into the skill and knowledge base you need to achieve everything you desire.

·         Allow yourself to break free from your trained expectation that all progress must be linear in nature. Stop thinking that you are only warming up for the success that it is coming, start living every moment as part of the journey and allow yourself to enjoy every step in the process. Everything that comes your way is “ON” the way to the success you desire. Nothing you encounter is ever “IN” the way.

·         Always give 100 %. If you are resting give yourself completely to rest. If you are working or learning new skills, then give 100 % to that. Giving 100 % commitment and effort, striving to be your best all the time is crucial when you want to succeed. Note I said give your best, not be the best.

·          Align you private and public personas, strive to always be authentic and show the world your true self. Always strive to project your true values and show integrity in all dealings with others.

Keep preparing and expect the universe to show up with new opportunities at any time. Opportunities, connections with the right people and happy coincidences can happen in an instant, so invest time, energy and resources into preparing for the opportunities and success you deserve

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Mapping out a Strategic Plan for Your Life

Have you sat and wondered why you seem trapped in a never ending cycle of knowing what you want, yet nothing seems to ever begin the process of moving your life in that direction? The reason you have not managed to realise your goals until now, is that your dreams and fantasies are defined by a vague and distant destination and your mind is continually thrown off by the elusiveness and ambiguity of this lack of clarity

You never program your mind to look for exactly what you need to succeed. As soon as you have clarity of purpose and you know exactly what you want in your future, you are able to program your brain to start searching for ways to deliver all the resources, people and opportunities you need to succeed.

Stop wasting even a minute longer and invest time today to get the clarity you need to become a super achiever. The difference between the fantasies and dreams you have held about your life, until now, and a future where all your dreams and fantasies will become real, is that 2012 is finally the year where you are going to write your dreams and fantasies down and turn them into achievable goals.

Action Idea: Explore your fantasies and dreams about what you want in your future and clarify them in your mind. Are they aligned with your vision for the future and your concept of what success really means to you? Once you are certain that what you think you want is what you really want and that it is important to you’ now is the time to convert your fantasy into a strategic plan for your future.

Your strategic plan must be a set of crystal clear instructions on how to convert your dreams into reality. A three digit combination lock has 18333 possible combinations or alternatives available to open the lock. Unless you have the actual three digit sequence of numbers available, you will struggle for a long time before you finally manage to open the lock.

The same is true about your life, if you continue to present your mind with vague instructions and too many possible options; you will struggle to find the correct process or combination to succeed. A properly designed strategic plan will provide your mind with specific instructions, which will keep you moving in the direction of the success you desire.

The best analogy for understanding your strategic plan for success is to equate it to preparing for a cross country trip. When planning for any long distance trip you would need to consider the following:

Timeline: No trip is possible unless you have a clear idea about how far you will need to travel in total and how long it will take you to drive the entire distance. Secondly you will need to decide how far you will travel and how much time you will spend driving each day.

The same principal holds true for designing your strategic plan, you must have a clear idea about exactly what you want to achieve and then you must turn this into something measurable. As soon as you have a measurable, quantifiable goal, you are able to break this back into a daily target. This daily target allows you to measure your progress daily, weekly and monthly, to ensure that the actions you are taking are delivering the desired results.

Mapping your Route: When embarking on your cross country road trip, there are thousands of options or routes available for you to follow as you travel towards your destination. Unless you clarify the direction you want to travel each day; you will never reach your destination as planned.

The same is true for your strategic plan, you must map out exactly what you want, knowing with absolute clarity what you will achieve each day, including various milestones or intermediate destinations along the way.

Who do you need to travel with you?: Any long trip requires some assistance from other people. Do you need someone to help with the driving or do you need an expert tour guide to make the journey more informative and enjoyable?

Your strategic plan is the same; it needs to consider all the people that you will need, as you travel on your success journey, people that could assist you, especially people that could help you in areas where you have weaknesses.  You strategic plan must include all the people that could assist you to accomplish your dreams and goals.

What research do you need to do?: Before embarking on any long distance journey, you will need to research the distance between towns, how far the various refuelling stations are apart, does the car need special fuel and is that specific grade of fuel available at the various destinations etc.

No strategic plan can ever work, unless you research all the additional information you may need to gather and document, so that you can achieve your strategic plan. The more time you invest into research today, the more time you will save later by reducing time wasted on managing unforeseen challenges

Resources: No road trip could ever be a success, unless you made sure that you had all the resources needed, Map, money, food, appropriate clothing and everything you will need from the moment you leave your driveway until you reach your destination.

The same holds true for your strategic plan, explore and discover all the possible resources you will need between today and the accomplishment of your big hairy audacious goal.

What training do you require? Your road trip might require you to drive through some dangerous terrain, like snow or ice. Do you require any special training to ensure you can navigate this safely?

Your strategic plan must include all the possible training you will need to help you improve you skills and abilities. You can never achieve your goals if you lack the necessary skills, knowledge and abilities necessary to succeed. Build a complete self-development program into your strategic plan and ensure that you acquire the skills, abilities and knowledge needed to realise all your dreams.

Creating your strategic plan is crucial to your success, but when you apply the simple process as described above, using the analogy of a road trip to help you build your plan, you are able to turn this crucial process into a simple yet effective document for success.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Change is a Door That Opens from the Inside

If you want your world to change, you could set a goal of changing the president, forcing interest rates down or improving the world economy or you could make a wiser and far easier choice and choose to change the one thing you can easily change – yourself. Everything in your world can change in an instant if you make the choice to change the way you look at your world.

Most people cause themselves an incredible amount of stress every day by looking at their current circumstances from an un-empowered position, where they have no idea what they want from their lives. They allow themselves to live without vision, they look around their world and see everything as being “IN” their way and constantly ask themselves, how they are going to get “through” the day, week, month or year.

You however now have awareness and I am certain that from this moment on, you are going to make a wiser choice; where you are going to create a crystal clear picture of exactly the kind of future you want. This crystal clear picture will equip you to make better choices and allow you to make the small shift necessary to allow you to change the way you view your current circumstances. The same situation that appeared to be in your way before will now be something that is of value and will be seen as something that will contribute and support your vision.

Everything you encounter after you make this crucial shift will be seen as being “ON” your way towards creating the future you desire. When you change the way you view the same circumstances, any challenging negative circumstances, will change in an instant. This shift will instantly transform everything that happens in your life, into a potential value adder and something you can learn from, rather than something that causes stress and something you have to just get through. There are obvious benefits that will accrue to you after making this crucial shift, as described above.

“Will it mean that you no longer encounter any challenges on your path to success?” No! You will still encounter the same difficulties and challenges; you will just see them differently. They will no longer be overwhelming, unmanageable and draining. You will now view the same challenge, roadblock or setback, as an opportunity to learn, grow or even to act as the very catalyst that will unlock or awaken a new opportunity, which may have remained hidden, had you not encountered the challenge.

Strife, challenge and setbacks are a normal part of life, it is impossible and I believe even undesirable to have blue skies, singing birds and pretty rainbows around all the time. The rains, storms and even lightening that we encounter are important ingredients, which help us to expand and grow into the type of people we need to be to attract the success we desire. It is during times of strife and challenge that true achievers are born. Challenges and difficulties sculpt us and help us mould our philosophy and attitude, allowing us to learn new skills and gain better insights. These bumps in the road encourage us to learn and apply crucial new knowledge, which may have remained hidden, had we not moved onto the bumpy section of the road, on the path to success.

Action Idea: Invest time to discover what success really means to you:

• What will you need to be doing?
• What will you have?
• What will you be?
• What knowledge will you possess?
• What relationships will you have fostered?
• What will your financial position be like?
• How will your health be?
• What is your spiritual life like?
• How much free time do you have?

Once you have explored all the elements as described above and you have a very clear idea of what success really means to you. It is now time to invest some energy into creating a crystal clear vision for your future. People spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for a wedding or 21 birthday party. Although these are important events in your life, they are only events. Invest as much time into creating a vision for your future, as you would invest into preparing for a wedding and you will create an incredible foundation for living the life of your dreams, where every day is filled with meaning and substance.

Action Idea: Explore your definition of success and discover all the elements that need to be in place before you feel that you are successful. Now create a vision for your future that encompasses all these elements. As you think it, have the foresight to ink it. Your vision is the one crucial element of the success process that gives you direction. Remember that success is a direction and never a destination, so stay focused on moving towards your definition of success and you will live a life of meaning and significance.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Vision, Mutual Support, Trust and Appreciation are the Four Pillars of Great Teams

Great teams of supportive, inspired and driven team members, where no individual member is driven by their own self-interest or ego, are the most cohesive and deliver the best long term performance. Once you have these crucial elements in place, where you have a real team of supportive and cohesive individuals, who have a clear vision for the future and everyone understands their individual role in making that vision real. You have created an unstoppable team whose whole, is far greater than the sum of its individual parts. The synergy that flows from a team of driven individuals with clarity of vision, no individual ego expectations and who support each other is infinite.

This cohesive unit must operate within the realm of real and meaningful trust. The individual team members do not need to necessarily like each other, but they must respect and completely trust each other. Trust and respect are the bookends of a cohesive team and crucial if you want to create the solidarity necessary to achieve and sustain high performance, within your team.

The best way to foster trust between team members is to encourage a culture of always giving what you want to receive, to other team members, before you expect to receive anything from them in return. If you want to be trusted by anyone in your team, then you should extend trust to them first. The most important ingredients when fostering trust between team members is honesty, transparency, complete integrity and a willingness to show your vulnerability when appropriate and to accept and support any vulnerability, which may show up in any of the other team members.  

Action Idea: Invest a day into getting to know each other better. Brainstorm a minimum of five ways team members and team leaders can demonstrate trust going forward.

Use these ideas as starting points:                                        

·         Be willing as leadership to be more transparent about the current financial position of the organisation.

·         Share your real financial goals and challenges with the team.

·         Commit to be transparent about how information is shared and communicated to the team

·         Be willing to expose your vulnerabilities

·         Each team member should share their own fears, past failures and shortcomings

·         Instil a culture where you lift the veil and remove the need to posture and pretend, allow each team member to be authentic.

·         Eliminate the tendency to gossip and understand any alliances or factions that may exist within your team

·         Explore how each team member can earn trust

·         Create a commitment to always demonstrate you can be trusted by always doing what you say and always being on time

Explore all the above ideas and come up with a strategy and commitment from each team member to always act in trustworthy fashion, where each team member always works to earn the trust of every other team member. These trust elements must become ingrained and part of the teams’ culture.  

The last element needed to create a team of super achievers is appreciation. Unfortunately this really crucial element is often forgotten and team members feel neglected. Appreciation is the fuel that drives all the other elements we have covered before and is often the reason that really great teams fail. Feeling significant and appreciated is a basic need within all human beings. This need to be appreciated starts at birth and never goes away. This need to be appreciated and to be recognised is an integral part of our hunger to live lives of meaning and significance.

The secret to working this principal effectively, within your team is to understand that each individual within your team has a different way they feel valued and appreciated. Do not assume that giving appreciation to your team members, the way you want to receive it yourself, will be the perfect way to show appreciation to your team. The way things work for you may be completely wrong for your team. The only way to ensure that you get this crucial element in place properly is to simply ask each team member, how they would like to be appreciated.

Action Idea: Pick five members of your team and sit with them, explaining how much you appreciate them and their efforts. Play open cards with them and tell them that you are unsure how to express your appreciation to them. Ask them individually and collectively how they would like to be appreciated. Armed with this information, you are equipped to show meaningful appreciation to your team in the future.

Bring all the elements I have described in this article into your team and you will greatly improve their performance and level of satisfaction and happiness. If you diligently work on using all the principals I have described in this and my previous articles, your team will be unstoppable and you can achieve any level of success you desire.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

  

You will get Knocked Down – Will you Stay Down?

My objective is to help you to point your creative imagination and enquiring mind in the direction of all the positive things that abound and to try to highlight all the wonderful possibilities, which are available to you. I want you to learn to look for and see all the abundance, possibilities, potential and incredible opportunities that are everywhere, if you are willing to look at the world through inquisitive eyes and search your environment with an open mind. A positive mental attitude, belief in your ability to partake in the abundance, which is everywhere and an enquiring and creative mind, is very necessary if you want to move your life in a positive direction toward super achievement.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson

This all sounds really rosy and appealing, but what happens when life happens and you get knocked down? The reality we live is most certainly not just filled with positive events and perfect outcomes. Very often we face challenges, it is most certainly not always a sunny day with blue skies, it often rains and in some cases there is even thunder and lightning. How can you stay focused and inspired when the inevitable challenges do arrive on your doorstep?

Martin Luther King Jr. said it so well, when he said: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge.” It is only when we are presented with those challenges that we get to separate ourselves from other men and women.

I was involved in a really serious car accident in March of 1995. My cervical spine was fractured and I lost 20 X 16 cm of the top of my head. The orthopaedic surgeon gave me about a 5 % chance of ever walking again. This accident was the greatest challenge I had ever faced in my life. The doctors were convinced that even if I did recover I would never be the same again, I would be disfigured and have physical challenges for the rest of my life.

What the doctors could not diagnose was my positive attitude, spirit, will and determination. Against all medical probability and prediction, in less than a year after I was told I may never walk again, I ran a 90 Km (56 mile) Ultra marathon between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. I refused to allow the tragedy and challenge of this car accident to define me, I invested all my energy after the accident into chasing my dream to excel and become a super achiever.

The rigorous efforts and daily discipline that had seen me build a number of very successful businesses before my accident, was re-focused onto reclaiming a part of me, which had been damaged in the accident. Despite the odds that were stacked so heavily against me, I was determined to fully recover and did what I had to do to get back on my feet and become whole again.

I put so much effort into my recovery that I believe that I was physically stronger after the accident than I was before. I also change the course of my life from a selfish one, where I was driven to succeed at all costs and would walk over who ever stood in way, to a far better place, where I wanted to become someone that could help and support as many people as possible to realise their dreams.  

Getting knocked down and facing challenges is all part of the cycle of life. I am positive that you have been knocked down, faced obstacles and encountered many challenges in your life. Have you allowed them to overwhelm you or have you invested as much of yourself as necessary to overcome them. Have you come out on the other side of any challenge a better person?

You are amazing, have unlimited potential and the ability to overcome any challenges that may come your way. See every challenge or obstacle as inevitable and expected and an integral part of the success process. No challenge is insurmountable; you have what it takes to overcome anything and to actually come out of any challenge a better person. Stop shrinking away from challenges and obstacles and have the courage to face and overcome them.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Focus, Clarity and Persistence will Make 2012 the Best Year of Your Life

How has 2011 turned out for you? Are you satisfied with the results you have managed to achieve this year? If you are like the majority of people I have interviewed, you are reaching the end of another year, where you feel worn out and frustrated. You have tried really hard, worked long hours and yet the meaningful life changing results you are seeking, just seem to elude you. Now is the time to finally choose to make the few small shifts necessary to change everything in 2012. Yes it is going to take daily discipline, consistent effort and work, but if you continue down the same path you chose for 2011, again next year, you will just keep getting the same results, year after year.

Start 2012 off a little differently to the way you have done things in the past, do not enter next beating your chest, proclaiming your massive transformation to everyone that will listen. Only to have your newfound transformation dwindle to a whimper and disappear before January is even finished. Do not go blazing into the New Year with great intentions, enthusiasm and massive expectations about what you are going to do to make things better next year. Rather start the year slowly and just remain consistent for the entire year.

Action Idea: Invest time into discovering the few crucial components necessary to create and sustain your future success.

·         What does success really mean to me?

·         What do I love to do and how can I make it possible for myself to make a living doing that?

·         What are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

·         What skills, abilities or knowledge do I need to acquire, to attract the kind of success I really want in my life?

·         What is my real vision for the future?

Once you have the answers to these questions you have the foundation for making meaningful changes and setting realistic goals for yourself in 2012. When you understand who you are and what is really important to you, it is far easier to stay focused, disciplined and on track, as you are taking actions every day that are aligned with who you are and the results you will enjoy will be meaningful and of real value to you.

After investing the time to answer the questions above, the next step is to set some realistic goals that are aligned with what you really want. Be careful not to make the same fundamental mistakes that you have made in the past where you set too many goals or expected too much from yourself. When you try to tackle too many goals at a time, attempt to change too many ingrained behaviours at once or attempt to do too much, too fast, too soon, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Action Idea: Break your year into 90 day segments. Choose only one goal to achieve during each period. Focus all your energy on only this one priority, shelve all other goals until you have realised just this one goal. This level of focus will help you to not feel overwhelmed and let you gradually make the changes you need, so that you can sustain your efforts for the long haul.

After identifying your one important goal, identify a few new key behaviour changes, which will assist you to achieve this goal. Remember the habits or behaviours that you are attempting to replace, have existed for a number of years, they are ingrained and part of who you have become. Breaking the poor habits that have kept you away from achieving your goals over the past few years is hard enough, without you attempting to introduce too many at once. Choose only one or two behaviours at a time and really use your willpower to carry out these new behaviours every day, until they become ingrained habits after about 90 days.

When your goals are aligned with what you really want and you focus your energy on achieving one goal at a time, you never feel overwhelmed, you fell energised and everything seems to just work. Commit to walk slowly into 2012 and stay consistent all year, taking the daily actions you know are necessary and the results that you will realise next year will astound you.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za