The Art of Making Decisions that Can Change your Life or Business

The ever increasing rate of change in our world, over the past few decades, has resulted in the challenges we face, becoming more and more complex. There is a constant barrage of data and information, through which we need to sort, before we can even begin making any decisions. These constant, accelerating changes, the vast amount of information and the complexities we face every day, has also resulted in much larger interdependencies amongst those impacted by any decision we make. All of these factors have added up and have made decision making far more difficult and complex for leaders.

The vast amount of data available and the tools, which can be used to help leaders shift through and analyse the data overwhelm, has seen leaders respond to these new complexities, by placing a far greater focus on analytics and data driven decision making. Leaders are becoming far more dependent on vast amounts of data to make decisions and are losing the confidence to listen to their internal voice of experience. They have turned down the volume on their leadership intuition and instead have learnt to trust the data to guide them, when making decisions.

I have observed a definite trend, in all the leaders, at the businesses where I consult. They have all moved toward an increased need for data and tools to analyse this data. Yet, despite, this increased attention, massively increased volume of data and tools to analyse and interpret the data, the decisions made by all these leaders does not always improve. I accept that the rapid rate of change, the complexities we face and the interdependencies amongst those impacted by every decision, makes data and analytical tools crucial to any leader. The challenge is that the leaders I have observed rely completely on the data, to guide them to make decisions.

The data and tools for analysing the data are only support mechanisms for any leader and are by no means enough on their own. The data and analytics only support the leader to make any decision and are by no means enough on their own. If any leader is to excel in their role as a leader and to ensure that the decisions they make are valid and in the best interest of all stakeholders. They must ensure that they trust their insight, experience and ability to effectively interpret all the data they receive. The reason many leaders fail to make credible decisions, is because they rely almost exclusively on the data they have analysed and they do not listen to their inner voice of experience, insight and foresight.

The second challenge I have observed in the leaders I have consulted with over the past few years, is that they are relying on analytical tools and techniques, which are outdated. If leaders are to begin making credible and effective decisions going forward, I believe that it is time to rethink how we use all the data, which is all around us and that leaders need learn to trust themselves, where they use their innate leadership intuition to analyse and more effectively utilise the data. This is best achieved when leaders commit to flex their decision making muscle, as often as possible and they work to consistently improve their skill and ability to lead and make decisions.

Effectively analysing and Utilising Data to Make Decisions

It is most certainly time to rethink how we utilise, analyse and interpret the massive amount of data all around us. The analytical tools and techniques employed by most of the leaders I have observed, were designed for a much simpler world. The rapid rate of change and the ever increasing amount of data, which is available, has seen these tools become ineffective and outdated. This means that leaders are making decisions, with flawed information. As they have begun to rely exclusively on the analysed data and have turned down the volume on their own leadership intuition and foresight, they often make ineffectual decisions, which have a negative impact on their businesses. Leaders are also allowing themselves to become overwhelmed with data overload.

Understanding How Your Brain Manages Data

Your brain is designed to work hard to map what it currently sees or observes, to what it already knows. To do this when it is overwhelmed with a vast amount of data overload, it must distort, ignore and sub optimise data. This system of comparing everything to what you already know was a very effective system forty thousand years ago, when our brains were evolving to their current structure. Back then things were pretty static and everything in our world changed really slowly. Therefore the brains ability to link all the new things it encountered to the old things it had already experienced, if not always accurate, provided our species with a survival advantage.

The challenge we face today is that we live in a vastly differently world, than we inhabited forty thousand years ago. Things are changing so rapidly in our world today, the business cycle is getting shorter and shorter, companies are developing products with an expected life cycle of only six months, completely new products, which did not even exist are created every thirty seconds today. This rate of change is not showing signs of slowing down either. The rate of change is accelerating at an ever increasing pace.

All of this means that your brain is completely overwhelmed with new data and input information, resulting in your brain kicking into a higher gear, where you distort, ignore and sub-optimise the entire data overload at an ever increasing rate. All the graphs, charts and reports become overwhelming and as such your brain will filter as much of the information as possible. This entire process happens subconsciously and so the more irrelevant data you try to utilise and analyse to make decisions, the more likely it is that your brain will filter the information and the less likely you are to see any problem data areas.

The secret to making effective decisions is to limit the data overwhelm and to ensure that all the data you utilise to guide you when making any decisions, is correctly analysed and processed before you even see it. It is also crucial that you turn the volume up on your own leadership intuition and that you once again learn to trust your experience and follow your gut feel. Flex your decision making muscle as often as possible. Become decisive and trust yourself. Too much analysis and data overwhelm, will often result in paralysis and ultimately poor decisions.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Connect with the Right People and you will Dramatically Increase your Sales

It is a well-known fact that people buy from people they know, like and trust. So if you have a desire to increase your sales, then you need to stop sitting with your feet braced firmly against the table, with a desperate look on your face trying to sell your products or services. Instead you need to invest effort into fostering mutually beneficial relationships with business partners. Your objective, when developing these relationships, must be to about solving challenges for your new partners, or rather providing them with solutions, which meet or exceed their expectations. This can only be achieved if you are supplying products or services; you completely believe in and trust yourself.

Learn the art of listening twice as much as you speak and ensure that you completely understand the needs of your partners. If any partnership is going to work, you must be certain that your product or service can completely satisfy the needs of your new partner. When you listen and completely understand their needs, you believe in your product or service and trust that it is exactly what they need. You have the ingredients you need to begin creating that mutually beneficial relationship, which will ensure that any relationship will be sustainable.

Your main objective when you work with any client has got to be one of building mutually beneficial relationships and creating partnerships, which will be of value to both parties. To become successful and to move “YOUR BUSINESS” to the next level, you must change your mind-set around the relationship you need to foster with your clients or partners. When I refer to “YOUR BUSINESS”, I do not care whether you own the business or you are an employee at a business owned by someone else. Unless you look on the portion of the business, where you are selling products or services as your own, you will struggle to get your mind-set right, where you are able to build the mutually beneficial relationships, you need with your clients and prospects.

You must believe 100 % in what you are selling and see your products as solutions to partner challenges. If you look on your products or services as a commodity, it will be impossible to convince anyone you are committed to build a mutually beneficial relationship and that your product or service is a solution to any need they may have. As long as you allow the relationship to remain one where, you are the sales person and they are the buyer of your product or service. They hold all the power and you are a subservient junior partner in the relationship. The person, who holds the purse strings, is in charge. You become merely an order taker, who merely writes down the instructions of someone, who needs the commodity you have to sell.

When you believe in the value proposition of your product or service and you always have your clients’ or rather your new partners, needs as the prime objective. Your partners will very quickly see your pure intentions and will eagerly partner with you and your product and service. The will start to buy from someone they know, like and trust and someone they believe will add real value to their business. You can awaken your own sales giant today, if you are willing to make the crucial shift away from trying to sell a product or service, which you view as a commodity. Toward seeing your products or services as a real value proposition, which when integrated into your partners business, will solve their challenges and meet their needs.

As you build mutually beneficial sales relationships with your new partners, there is an immediate shift in power. You are no longer viewed as a junior partner and provider of a commodity, but an important cog in the wheel of your new partners business. As you shift away from the old school hard selling tactics and begin to use new age mutually beneficial relationship building and sales influence as a selling strategy, you will unlock your hidden sales super and you will become unstoppable.

Action Idea: Take a close look at your current sales strategies and answer these questions:

• Do you believe in the product or service you are selling? 
• Would you want to buy what you have to sell?
• Do you really believe your product or service is a good value proposition for any client?
• Do you believe that your product or service is value for money?
• Are you just an employee, trying to get through the day, or are you involved in building your own business?
• Do you have the intimate knowledge of your market and partners business, necessary to become a partner and challenge solver in their business?
• Would you like and trust you, if you were the client?

Invest sufficient time to answer the questions above and after conducting an honest audit of your current selling strategy. Begin the process of improving all the areas in your business, which may be below par, so that you can make the shift you need. Where you move away from selling, towards building partnerships with people who know, like and trust you and who see your product or service as a great value proposition.

As you develop a real belief in what you have to sell, you completely understand your market and individual partners needs within that market, you will no longer just be selling products or services. You will be forming mutually beneficial relationships with partners and solving any problems they may have. As you continue to grow into this new modality, you are no longer selling; you are building connection and fostering relationships with people, your products or services, help and support.

As long as you really know your markets and individual partner’s needs within those markets, you always have their best interests at heart and you believe 100 % in what you have to sell, you will succeed in growing your sales beyond even your wildest dreams.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Become Recognised as the Expert in Your Field

In this evolving and ever changing world we live in, it is becoming increasingly important to be recognised as the go to person or expert in your field. If I had to ask you who the best Body builder in the world was, you would immediately say Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is seen as the expert, despite the fact that he has not competed in any body building competitions since 1983. He is still perceived as the best body builder or expert in the field of body building. Not many people know that although he won the Mr Olympia title six times, there are two people who have won the MR. Olympia competition a total of seven times each. So it is not just about actually being the expert in any field, it is about perception and what you are able to communicate about your abilities, which plays a factor in how you are perceived too. It is therefore not good enough to only be the expert in any field; you need to have an effective way of communicating this to the world around you.

Becoming the expert or go to person in any field, will increase your perceived value. You will be able to charge a premium for your services, which people will gladly pay, as they see you as the most valuable person available. Becoming the perceived expert in any field does not happen in a day, it happens daily over a period of time. If you want to move down the path of personal mastery and gradually grow into the resident expert in any specific field, you need to adopt a few new behaviours or traits. These new behaviours or traits will help you to master the qualities and develop a new success habit set, to support your progress towards becoming an expert in your chosen field.

Commit to a process of On-going and Never Ending Improvement

The first and probably the most crucial, new habit you need to develop, is a commitment to constantly grow your knowledge and skills. When you commit to become a consummate learner and every day you strive to be just a little better than you were the day before. You equip yourself to gradually grow into an expert in your chosen field. Research has shown that becoming an expert in any field will take approximately 10 000 hours, of dedicated and focused practice.

If you have not read the book “Outliers – by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he outlines the 10 000 hour rule and describes how this rule separates, those people who do end up as experts in their field from everyone else. He shows that it takes a minimum of 10 000 hours of consistent, focused and perfect practice to develop great talent in any field. In other words if you want to become an expert in any field, it is imperative that you apply the principle of consistent, constant never ending improvement in your life. Only after 10 0000 hours of perfect practice can you expect to be a master at what you do. To become an expert in any field you need to be driven to constantly learn, grow and improve. This commitment must continue for the rest of your life, because if you are not growing, you are not standing still, you are actually going backwards. You can only coast in one direction.

The model of constant and never ending improvement, which really resonates with me is the one advocated by the late Steve Jobs and followed by Apple. Steve jobs had a mantra; in which he said “There has got to be a better way.” This philosophy of always raising the bar, striving for constant improvement, equips people to constantly look for ways to expand, innovate and grow.

Action Idea: Look at your life right now and have a crystal clear vision about where you want to go, i.e. what area do you want to master or become the resident expert in. Try to identify the greatest constraint, which is limiting your progress and stopping you from growing into that expert. Once you know the areas, which need improving, create a growth and development plan to start acquiring the knowledge and skills you require. Search and discover why it is important for you to grow into that expert. Finally commit to action every day to acquire the knowledge and skill you need. This process of learning and growth is a lifetime commitment. Although it will take 10 000 hours to master any new skill, it takes a lifetime commitment to become and remain the go to person or expert in any field.

Becoming the expert in any field, takes work and dedication, so before you decide to invest all the effort into learning and becoming, it is crucial you search and discover that deep rooted reason why acquiring the required knowledge or skill is important to you. You will never have the drive and determination to keep going, day after day, investing time to learn, expand and grow, unless you have, a clear vision and a real deep rooted reason why you want to become the expert. Your reason is unique to you and your circumstances. Whatever your reason is, it needs to be powerful enough to drive you out of bed every morning and keep you inspired and passionate all day, despite any challenges you may encounter.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Ask more Positive Questions and you will Transform your Life

How you show up every day, does most certainly set the tone for how your day will unfold. Do you wake up every morning spring out of bed, energised and fired up by the prospect of tackling your day? I refer to this as my daily activation energy. When you wake up and consciously force yourself to get out of bed, energised and ready to tackle whatever comes your way that day, you are effectively setting the tone for an energised and productive day. On the other hand when you wake up, you barely open one eye as you reach over and press the snooze button, you are programing your brain to be lethargic and un-energised for the day. You are setting a tone for a lacklustre performance and that is exactly what you will get.

When you practice this daily energising routine, where you get your day going in a highly energised and inspired way, this energised feeling lasts throughout your day. This allows you to be incredibly productive, effective and efficient, leaving you feeling satisfied by what you are able to accomplish and the contribution you are able to make each day. The art of waking up energised and inspired every day, where you project a great attitude to the world, is a conscious choice. You can either choose to be disgruntled and overwhelmed by everything in your world or you can shift the way you see those things. Change the way you see the things, which are causing you discomfort and those things will immediately change.

We cannot easily change the state of the economy, the constant changes we face in our lives and businesses each day, interest rates or the availability of capital. But we can immediately change one thing and that is how we see these things and how we allow them to affect our lives. If we wake up in the morning and we are faced with challenges, which seem overwhelming and insurmountable, we can either allow ourselves to feel beaten or we can learn to ask a better more positive question. The overwhelm is most likely caused because we are asking negative questions like “why me and what have I done to deserve this” instead of asking more positive questions like  “how can I use this challenge to my advantage or how can this challenge help me to prosper” These better questions will allow you to immediately shift your state and will move you into a far more creative place.

I have seen how quickly people can change their state, from a negative, place of overwhelm to a place of creative positive energy. When consulting with clients who are engaging in negative self-talk and bombarding themselves with a series negative questions, because they are facing a few difficulties or challenges. As they consciously start to ask a better series of positive questions, as they make the shift, to a more positive state, I can actually see their body language change. Their shoulders lift, they stop looking down and they start to raise their eyes, looking into the distance. They immediately start to feel more creative and innovative, as they begin to contemplate and allow their creative juices to flow. The change can be almost instant. As soon as you make the conscious decision to improve the type of question you are asking, you empower yourself to raise your state and you become far more creative and innovative.

It is a well-known fact that the quality of your life or business is directly proportional to the quality of your questions. Instead of allowing your mind to travel down the slippery slope of negative self-talk, as you engage in asking yourself a series of negative questions, every time you face a challenge. Learn the art of asking positive questions, questions which allow you to explore the situation and discover solutions. Negative questions can never serve you and rob you of your creativity and ability to innovate. The time you will invest into developing this skill, will stand you in good stead going forward. Next time you find yourself engaging in a downward cycle of negative questioning, take charge and consciously force yourself to ask a better more positive series of questions. You will immediately feel your mood lift and your creative juices will start flowing.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

How the Chamber is using Social Media to add value to you and your business

Social media is one of the greatest marketing and networking tools available to business today. The numerous Social media forums that are available, have given business a platform to firstly listen to the needs and expectations of their target market and the opportunity to communicate with the people they have targeted, within specific businesses, in those target markets. Any business that is not using this very powerful new marketing tool, in their business is missing out on one of the greatest marketing opportunities ever presented to business, namely to connect with the right people, in the right place, at the right time Social media is the perfect opportunity for the right people to get to know like and trust you and your business.

Social media is also an incredible tool for improving your businesses networking activities. It offers you the opportunity to research people before networking events, to see who you want to meet and connect with at any Chamber networking events. Prior to attending any Chamber networking event ask any the event co-ordinator to send you a list of the people and companies that are expected at that event. Identify which companies and individuals are aligned with your marketing strategies and then use the various social media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google to research these people.

Most social media sites have pictures on them, memorise the pictures of the important people you want to connect with at each networking event. This will allow you to use your time at the networking event, as effectively as possible. You will be able to walk straight up to the right people that you want to meet and begin the process of building connection with them.

These social media sites also give you the opportunity to research the people you want to connect with at any chamber networking event. As you know networking is never about selling, it is about connecting with the right people and looking for mutually beneficial opportunities to assist each other. In this vein it would be of great value to know a little about the person’s interests or hobbies etc. This would give you material to use at the networking event, to begin building connection with the people that you have identified as your prospects.

The Chamber has seen the opportunity for helping businesses to utilise this new technology in their businesses. To this end we want to help businesses to connect, network and market themselves via the JCCI social media forums. The two forums we have chosen to use are Facebook and Twitter.

Create a Facebook profile for yourself and your business. This is the first step required, to begin the journey to use the chambers Facebook platform to market your business. As your Chamber we are committed to offer you and your business as many value add services as possible. This is just another attempt on the part of the Chamber to keep adding value to all our members, by offering you and your business, this new platform to market your business and an additional opportunity to build connection with other chamber members.    

Once you have set up your Facebook profile, it is really easy to find the chambers Facebook page. To find the chamber on Facebook, simply type in JCCI Sandton Midrand Chamber, into the search window on the top of your Facebook page, as highlighted by the big red arrow on the screen and then click on the JCCI picture that will come up. This will take you to the chambers Facebook page.

Please click on the “LIKE” button, located in the middle of the page. This will allow you to join the chambers page. You will then be listed as one of the followers of the Chamber. This will allow other businesses to search for and find you on the Chambers page.

After liking the Chambers page, you now have the opportunity to post something of interest on the chambers page. Look at the block identified by the second red arrow on the screen; this is where you can post your item of interest. Remember if you start trying to sell your business here, people will simply ignore you and your business. Selling here is as ineffective as standing at a networking event with a loud hailer, telling everyone how great you and your business are.

The second social media platform we use is Twitter. Please create a twitter profile by visiting twitter.com, as soon as possible. We have decided to use twitter to offer a further opportunity for businesses’ to get value from the various networking events. At all the  Chamber networking events we are using the # tag feature, to create a closed social media platform for people to offer feedback and to connect with each other, during and after Chamber networking events.

Using your smart phone please type in #JCCI, followed by any message you want to broadcast at the event. Anyone that types a search on twitter using the #JCCI tag will be able to access all the info transmitted during each event. Nadia will also collate all the #JCCI comments broadcast, during each Chamber networking event and send this to everyone that attended that networking event.

Please follow the link    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo as seen on the screen to view a great video on the new social media revolution. If you need an expert to assist you with any of your social media strategies please contact either of the experts shown on the screen right now.

Please follow the link below to view a YouTube video detailing this strategy.

Chamber Social Media Strategy

Author: Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Is your pursuit of “Money” what you really want?

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Is your pursuit of “SUCCESS” giving you a skewed perspective on what is really important and is it creating imbalance in some areas of your life? Society’s definition of success, fame, fortune and bucket loads of money can be completely misaligned with what is really important to you. This misalignment will cause you to experience stress and although you may start to acquire the trappings of what society believes are the measure of success, you will still feel out of alignment and there will be no harmony in your life. The fancy car, beautiful home and  designer clothes all mean nothing if you are obtaining these at the expense of another area of your life.

There is no point sacrificing your health or your relationships, as you blindly pursue something you don’t really want in the first place. Do you really want buckets of money and all the trappings of someone else’s definition of success? Having your chauffer drop you at the hospital in your Rolls Royce, for your third heart bypass surgery, because you no longer have a family to take care of you, when you are sick, as your wife has left you and now lives with your children in a different part of the country, is a very shallow existence and rather pointless and empty.

The process of creating a life of meaning, fulfilment and long term sustainable success is to:

1.       Invest the time to look at yourself, search inwardly and discover what success really means to you. Avoid allowing yourself to be trapped by what society has led you to believe is important, namely fame, fortune and material possessions. Have the courage to be honest with yourself, discover what you really want and what is important to you and your unique circumstances. When you finally make this realisation and you discover what you really want and value, the world opens up to you. Everything becomes far easier, as your efforts are aligned with what really matters to you, you are now moving your life in a direction that has real meaning and as you reach each milestone on your journey through life. You get to celebrate meaningful victories that matter.

2.       Focus your energy on discovering and developing your strengths and utilising these strengths to create the life you have visualised as success. When you are clear, on what really matters to you and you discover, how to use your unique strengths to attract exactly that into your life. You are setting a foundation for lowering your level of stress and raising you level of performance. When you know what is important and you develop your unique strengths, to support you in achieving just that in your life, you begin to live a balanced and effortless life, filled with love and joy.

3.       Invest resources and time into becoming more. When you know what really matters to you, you focus your unique strengths on bringing that vision to life and you consistently strive to become more, you have set the stage for creating a meaningful life that matters. Your commitment to on-going learning and personal development, will allow you to constantly grow and expand. As you become more, so you will attract more.  

The beauty of this approach is that you are attracting exactly what you want into your life. Every victory will have meaning and be aligned with what matters to you. There is no need to sacrifice any part of who you are, as everything you do is in harmony with what is important to you. It is only when you pursue something that is misaligned with your values and your unique definition of success that you will bring imbalance into your life. When you have clarity on what success means to you, you have an understanding of what your strengths are and you commit to a life time of on-going learning, focused on maximising these strengths.  You have set the foundation for living a happy and meaningful life.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Use Negative Events to Expand and Grow

Use Negative Events to Expand and Grow

Best Business Motivational Speakers

We all have the objective of achieving our full potential, living a meaningful and fulfilling life, filled with joy and happiness. As children we are filled with dreams about our future and we are committed to a notion of excellence and possibility. Yet after observing our adult role models and listening to their negative attitude to life and unrealistic expectations, where they believe that life should just be filled with positive all the time and no challenge, we enter adulthood filled with doubt and believing life is hard and that we should just get through our weeks, working to survive, not to thrive and grow.

Make the shift today and accept that living your full potential is your birth right, the very reason you are here on this beautiful planet and that any path to success will be filled with challenge. Know that challenge is all part of the human experience and more often than not, the very catalyst that allows you to unlock hidden opportunities. When you stop having impossible expectations that you should only live a positive life and that any negative that crosses your path is bad. You open the door to realistic expectations and you begin to see challenge as part of the human experience and a very necessary part of becoming all you can be.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Start to look at everything in your life a little differently, see everything that comes your way as something that has been sent to help you to become more, to help you to grow and expand into the type of person you need to become to attract and deserve the success that you desire. This shift where you see everything, both challenges and opportunities, as merely events, that will help you to expand and grow. Stop looking for ways to get through your week and start to see everything, as being on your way to the future you desire. As you shift the way you see things and you begin searching for ways to get as much from each experience as possible, you stop being a victim and you become a victor. Someone that expects challenge, plans for it and very quickly overcomes it has a tool kit, to help them to get value from every challenge, even if that value is only experience and an opportunity to eliminate one of the ways not to do something in the future.

Accept that history serves only one purpose and that is one of learning. Learn from all the lessons it has brought you, be grateful and celebrate all the successes you have enjoyed and know that the human experience will always be filled with both positive and negative. When you accept this, you stop feeling like a victim, you equip yourself to begin uncovering your hidden potential, you see that you have endless possibilities available to you and everything becomes possible for you.

Know that any worthwhile journey to living a life of meaning, will be filled with both positive and negative experiences, adopt the adage of “I will Until”, keep taking inspired action every day that is aligned with the result you want to achieve and you can have, do or be anything you want. Strive to be the best you can be and believe in your ability to live a life of purpose, where you will reach your highest human potential and you will not only have the success that you desire, but you will feel fulfilled, content and happy.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Money creates far more than just freedom

Money creates far more than just freedom

What is your relationship with Money? Do you feel guilty for having expectations that there is a transfer of money, to you for products or services that you supply? Too many people feel guilty when they charge for their services.  They feel that money is not aligned with their spiritual purpose and that expecting a fair price for services rendered is not a true reflection of their true value.  There is never a reason to feel guilty for charging a fair price for all services rendered, when everything is in balance and there is a fair exchange of value between parties.

It is time for you to upgrade your relationship with money and to start seeing money as only a measure of value. Both money and value have the same number of letters, it is time to shift the way you view money and to begin seeing the exchange of money as merely a fair exchange for the value you have offered.  As you make the choice to step into a more empowered relationship with money and you look on all transactions as only a fair exchange of value, you will stop seeing yourself as, someone who trades hours for money and you will start to identify the true value you have to offer. As you train your mind to make the shift and you stop viewing yourself as someone that merely trades dollars for money, you begin to see the real value that you have to offer and charging a realistic price for the value you add becomes comfortable.

As you break free from your unconscious habit of exchanging time for money, you will immediately stop feeling resentful about money. As you view money as merely a means of representing value and your contribution as a means of adding value to people, you change your relationship with money and more money or value will flow to you.

As you see your true value and you begin to attract more money (value) to yourself. You are able to establish a strong foundation of financial security that will give you the opportunity to have more freedom and choice.  A strong financial foundation allows you to become far more focused and frees you up to concentrate your efforts on things that really matter to you. Recognise your true value today and start to build a fortress of financial security around yourself. The benefits of living a life free from financial worry stretches far beyond mere freedom of choice. As your financial cushion grows, you begin to live a life free from unnecessary stress, your health improves and you have far more energy.

As your financial foundation grows and solidifies into financial independence, you free your mind up and you are able to stroke your creative juices. As you align yourself with abundance and prosperity, you build mutually beneficial bridges and connection with people that can support you and whom you can support in return. This helps you to keep growing and expanding, constantly becoming more and allowing you to turn your success into significance. Significance is a place where you are able to help others to grow and achieve the outcomes they desire. I believe that we are striving for significance and as this can only really be achieved by helping others, we must move our focus away from merely becoming successful and strive to help as many people as is humanly possible get what they want.

Commit to keep spreading your gifts and allow value to flow freely around you, as you engage in fair exchange, with everyone that you touch. See money or value as a flow of energy and see it circulating from people through you and then back out into the universe once again. As you grow and expand, you are better able to participate in this flow of energy and value. Commit to support important causes and give freely to inspiration, care for those less fortunate than you and leave a legacy of real love and grace.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Turn Challenge into a Success Tool

Turn Challenge into a Success Tool

Business Motivational Speakers

The world we inhabit is constantly changing and new challenges cross our paths daily. These ever changing times require that you start to stretch yourself beyond your self-imposed comfort zone and means that you must accept that there are going to be many occasions where you will be forced to plunge headfirst into uncomfortable situations. True, this will cause some pain and discomfort for a moment, but it's the quickest path to generating long-term fulfilment and sustainable success. Change and challenge are synonymous with success. As you enter a path of growth and you choose success over mediocrity, you will most certainly encounter challenges and roadblocks along the way. None of the challenges that you will encounter on your path to success are reserved only for you and your circumstances. They are merely a fact of life and the natural process, that anyone who chooses to stretch themselves, will encounter. Almost every challenge that you will encounter on your path to success has most certainly be encountered and overcome by someone before you. Learn the art of expecting challenge, welcoming it and viewing it as merely a part of the journey to uncovering and living the success you desire.

From this moment forward know that challenges are just a part of the success process and in many ways a very necessary part of that process. The challenges that you encounter, are very often the very catalyst that unlocks, opportunities that may have remained hidden, had you not encountered that specific challenge. In the future when you are faced with any roadblocks or challenges, do not let them overwhelm you, keep going and know that every challenge is just an opportunity to learn and grow. There is light all around you and challenges are just an integral part of the journey toward new and better outcomes in your life.

Business Motivational Speakers

The one certainty, in our lives right now, is frequent challenge, as challenge seldom happens in a vacuum. We can either allow the challenges that cross our paths to control us and our futures or we can consciously anticipate, work with and/or around every challenge we encounter. By learning to co-operate with challenge, you can uncover and utilize the numerous opportunities that these challenging times offer and discover a vehicle to assist you to realize your dreams.

Shift you thinking away from viewing any challenge or roadblock as a crisis. What picture does facing a CRISIS create in your mind? By simply changing the words you use to describe events in your life, you will immediately feel very differently about them and your responses will become more effective. See and describe everything you would traditionally have viewed as a crisis as a merely a challenge, that you expected and just one step closer to the outcome you want to achieve. Challenges after all are just events, that when viewed differently are opportunities in disguise. Many new ideas, concepts and opportunities will emerge after encountering any challenges or obstacles, if you are willing to slow down, search, discover and learn. Any challenge you may face may be a time of testing, but it is also an opportunity for renewal and growth.

Look at what life is reflecting back at you right now, this reflection was created by your thoughts, actions and beliefs. If you don’t like the reflection, you can change everything by simply changing the way you do things. Accept that not all the changes you make, will deliver the desired results. If things don’t work, adjust your approach but never a give up. All progress requires change, but not all change is progress. Change the way you view any challenges that cross your path and the challenges you encounter will change from a crisis, into something expected and useful.

Author: Andrew Horton Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Planned rest, proper nutrition and daily meditation are the power tools of super achievement (Part 2)

Planned rest, proper nutrition and daily meditation are the power tools of super achievement (Part 2)

Best Business Motivational Speakers

In the article yesterday we explored the necessity of regular rest, proper nutrition and for making time in your day to clear your mind and meditate. The greatest challenge you will face, as you try to introduce these three crucial components into your life, is that you will feel like you are slacking off, when in fact you introducing three new tools that will in fact make you more productive. The first step in this very necessary process is to see the huge productivity benefits that will flow to you as you build time into your schedule to recharge, how building good nutritional choices into your daily planning and scheduling time to unhook and allow your brain to replenish are all crucial components of creating the success you desire. If you are like me and the idea of taking time off feels like you are actually just slacking off, then shift your self-talk away from “taking time off” and see the time you schedule into your day for recovery, meditation and ingesting proper nutrition as “Rejuvenation, productivity building time”. This shift has really helped me to introduce these crucial components into my schedule. I now spend less time working each day, schedule rest time, exercise time, nutrition time and I ensure that I make time to meditate every day. Amazingly, since I have introduced these components into my busy schedule, I am getting far more effective work done each day.  Make this shift away from “I am wasting time” by introducing these apparent time wasters into my schedule to I have a new set of amazing productivity building tools that are making me far more effective and productive and you will astound yourself at how much more you will get done.  

The only way to make this work for you is to ensure that you actually schedule all three components into your dairy. As you know “whatever gets scheduled, gets done”. Every Sunday evening, when you are putting your weekly plan together for the week, you need to build the following components into your schedule, time to meet your future and to rest each day. Schedule regular meals throughout the day, make time to exercise and also build in time to meditate. These time slots are penned into your dairy and become unmovable appointments. The trick to make this work for you is to ensure that you defend these appointments on your calendar, like you would an opportunity to appear on the Oprah show. During your appearance on Oprah, you would not take calls, accept interruptions. You must treat these crucial daily meetings the same way, you need to remove yourself completely from the grid and block all other interruptions.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

These components are crucial productivity, energy and efficiency building tools. So break your desire to keep these activities secret from everyone around you. You have no reason to feel guilty about taking care of yourself and for doing things every day that are going to make you more effective. Use yourself as an example to everyone around you and show them how introducing these crucial components into your schedule actually make you far more productive. As you set new parameters and expectations around your schedule and you communicate this to everyone around you. It is amazing how the world seems to reorganize itself and everything seems to align with your new schedule.

The final and very crucial component in this process is to measure how you do each day. As you review how you do each day, week and month and see how you are improving and getting more and more done. You will see a pattern emerge that will give you a way to not only monitor your progress, but a way of constantly improving and making this system work better and better for you.

Measure all the rejuvenation components,

·         Are you keeping your commitments to rest and relax every day?

·         Are you exercising a minimum of 3 – 4 times a week?

·         Are you eating proper, nutritional meals 5 times a day?

·         Are you making time to mediate every day?

Commit to make, introducing these crucial components into your schedule, an uncompromised and productive priority each day and you will see you effectiveness and efficiency improve day after day.

This is what I recommend you introduce into your schedule as rejuvenation time

·         40 minutes for meditation

·         40 minutes to exercise, walk, gym – to move my body away from the office.

·         40 Minutes to do activities that engage and relax your mind. Find something that can challenge and excite you to do.

·         Take one day off a week, 24 hours in which you do not touch anything work related at all. I normally choose a Saturday and from 12 on Saturday until 12 on Sunday I do not think about work or do any work at all.

·         Schedule a 3 day long weekend getaway every 90 days.

·         Take a three week break once a year and travel.

As you introduce a schedule into your life, where you encourage recovery and rejuvenation, you will see remarkable improvements in your creative capacity, level of focus, efficiency, productivity and efficiency. We are creatures of habit, so the only way to make this work for you is to schedule it into your day and to make this part of your new routines and success habit set.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

How do you turn information overload into knowledge and skill?

How do you turn information overload into knowledge and skill?

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Our world is filled with a never ending flow of information, tips, ideas, quotations, advice and suggestions. There is such an information overload all around us, every second, that we can get lost in a sea of overwhelm, to the point where we are constantly overstimulated and we get to learn very little of value, from this sea of infinite information. The secret to get real value from everything we see around us, is to slow down and to give yourself time to digest and absorb all the information and to extract parts that you can begin to apply in your life. Give yourself permission to slow down from the fever pitch of your life for at least an hour a day. Time where you slow down long enough to contemplate, review, digest and act on anything you have learnt that day. The infinite flow of information all around you is not a source of growth or empowerment, until you learn and apply the knowledge in your own life. Knowledge alone is never power, if it was everyone that had access to an internet connection would be able to achieve anything. They could simply type a question into Google, wait for the answer and change their life. As you know knowledge is not power, it only offers us the potential to improve and grow, if we are willing to learn the lessons offered and apply the new value in our lives.

There is most certainly no shortage of knowledge or information today, knowledge is everywhere and if you have access to the internet it is virtually free. All that is holding us away from the success we desire is a commitment to use this infinite flow of free information and knowledge, as a source of our growth, improvement and on-going development. It is such a privilege to live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by ideas and concepts that can feed our minds with inspiration, positive thoughts and new stimulating ideas. The challenge is to not mistake the constant supply of knowledge and the noise all around you for growth. The infinite sea of knowledge and ideas all around us can become so overwhelming that we become paralysed into inactivity. We are so busy chasing after everything that we achieve nothing at all. Never mistake attempting to keep up with this never ending flow of information as a way to improve and grow. This constant activity and overwhelm is merely activity, it is most certainly not improvement and growth.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

The secret to become a real learner is to commit to not only read through every article, book or magazine that passes through your hands. It is to actively find ways to unlock the useful information contained in all of these by:

1)      Read it through once

2)      Summarize the key ideas or concepts.

3)      Look at each concept in turn and see how you can implement any new ideas into your life.

4)      Check and review any ideas that you do introduce to see how they are working for you.

5)      Keep acting on these ideas, review how they are working and then see if you can improve anything.

6)      Keep repeating this cycle until; you see these new ideas turning into real and meaningful results in your life.

You can master anything you want within about 5-7 years if you are committed and you apply yourself to the process. You can become world class at anything that will help you to change your life and move you closer to the success that you desire. Look into the future and project yourself seven years down the line. What skill or ability would catapult you to the next level and completely change your life? Once you have identified that one skill or area of expertise that you want to gain mastery over. Begin the process of planning a path to start the process of mastering exactly that in your life.

Within three years of focusing your efforts on studying the right material, as I have described in the six point method above, you will most certainly get to be good in your field and you will most certainly stand out from the crowd. Remove that picture of instant gratification from your mind, becoming an expert in any field and changing your life ids a process it is most certainly an event. Commit yourself to a marathon; this is not by any means a sprint. Real, meaningful transformation and growth, takes time and effort. One of the skills you must commit to learn early on is patience. Remove your expectations of becoming an overnight sensation or success. There is no such thing – there are many ten year – overnight successes, but no instant successes.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

So where to start –

Explore your plan to become a master over the next 5 – 7 years. Use this as a starting point.  Now look at your life over the next 90 days and choose a theme or focused area of study that is aligned with this outcome and concentrate all your efforts on only this theme for the next 90 days. Focus all your energy on only this theme for the next 90 days and only read, listen to or apply knowledge that is aligned with this theme. This focused approach will help you to remove the clutter and noise from your life and guide you to actually grow and expand your wisdom and knowledge base.

Now break this 90 period back even further into 45 day segments.  It takes between 26 and 45 days to turn a new routine into a habit. So if you want to develop a new success habit set that will allow you to achieve long term sustainable success that will feel almost effortless. Commit to introduce a new discipline, behaviour or routine into your life that is aligned with your goals or the outcomes you want to achieve and apply your willpower each day to carry it out. These are the new ideas or concepts that you will be learning from the material you have chosen to focus your energy on over each 90 day period. Do this for a minimum of 45 days, after about 45 days each new routine will become an entrenched habit, so it will no longer require willpower to perform.. I have found that you can work on a maximum of five new routines or habits at a time. I refer to these new behaviours or routines as your “Code of Personal Achievement”. Follow the link to view an article I wrote on understanding what the “Code of Personal Achievement is and how to learn this new skill.

I have found this method to be very helpful and have used it very successfully in my own life for a number of years. Please see a summary of the process below

1)      Identify an area of expertise that you want to master. This is an area that when you master it, will completely revolutionise your life.

2)      Create a seven year plan to begin moving you toward mastery.

3)      Break your plan back and look at the next three years and commit to apply focused effort to study the material using the six point method described above.

4)      Break your year into four equal parts of 90 days each. Choose a study or growth theme that is aligned with the outcome you want to achieve over the next seven years and focus all your energy on only reading, learning things that are aligned with this theme.

5)      Invest 45 day segments into converting the new behaviours, routines or skills into habits.

Commit to apply this system into your life and you can remove the clutter and noise from your life and you will be able to start benefitting from all the information that surrounds you.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Empower Half Hour

 "The Empower Half Hour"

Are you frustrated and convinced that your life is going nowhere? Do you feel like you have tried every possible tool, technique and gimmick to help you find success and meaning and yet you are still trapped in a life that is unfulfilling and empty? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are not alone. The vast majority of people are just like you. They feel frustrated and incomplete. They are searching for answers to unlock their potential and turn it into fulfillment and long term success.

Are you looking at your life, feeling trapped in a place where you are asking the question  “what can I do with my life” I meet people just like you every day who constantly chastise themselves for not having enough willpower to carry out the commitments that they make to change their lives. They feel as if they lack commitment and willpower and they constantly break every promise they make with themselves.

The “Empower Half Hour” is a 30 minute weekly show that will help you to answer that burning question “WHAT CAN I do with the rest of my life”, by offering you a weekly guide to help you to turn your willpower into “MYPOWER”. This show will offer you a gradual approach to gradually change your life. You will not need to completely reboot your life, the ”Empower Half Hour” will show you how to make the few small shifts that will move you from mediocre to magnificent. You will be guided, week by week, how to introduce a few simple, yet very effective daily routines that will help you to achieve your dreams and turn your fantasies into Realities.

“The Empower Half Hour is based on over 25 years of personal struggle and success. I have tried and tested all the tools that will be offered every week, in my own life and in the lives of many of my coaching clients. All the people that have embraced these ideas and applied them in their lives have transformed their lives and are living the success they deserve. The “Empower Half Hour” is a show that will guide all viewers in a progressive fashion, to begin making the changes necessary to positively change their lives.

Each weekly show will be filled with nuggets of really useful ideas, tools and techniques that will allow you to become the success that you desire. The only challenge you face is that as easy as these nuggets are to apply and to use, so easy are they not to use. This show is not meant to offer a quick fix option that will offer instant success, with little or no effort. It is a show that will guide you to gradually change your life over time. The “Empower Half Hour” is designed to be a series that offers a set of tools and techniques each week, that when used correctly, will become your toolbox to long term sustainable success.

As the show unfolds and you begin to apply the tools offered each week on the show, you will discover a recipe to re-align your values with the crystal clear vision you will create for your future. This new recipe will, over time, become your new success habit set that you can point at any goal or outcome you want to achieve in the future.

This show will guide you to accept that bringing success into your life is a process, it is not an event. Commit to include this new recipe for long term sustainable success into your life and begin using the tools offered. This will allow you to unlock potential that you never even knew you had. Think of it this way:

• What if it is just and apple a day that keeps the doctor away and you don’t eat that apple?
• What if this approach is all that you need to finally discover what you want to do with your life?
• What if this is the key you have been waiting for, to unlock your potential and express your dreams?
• What if you neglect to make the small shifts and introduce the new daily routines? Are you willing to miss the opportunity to finally live a fulfilling and complete life, simply because you choose not to introduce and apply a few new daily routines into your life?

This weekly show is designed to empower you to replace those limiting, dream killing habits that are keeping you trapped in mediocrity, with a success habit set that will make arriving at success one day feel almost effortless.

We will guide you to consciously make your habits and routines work for you. Have you ever arrived at a destination and thought “How did I get here?” You have absolutely no conscious idea what route you took or how you drove there. This is how your habits or entrenched routines work. How amazing is it that you can perform a complex task like driving through traffic, stopping at traffic lights, obeying the speed limit and being able to keep yourself safe, all without thinking about what you were doing or even remembering what you did. This is the basis for the new routines you will gradually introduce into your life in response to the tools offered in “The Empower Half Hour”.

You are encouraged, during each show, to gradually introduce a few new daily routines into your life, and to commit to practicing them until they are habits. This will make achieving success feel effortless. Your role is not to keep applying willpower to everything you do. Your job is to learn a set of daily routines and to turn them into a success habit set.

This success habit set can then be pointed at any outcome or result you desire and turned into effortless success. “The Empower Half Hour”. is a show that is packed with practical advice on creating useful habits that will serve you. We are creatures of habit that quickly get into comfort zones of routine behavior. Learning to use this fact about human behavior to our advantage is the focus of this approach.

Instead of going against our instinctive conditioning and working harder and harder every day to pursue success, we tune into how we function best and we use our basic human conditioning as a tool for creating the outcomes we desire.

Until we become aware of these basic truths about our nature, we are most likely to constantly operate outside our comfort zones and expect to use willpower to force ourselves to function against our own values. It is no wonder that so many people land up not achieving the success they deserve or desire. They are working against their natural makeup and design. You would never expect great results if you entered a combine harvester in a formula one motor race. The combine harvester is not designed for speed, it is designed for process. Similarly you cannot expect your brain to work differently from the way it is designed to operate. It is designed to keep us safe and to operate routinely within the bounds of our comfort zone. Yet we force our brains to operate under stress and we expect that our willpower is enough to override our basic programming. When we expect to operate outside the basic design parameters of our brains for prolonged periods, we invariably fail. We then torture ourselves and chastise ourselves as failures, all because we are unaware of how to use our own machinery properly.

“The Empower Half Hour”.  will show you that long term sustainable success is not a mystery. It is a compounding process of small daily routines over time that adds up to significant results i.e. the creation of a success habit set that is unique to your circumstances and workable for you.

This weekly show will show you how to regain the belief in your abilities and how to remain focused and aligned with your mission and vision of the future. We will explore challenges, roadblocks and setbacks and you will be guided to accept them, manage them and then find ways to exploit them to your advantage. Challenges are all part of the success process, so when they do show up (and they will), you will know not to allow them to overwhelm you. Your new habit set will equip you to review each challenge, find solutions and even reveal opportunities that may be hidden behind each challenge. The measure of someone is never whether they encounter challenges, but rather how they choose to respond to any challenge that does cross their path.

Your failure in the past is most certainly not a sin. It is merely a symptom of the methods you employed in the past. These methods flew in the face of the natural workings of your body and the basic operating principals of your brain. Your past failure was the result of not utilizing your machinery properly. You can never expect yourself to succeed when you place yourself under stress or if you operate outside your natural area of strength and comfort. Stop trying to impose new pressure on yourself, using pure willpower to achieve the results you want. When you do this, you place yourself under a huge amount of unnecessary stress. Your body’s natural defense mechanisms then come into play and your body strives to get back into balance.

The trick to stop this cycle of never ending un-kept promises and failure is to avoid placing your body under any unnecessary stress. Rather:

• Commit to gradually expand your comfort zone.
• Align your hierarchy of values with what you are attempting to achieve.
• Gradually develop a set of success habits that will make success both inevitable and effortless.

When you remove the imbalances or stressors from your life and you work instead to operate within the natural parameters or functioning of your body, you bring your system back into balance and you are able to function optimally, working with your body, rather than against it. The principals offered in “The Empower Half Hour”. must become your new way of life, a new way of doing things. The way you do anything, is the way you do everything.

How Will The Show Be Structured?

The show is organized into four logical sections. You will be guided through a systemic and natural flow to answer the question of what can I do with the rest of my life? How do I live my potential by creating a new success habit set that will deliver the success I desire?”

Section One

Building the Foundation of your Success

The first section of the show is designed to allow you to gain some insight, background and inspiration before getting your teeth into the practical tools offered in the rest of the show. This section aims to introduce some crucial concepts that must be embraced and understood, before kneading and molding your hierarchy of values until they are aligned with your vision and mission for the future and creating a set of success habits that will serve you.  I have designed this section to set the foundation for creating the outcomes you desire. It introduces you to the concept of success and asks you to define, exactly what success means to you. This is a crucial step on this journey we are undertaking together. Until you get a clear picture in your head about what success means to you, you are floundering in the dark, chasing after something unknown and mysterious.

Section Two

You will be introduced to the principals we will be utilizing throughout the show and why they work. This is done in an easy to understand and concise fashion. It is really important that you understand the reason these tools work, as this creates a foundation of believability for you. When you believe in something and you understand why it will work for you, it becomes far easier to introduce and apply these new tools into your life. When anything is believable it is achievable.   

How do you discover that? Those are your dreams and your fantasies. You will use the tools provided, to convert your dreams and fantasies into a crystal clear and concise set of achievable goals.

Discover Your Own G.P.S.

I am sure you know how a Global Positioning System (G.P.S) works. It triangulates and determines your current position. You then supply one piece of information, namely where you want to go. The software inside the GPS then calculates the best route to get you from one to the other. This information is then supplied to you either via voice prompts or pictures on the screen. You then take action and begin to follow the directions offered. As long as you follow the instructions and keep taking consistent action as directed, you will arrive at the chosen destination. 

The same is true for creating the future you have dreamed of your whole life. Moving your life from where you are to where you want to be in the future is a journey. As with any journey you undertake in your life, you must first know where you are in terms of your skills, abilities, habits and desires.

Conduct a Self Audit

 

Invest some time to carry out a self-audit. This will help you get a clear picture of where you are right now, and serve as a really grounded and clear starting point. This self-audit will highlight any areas in your life that may need improvement, new knowledge or skills you may require.

Dreams are merely your future reality waiting to be set free and your expectations are the fuel that provides the momentum and inspiration for you to create the meaningful dreams that will make a difference to you and the world.

Once you understand where you are, it is time to supply the second piece of information required to complete any journey, namely where you want your life to go. The place you want your life to go is simply defined by your dreams and fantasies. There are a number of simple tools and techniques offered that will help you to uncover what you really want. This section is designed to form the foundation of the entire process and highlights and explains the importance of moving away from stress and imbalance toward a more positive outlook and inner harmony.

As soon as you are comfortable with where you are, it is time to convert your dreams and fantasies into measurable, tangible, achievable and crystal clear goals. You will be guided to explore your values and to align these with your vision and goals that you have set for the future.

You will then be ready to engage with Section 2 i.e. the information, activities and measurement criterion needed to complete your journey. In other words this section gives you the directions you need to travel in order to reach the success you desire.

Section Three

 

This section is broken up into four simple parts:  Plan, Do, Review and Improve

 

Plan – Start to get the Best of your Life

 

What are you planning? You are building the map of the route that you will need to travel, to take you from where you are to where you want your life to go. Before you start building your plan, you will take a careful look at your self-audit and identify any skills or knowledge you may need to acquire. A strategy to acquire the necessary skills will be crafted into your plans.

Next, you will take a look at the goals that you have created to deliver the future you desire. Your goals are then broken back into more manageable chunks or projects. These projects are easier to achieve and can be accomplished within a reasonably short time frame, not more than 90 days long. Once you have broken each goal back into projects, you will begin the process of breaking these back even further into individual action steps.

The action plans you will create are crucial source documents that will form the foundation for turning goal setting into goal achieving and long term sustainable success.

There is an old military saying that says: NO plan survives first contact with enemy. Dwight D. Eisenhower was quoted after the successful invasion of Normandy, as saying “The Plans were useless, but the planning was indispensible”. Building your action plans allows you to think about where you want to go and to program your mind to search for opportunities, resources and everything else you may need to get you there.

The rapidly changing times in which we live today has made remaining flexible even more crucial than ever before. Whilst you must always have a vision and an outcome in mind, the secret to becoming and remaining successful is to be open minded and wide eyed about what may show up unexpectedly to support your ride to success. There is always more than one way of achieving the same outcome. This book teaches you to remain flexible and on the lookout for different or better ways to succeed.

Do – Just Lean Into it

No amount of planning or preparation is of any value until you commit to take action and bring the plan to life. We get so wrapped up in ‘doing’ in order to survive that we create the illusion of motion to fill our days. I have written this book as a guide, to show you how to begin taking inspired daily action that is aligned with your goals and which will deliver the results you desire.

This show is all about application and success. It will offer you a guide that will allow you to stop waiting for everything to be perfect before you begin taking action. After watching this weekly show, you will be equipped with all the tools you need to begin taking daily inspired action. These are the very actions necessary to achieve any goal or outcome that you desire. The functional plan that you will create is a daily guide to get you to your goal. Just as no farmer has ploughed his field by turning it over in his mind, so no one has achieved real and lasting success without taking consistent and committed daily inspired action.

Review - When in doubt check it out

When on the path to achieving your goals you will need to have consistent and regular checks to ensure that you remain on track. By monitoring your progress on a regular and frequent basis, you will only need to make small corrections to keep you on your path to success. It is imperative to have a set of predetermined ways to measure and monitor your progress. This will allow you to constantly take action to revise your daily actions to ensure that they are delivering the results you expect.

Always remember that you are more likely to complete any task if you frequently and consistently measure your progress against expectations. Your level of success is directly proportional to the quality and frequency of your reviews and goal measurement criteria. After reading this section you will be equipped to understand and set good quality measurement criterion that will help to keep you on track to success.

Improve

After reviewing and measuring your progress against your predetermined measurement criterion. Assess whether the actions you are taking are aligned with the outcomes you are trying to achieve. If they are, keep doing things exactly the same. If they are not, then examine the actions you are taking and alter them until they do deliver the outcomes or results you desire. This is a simple process of measuring your progress against expectations and then taking action to remedy any short comings. Not all the changes you make will deliver the results you desire. Keep making meaningful changes to your daily actions until you do align your outcomes with expectations. 

Section Four

Meet Your Future, C.P.A and Performance Management System

Inspiration is that fire in your belly that drives you to begin and to keep taking the necessary daily actions that will help you to realize all your dreams. Aligning your values with the success you desire and developing a success habit set are the catalysts that will help you to sustain your efforts and allow you to live a harmonious and balanced life. When you are in alignment with your values and you have created an ingrained success habit set to support you, you have the makings of creating and sustaining what will appear to be effortless success. This new set of daily routines or ingrained habits is what will keep you going even when that initial fire in your belly begins to burn out.

 

You will be introduced to the three simple concepts or new habits that will encourage success, balance and harmony in your life. You will be guided to gradually introduce these three new routines into your life. Once you have learnt and are applying these tools on a daily basis, you will have introduced three fundamental tools for long term sustainable success. You will carry out new daily routines almost on autopilot and most importantly you will have created daily time slots to work on your future. These activities will be measured regularly and tweaked until they deliver the desired outcomes. Bear in mind that once mastered, this approach can be used to create success in any area of your life.

Meetings with Your Future

This is your new success tool that is introduced into your daily routine to equip you with the time needed to carry out your inspired daily actions. This is time that you set aside every day to work on yourself and your future. When you introduce meetings with your future into your daily schedule you are teaching yourself to make time available to carry out the necessary daily activities to create the future that you desire. This is the time you make available every day to carry out the 5 daily activities or codes as described below. These are the almost insignificant daily actions that, compounded over time, allow you to create the future you desire, moment by moment. Real long term sustainable success is not about huge effort carried out over a long period of time. It is about small almost insignificant actions performed indefinitely over the course of your life.

Scheduling meetings with your future is time that you schedule every day to devote to making a meaningful difference to the way your future will turn out. Choose to include this very simple tool into your daily schedule and make it an integral part of your success habit set. This will remove the illusion that there is no time available to work on exploring and exploiting your own potential.

There are endless possibilities and opportunities all around you. Break free from the prison of perpetual ‘busyness’ and stop allowing yourself to be a victim of a perceived lack of time. Choose to introduce this system for time efficiency into your life. You will then have time available to perform those few small daily activities that will add up to massive success.

Code of Personal Achievement (C.P.A.)

This is a unique set of commitments or codes that you set for yourself every day, to carry out five activities that are aligned with the goals, you are trying to achieve. These activities when carried out daily will move you closer to the outcomes you want to achieve. They are the daily actions or tasks you are attempting to develop. These daily activities will over time turn into your success habit set. Initially it will require willpower to carry out these very necessary daily activities. After about 46 – 66 days these activities will become entrenched habits. To ensure that you have the time and inclination to carry out these tasks, we have created the concept of daily Meetings with your Future. (See above). Once you have developed the habit of scheduling Meetings with your Future every day, to ensure that you have time to carry out these actions. You will have created a daily routine that will help you to build any new success habit set you desire.

For example: If your goal was to improve your health.

You would choose five daily activities or “commitments to yourself” that would help you achieve this goal.

·         Drink 2 liters of water

·         Exercise 30 minutes a day

·         Eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day

·         Cut down on fat intake

·         Take multi vitamin daily

You will consciously carry out these five activities every day for 66 days, until they become entrenched habits. Current research has shown that it should take between 40 to 66 days for these activities to become entrenched habits. It will initially require discipline and willpower to carry out these activities but soon enough they will become ingrained habits and will become an integral part of your new success habit set. This is a tool that allows you to start developing a new daily routine that will ensure your success. This code or commitment you make with yourself, acts as a daily reminder for you to carry out activities that will help you learn new positive habits. Over time as you apply discipline to carry out these carefully chosen daily activities, you instill a new set of behaviors that eventually evolve into your new success habit set.

Performance Management System

Whatever gets measured gets done. The performance management system is designed to measure your performance on a daily, weekly, quarterly and annual basis. This system is designed not only to measure performance but it is also a way to celebrate success. When we constantly celebrate our successes, we are better equipped to remain inspired and driven to succeed.

It is not enough to merely have forward motion, where you are like a feather blowing in the wind. Yes, you are moving forward toward achieving your dreams, but at the first obstacle you become stuck and lose all impetus. This book will show you how to build momentum in your life as you work to achieve your goals. You must learn to feel and operate like a strong free flowing river, where you become virtually unstoppable. This is only achieved if you constantly measure your performance and you take action to ensure that your activities are delivering the desired results. As long as your daily activities are achieving the outcomes you desire, you bring some of the most powerful forces into play namely momentum and compounding.