Motivational Speakers - What Are your Expectations for the Future?

Motivational Speakers

What Are your Expectations for the Future?

Why do you think everyone has different expectations and beliefs about what they can achieve in the future? I know you are expecting a really profound answer here, but I am afraid the answer is really simple. Your most prominent thoughts drive your expectations. So what you think about, actually does affect the way things turn out in the future. Your thoughts really do have an incredible effect on your life and how it will turn out.

When last did you invest some time to ensure that your thoughts are positive and that you are in a positive mental state, where you consistently reflect a positive attitude to the world?

Your thoughts create Everything in your Life

It has been common knowledge for many years that your thoughts do indeed drive your success or lack thereof. In fact many of the greatest self-improvement books ever written, focused on the power of your thoughts. The titles that come to mind are titles like ‘Think and Grow Rich”, “As a man Thinketh” “The magic of thinking big” and “The power of positive Thinking” and many, many more. It has been proven many times over that what you regularly think about, you most certainly bring about.

Are you making a fatal Mistake?

The most common error made by most people, who set goals is that they use their thoughts to turn the creative process against them. For example, we are extremely averse to loosing things. So when you set a goal to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure. Rather set a positive goal in the present tense, something like “I come alive at 95”, or “looking great at 58”. This positive reinforcement allows you to view your goals as something positive and something you want to take action to achieve.

Another fatal mistake is setting a goal around the things you don’t want. For example if you want to live debt free. “You set a goal like I will be debt free by a certain date” This means that your goal is focused squarely on what you don’t want in your life. Again you are not creating a positive feeling and set of emotions around your goals. Rather set goals like “I will create a positive net asset value, by certain date”. This allows you to focus on taking positive actions to achieve a positive outcome.

Avoid the common mistakes of focusing on the negative, or on setting goals where you must lose something and rather focus on creating a positive vision of what you want to create in the future.

Action Idea: Allow yourself to get centered, grounded and look around your world, see all the wonderful abundance, which exists in you and all around you. This mind-set is best supported, when you explore your world, appreciating all the wonder that you already possess. I must once again affirm the importance of feeling gratitude for everything in your world, as  it puts you in a far better place and mind space, where it is far easier to think and believe in all the positive possibility, which abounds.

Clear Negative Thoughts from your Mind

When you focus on gratitude and you set only positive goals. It is far easier to stop negative thoughts and the natural doubts, which flow through your mind all the time. It becomes far easier to redirect your thoughts towards abundance and to see all the wonderful opportunities all around you. Focus on the positive, be aware of the negative, but ensure that this does drive your expectation and you will be able to invite more abundance into your experience. This will will allow you to experience far more well-being, meaning, fulfilment, love and joy in your life.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Do You Appreciate Everyone Around You?

Nothing has a greater effect on building relationships than Appreciation

Appreciating others is one of the principles of success, which too many business professionals, neglect on their journey towards sustainable business success. This is often at their own peril as research shows that up to 88% of employees who leave their jobs, do so because they feel unacknowledged and unappreciated. Consider the impact of a lack of appreciation on personal relationships! “Whether you are an entrepreneur, business leader, teacher, parent, coach, or simply a friend, if you want to be successful with other people, you must master the art of appreciation”

Appreciation Builds Influence

If you want to build influence with other people, to create deeper, trusting, mutually beneficial relationships, you must show appreciation. Consider when you’ve been on the receiving end of uncommon appreciation—when someone has made you feel appreciated and special. What was the impact of that act of appreciation on the relationship? How did you feel about that person? How do you feel now about the impact that person has had on your life?

Appreciation Inspires Those Around you

There is a major mismatch in how much employees value appreciation and how much their employers recognize it as important. Studies have shown that employees consistently place “appreciation” as the number one thing that influences their level of motivation. Yet their employers place it as number eight, below wages, job security, opportunities for promotion, and even discipline.

Think about the people who could support you the most, as you travel the path towards the business success you desire. These are the individuals, who will support you to achieve your goals and help you create your ideal life. How do you appreciate them? What kind of impact could an increase in appreciation have on their desire to be a member of your support team?

Individualize your appreciation for the most impact

In order to have the most impact when you practice appreciation, consider the way in which each individual likes to be appreciated. Each person has a dominant way in which their brain takes in information and processes it—auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic. If you are attempting to show appreciation to someone by telling them thank you, yet they are dominantly a visual person and need to see it, your “thank you” won’t have the impact that it could.

Appreciation Activates the Law of Intention

One of the reasons for calling appreciation a “secret” of success, is that it sometimes pays dividends in indirect, yet very real, ways. According to the Law of Intention, we attract more of what we focus our attention on. If we’re constantly focused on the things we don’t like about our lives, we’ll tend to attract more of what we don’t like. Yet if we are in the mode of appreciation and gratitude, focusing on the things we like and appreciate and are grateful for, we’ll attract more of the same into our experience. When we are grateful we also become more “attractive” to others—they want to be around us far more!

Be Generous when showing your Appreciation

Increase your awareness of what others are doing around you. Even if another’s actions don’t directly benefit you, be aware of things others do that you can appreciate. Has someone created a thing of beauty? Did you overhear a mother speaking kindly and patiently to her whining child? Is the clerk in the checkout line dealing with rushed customers with grace? What are the ways that you can be in the mode of appreciation throughout your day? How can you appreciate others around you?

Appreciation Starts with You First

To really enjoy the benefits of showing appreciation, you must learn to show appreciation to yourself first.  In addition to appreciating what’s happening around you, be sure to especially acknowledge and appreciate yourself. Even if you’re showing a lot of gratitude and appreciation for others, when you’re constantly berating yourself or beating yourself up internally, you’re not creating true abundance.

Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers South Africa

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Small Errors Compounded over Time, Destroys your Potential

The compound effect is remarkable and small consistent, well directed efforts over time, add up to remarkable results in our lives and businesses. Unfortunately the compound effect does not only work in a positive direction. Consistent neglect of your health, career, and relationships or around building wealth eventually results in disaster.

Failure is seldom the result of a single cataclysmic event; it is the accumulation over a prolonged period of poor thinking and choices. Failure is nothing more than a few small errors in judgment, repeated day after day, for a prolonged period of time. Have you ever wondered why someone would make errors in judgment or bad choices and just keep repeating these mistakes, again and again for years and years?

The reason is simple; the negative outcomes, as a result of the neglect or bad choices are not immediately visible and so people think that the small compounding errors do not matter. Each little piece of neglect or lack of discipline does not seem to have any effect on their lives at all. We seem to escape unscathed and it appears that we have escaped any immediate consequences.

The Result of Neglect is Slow and Subtle

Our lack of discipline and our total disregard toward our on-going education and growth seems to have no effect on our lives at all. Not reading any books for the past ninety days seems insignificant. We look back over the past ninety days where we have neglected one small, yet very significant discipline, namely daily reading, and nothing drastic has happened so we repeat the error in judgment for the next ninety days.

This is where the true danger to our future success lies. Not only are we not showing any discipline and not reading the all-important books, which are going to help us to grow and constantly develop, but we are oblivious to the fact that it even matters. Sitting every night in front of the television, entertaining ourselves to death brings what feels like instant gratification and helps us in the moment, escape from the stresses of our day.

Repeated Neglect and Bad Choices Spells Disaster

Unfortunately repeating this behaviour only keeps us trapped in the circumstances, which cause us the stress in the first place. We repeat this cycle every day, we go to work at a place that we hate, do a job we cannot stand and which causes us unbelievable stress. Then we arrive home in the evening and collapse in front of the television, so that we can cope with everything that is wrong in our lives. This cycle repeats for years and years and we remain trapped.

The pleasure of the moment, watching television, makes us feel better in the moment, so we neglect to make the changes necessary to break the negative cycle, which is keeping us trapped. The consequences of a future, where we remain stuck in circumstances that are making our lives miserable goes unnoticed.

The consequences of this on-going neglect is seldom, if ever,  instant and the compounding effect of the neglect and poor choices, compounds and accumulates over time. Unless you make a conscious effort to change and you finally choose to begin taking positive daily actions, which will have the opposite effect and will eventually result in success. The on-going neglect in your life will just keep compounding into a wasted life in which you never get to realize your full potential. Failure is subtle and does not shout out immediate warnings about the impending, inevitable disaster, which is looming, due to your on-going errors in judgment. Wrestle back control of your life and begin using the compounding effect in a positive fashion and you can reverse the cycle.

Reverse the Cycle by Making Better Choices

As you make better choices, you will reverse this negative cycle and using the same principles, which have resulted in your living an unfulfilling life, you can create massive success in your life and business. By reversing the formula for failure and applying a few daily disciplines consistently in your life, you can create a formula for success.

The way to achieve this change in your philosophy is to change the way you look at your future. You must make the outcomes you want to see in the future an integral part of your current thinking and philosophy. This means that you must look to your future and create a crystal clear picture of exactly what you want your future to look like. Once you have this vivid picture in your mind you must identify the new habits you must develop to support this vision.

The Future you Get to Live is the Result of Your Actions Today

The success or failures you will see in your future are both future consequences of the actions you take or fail to take today. As long as you stay focused on the instant gratification in the moment and you never look at the potential rewards, which will flow to you in your future, with the application of a few small daily disciplines. You will remain trapped in a life of mediocrity.

To break free from the place you are trapped at the moment, look a little further down the road and visualize the future you desire. Commit to amend the current errors in judgment, which are holding you away from that visualized future. Develop and apply a few new success orientated disciplines, which will move you one small almost insignificant step at a time; closer and closer to the future you desire.

Positive Results will Show-up in a Reasonable Length of Time

The wonder of choosing to apply a few success orientated new disciplines into your life, is that the positive results will be seen within a reasonable length of time. Stay focused on the future outcome you see in your future and stay focused and committed to that outcome. Keep applying yourself to carry out the new daily disciplines and you will begin to feel a new level of satisfaction and vitality. The positive results will begin to show in your life and this will give you a new level of self-confidence.

The real magic of the new disciplines you will introduce into your life, is found in the fact that it will help you to shift your thinking. Once you begin to reap the rewards of a life of substance, you will no longer be content to simply live a life of subsistence. Make this the first day of your new life, try a little harder, and make a conscious effort to change those deadly dream destroying habits, which are keeping you trapped in mediocrity. Commit to apply a few new disciplines in your life every day. The rewards of these few small subtle positive changes will be magical and well worth the effort.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers South Africa

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Set Only Positive Goals and Achieving Them will be a Cinch

When police agents are trained to recognise counterfeit money, they are trained to focus on knowing all the characteristics of the legal currency. They are trained using real money and work with only the legal tender, until they know every counterfeiting measure printed on or in the money. They study the money on both sides, until they know every feature of the money, which makes it legal tender. By knowing the real money so well, when they encounter any counterfeit money, they will immediately recognise it as counterfeit. Their training is very specific and focused on teaching them to know everything about the legal money. Their minds are therefore not cluttered with all the possible things, which could be wrong or the mistakes that are commonly made. They are completely focused, because they are specialists in the real thing. This way any counterfeit money is glaringly obvious to them.

The same is true for your life. When you focus your energy on the penalties of failure or you are constantly worried about all the things that could go wrong. You are far more likely to infuse your performance with those penalties and potential mistakes. One of the most crucial steps in the process of ensuring you stay focused on achieving your vision and goals is to concentrate on what you need to do. Do not allow yourself to focus any attention on the things you must not do. For example, if you feel you are carrying a little too much weight. Do not set a goal to lose weight, or if you are a tennis player do not set a negative goal, not to double fault. Avoid setting negative goals like not being late all the time or not to speak so fast and loud all the time. These goals are framed in negative terms and try to get us to move in a positive direction, by focusing on the negative. No wonder achieving goals seems so difficult.

We need to steer clear of negative goal setting. It is impossible for our minds to focus on a reverse idea. For example: when the tennis player focusses on the negative term, namely the double fault. He is reminding himself of the very condition he wants to avoid at all costs. The person, who is constantly late for everything, by setting a negative goal about not being late, does not offer a solution, but only highlights the challenge they want to overcome. When we think in terms of all the weight we have to lose, we have a negative self-image in our minds of someone who is overweight. To succeed in achieving any goal we set we must create a vivid picture in our mind of what we want to do, or achieve, not what we do not want to do, or what we do not want to achieve. In the case of losing weight we need to create a vivid image in our minds of what we will look like when we reach our perfect weight. Using this image as our goal we have a positive image and a solution to focus on, rather than a negative picture of being overweight and the kilograms we need to lose.  

Try this little experiment: Get a picture in your mind of a time you were really angry or upset. Focusing on that picture, try to concentrate on not being upset or angry. How does it make you feel? Now get a vivid picture in your mind of a time you felt energised and happy. Focusing on that picture, concentrate all your energy on feeling elated and happy. How much better do you feel using the second technique, where you focused on the positive outcome you wanted to achieve, rather than trying to overcome a negative picture or emotion?

When you understand this really important characteristic about how your mind works and you understand that your brain can’t focus on an idea in reverse, you can now appreciate why you must only set positive goals. Try to never again tell yourself not to make mistakes, rather focus on visualising a picture of a perfect or flawless performance. When you focus on the positive outcome you want to achieve, you will perform far better. Can you imagine a tight rope walker who constantly tells himself, not to fall? How long do you think he will survive as a tight rope walker?

The best way to improve performance or to set goals is as follows:

• The tennis player, should say things like “First serve in every time”
• The person who wants to lose weight, should say “I am reaching my perfect weight”
• The person, who speaks loudly and too fast, should say “I speak, slowly, clearly and with confidence”.
• The person, who is always late, should say “On time, all the time, every time”.

These are all examples of positive goal statements and they help you to create positive images of achievement in your mind. These positive images, then act as a strong pulling force, to pull you in the direction of the desired new behaviour you need to adopt, to achieve any goal. This small shift in the way you set goals will have a remarkable positive effect on your ability to achieve any goals in the future.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

People, Purpose, Projects and Process are the Cornerstones of Success in any Organisation

People, Purpose, Projects and Process are the Cornerstones of Success in any Organisation

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Creating and sustaining success in either your own life or business is about leadership. In the case of your own life, it is about, self-leadership, self-discipline, or daily inspiration and drive; to carry out the activities needed to achieve the outcomes that you desire. To expand this success into your business requires a form of leadership, which encourages the duplication of this individual commitment and self-leadership, into every member of your dream team.

Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link and in the same vein; every team is only as strong as the commitment and drive of each individual team member to give their best, and to deliver on their role within each team. Each team member can only deliver on this, if they have crystal clear picture of what is required of them every day, they know what the purpose of the team and organisation is and there are Cleary defined projects and processes in place that are easy to follow and utilise.

People and businesses that prosper and manage to thrive in all areas, focus on the four cornerstones of success, people, purpose, projects and process. The secret to make this work within your business is to ensure that all four areas are clearly defined and understood by everyone, so that both your team members’ and clients know exactly what to expect and more importantly what to do.

People are the lifeblood of your organisation - Best Business Motivational Speakers

No vision will ever see the light of day, without the support and commitment of everyone within the organisation. Any business that wants to succeed knows that people are what make any enterprise possible. Happy, content people within any organisation will deliver more than what is expected of them, they will always strive to exceed expectations. Any leader that wants to succeed and thrive must make their people a priority and ensure that there are clear channels of communication available that will ensure that everyone is heard and made to feel valuable.

You can’t thrive without VISION – Purpose – Best Business Motivational Speakers

 No matter how simple or complex a business may seem, if the business is to thrive and not merely survive, there must be a culture of real leadership within the organisation and a commitment to clearly define and communicate the purpose or vision of the organisation to all stakeholders. This vision or purpose must be filtered down in a concise fashion, to each team and finally every individual within those teams must understand their individual role, required to bring this vision to life.

As long as any organisation has a clearly defined purpose that is understood and supported by everyone within that organisation and every team member knows their individual role, required to deliver on the big picture. You have a fantastic foundation and a strong springboard to start the journey towards long term success. This journey is sustained by each individual and their drive to deliver on their individual commitment to the overall vision.

When you are communicating your vision or purpose to all stakeholders, ensure that you tell a story about why the business exists  what it does, so that you continually keep all stakeholders informed about where the businesses is headed and everyone is clear on their individual roles to deliver on this vision.

By the inch it is a cinch - Best Business Motivational Speakers

Ensuring that you have inspired passionate people with a common vision and commitment to deliver on this vision is crucial to ensure success. Success can however only be sustained if the vision is continually broken back into small bite size chunks that are accepted and understood by every team member. Long term sustainable success is the accumulation of a myriad of small daily activities on the part of every individual.

Look to break every challenge, question, initiative, campaign or innovation back, into logical projects or small achievable bite size chunks. Once you have the commitment of every individual within your team, they understand what actions they must take every day and you commit to supply all the necessary resources required, you have the ingredients necessary to achieve each project. As you complete each project, you eventually have everything in place to continually delver on your vision.

Whatever gets measured gets done - Best Business Motivational Speakers

Finally all that is left to do is to bring your people, purpose and projects together and to have a system that manages and measures all three. Effective process management is about understanding and ensuring that every task and action is undertaken and that these actions are delivering the required outcomes.

If your business is to thrive in these changing times, it is crucial that you understand the role played by the four cornerstones of business success, namely people, purpose, projects and process.

·         People must be encouraged and continually developed.

·         Everyone must support the common vision or purpose and have access to all the resources needed to succeed.

·         Each stakeholder must know their individual roles, required to complete each project

·         There must be clearly defined processes that define, monitor and measure individual performance.

 All four cornerstones of long term sustainable success are most certainly common sense, but are they common practice in your organisation?

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Lead Yourself into the New Changing World

Lead Yourself into the New Changing World

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Before the advent of the computer age and globalisation, there were only two certainties in life, namely death and taxes. Since we moved into the new millennium and the rate of technological development has sped up even more, there is now a third certainty and that certainty is constant change. This inevitable accelerated change is speeding up year after year, due to the on-going technological development, the explosion of knowledge, globalisation, the shift in economic power to Asia and the changing demographic majority in a number of first world countries.

Just look around your own environment and you will bear witness to the incredible strides made in technological development over the past few years. Remember those huge bricks; we called mobile phones in the 1990’s. All those behemoths could do was make and receive phone calls and they had a battery life of only a few hours. Now only a few years later you have a smart phone in your pocket that weighs a few ounces, with a battery life of a couple of days, with more computing power than one of the space shuttles. All these changes have occurred in a little over ten years, astounding progress, when you consider that the first computer was only invented in the middle of the last century.

Ray Kurzweil, in his essay, “The Law of Accelerating returns”, which he published in 2001, states that technology will not only experience 100 years of progress during this century, he says that it will be more like 20 000 years of progress at the current rate.

Add the fact that knowledge is doubling at an ever increasing rate every year, it becomes even more crucial now to stay committed to a life time of learning and growth. At the turn of the last century, it is estimated that it took about 150 years for knowledge to double. Since the turn of this new century, it is estimated that knowledge is doubling every two years and astoundingly by 2020, the experts predict that knowledge will double every 72 days. This growth in knowledge will require more and more specialisation and focus on the part of everyone. The concept of a universal man or women that could know all the information available to mankind, as depicted at the turn of the last century, becomes more and more impossible as the years go by.

The very people that were born in the 1980’s and 1990’s (Millennial Generation) are the biggest group to enter the workforce, since the baby boomer generation. These people have grown up in a different era; their value systems are completely different. As they enter into the workforce and become the decision makers of the future they will most certainly change the way things are done. The key role they will play in changing workplace dynamics will be driven by the ever increasing expectation around instant gratification and their need for constant reinforcement and praise.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Leadership in most business organisations up until now, has been based on the premise that these organisations are purely there for economic reasons and to generate a profit for all stakeholders. Business was all about developing structures, which could leverage the best control over resources, so that capital could be managed and leveraged for maximum return. These structures were best served by pyramids of hierarchies that performed rigid and narrow tasks, within very narrow guidelines. These structures have become archaic and will no longer be effective in the new millennium.

Today it is no longer about managing people and processes. Effective leadership is all about building and supporting everyone in the organisation, to become leaders in their own right. Success is no longer about having leaders that create structure and systems that people blindly follow. It is about developing a leadership style, where everyone in the organisation builds their own self-confidence, self-awareness and becomes responsible for their own self-management.

This mind-set is best developed by encouraging everyone in the organisation to build their emotional intelligence, by improving their communication skills, encouraging the development of effective time management skills, building real connection through effective networking and a focus on building a culture of team participation and recognising the importance of each individual to the whole. These rapidly changing times have highlighted the need to do things differently and to commit to a lifetime of learning and growth. The need to be flexible and adaptable, has never been more necessary than it now is, open your mind and allow yourself to not only expect change, but to plan for change and to change the one thing you have control over, namely yourself, sooner rather than later. This shift will allow you to see new trends and changed circumstances early. This will give you a huge advantage going forward.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

Become The Person you need to be

Become The Person you need to be

Best Business Motivational Speakers

Everything we are able to attract to ourselves is not controlled by some mystical force that surrounds us. We attract everything into our lives because of whom we are, what we think and speak about and the consistent daily actions we take.

 To attract anything into your life you need to figure out how to answer these few questions:

1)      How do I become the type of person that deserves everything that I what I want in my life?

2)      What skills, knowledge or talent, do I lack that is holding me away from what I desire?

3)      Who is living a similar life, doing what I want to do and experiencing what I want to experience?

4)      How can I learn everything I need to learn, to become more like the people that have the success I desire.

Best Business Motivational Speakers

As you answer these questions, you commit to build a plan, which will allow you to begin turning into the type of person that will begin to attract all the resources, people and circumstances, which you require, to have everything you desire. Then all that is left to do is for you to pull the trigger and begin taking daily action on your plan. After making this small shift, you will begin to see amazing things begin to happen, everything will seem to magically gravitate toward you, not because of some mystical force, but because you are focusing your energy, thoughts and actions on becoming who you need to be.

To illustrate my point I want to quote a few of the legends on human development that have enjoyed incredible success in their own lives, by following a these principals.

1)      If you want to attract more, you must become more.  - Jim Rohn

2)      Change your thoughts and you change your world - Norman Vincent Peale

3)      All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination; Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and achievement - Napoleon Hill.

After reading the quotations from the experts above, it is clear that they have known for a very long time that, whatever you focus your energy on and think about, you will eventually bring about. There is no great mystery to this process at all. To begin to enjoy the success you desire, you must first know exactly what you want, focus your strengths on becoming the person you need to be in order to attract just that into your life. Then all that is left to do is for you to do, is to direct all your energy, thoughts and actions in the direction of what you want and the magic will begin.

There will obviously be challenges that will cross your path, on the way to manifesting exactly what you want in your life.      

Best Business Motivational Speakers

The secret to begin attracting and sustaining the type of success you desire, is simply a case of focusing your energy on becoming more and a then remaining committed to a life of on-going learning and growth. These are to be expected as they are an integral part of the success process. Challenges are yet another opportunity for us to develop, grow and expand, to become more. Commit to accept challenges as an integral part of the success cycle, introduce this simple process we have discussed above into your life and amazing things will begin to manifest in your life. As you keep becoming more, you will continue to attract more. Whatever you commit to become, you focus your attention on and consistently apply your specific strengths to make happen, will eventually manifest in your life.  All that you need is patience; persistence and the fortitude, to invest sufficient time, resources and energy into becoming more.

Author: Andrew Horton Best Business Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

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