Success University 02 (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

[winston]

Seek And Ye Shall Find by Mike Brescia

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Today's Empowering Quote
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"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."
-George Bernard Shaw

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Today's Empowering Question
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"How good am I going to feel when I (reach some outcome)?"

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Today's Fast Session
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I just had a conversation with someone I've known my whole life. This man lost over $150,000 in the stock market in
the last 20 months. He just kept watching it go down, down, down. Of course, he's been listening to a small town broker who doesn't know much.

It just breaks my heart to have watched this, because it was so avoidable. There is so much information in the world right at our fingertips that it's simply shocking to me that anyone would continue to blindly trust someone without getting more education on investing.

As people living in the 21st century, we've lost all excuses to getting beaten like that in most areas of life.

I mean if you want to lose weight, gain weight, stop a rotten habit, find your love, help your kids get better grades, be a great parent, make more money, etc., etc., etc. the How-To is out there. But you have to find it and then DO something.

When I had so screwed up my life that I was living in a vehicle, no one was betting on me to make it to my next birthday, let alone reach the top of the mountain. But it was by using the wealth of information that's available to us all that helped me salvage my life from certain destruction and put me on the right path.

Now I'd been imploring and begging this guy for the last 32 months to subscribe to investment journals and newsletters. Nope. Things were going just fine. Didn't need it. Market is going to turn around any time. Now he's scared to put money into anything. That's what a lack of knowledge and fear will do to you.

It didn't take a genius to make money in the market for quite a long time. So after being lulled to sleep by the good times, he knows absolutely nothing more about successful investing than he did 10 years ago.

And investing is just one of many broad areas of life where you can easily succeed or fail based on just one more (or one less) bit of information.

Of course you still have to act on your knowledge. Because when it comes to the important decisions in life, motivation and belief aren't always enough. You must know what you're doing. There is no substitute for a good well drawn out plan based on solid principles.

Back to investing for a moment. Why doesn't Warren Buffett, the world's greatest investor, invest in high tech and internet stocks? Because as a whole, they don't have a long enough track record to have proven to be able to perform in many different economic environments. Hey, I worked for a large, well-funded "dot com" that doesn't exist anymore!

The bottom line is this...

If you want to learn something, you've got to learn it from the people who KNOW what you want to learn.

Don't cry about your relationships to people who have been married and divorced four times. Don't ask your next-door
neighbor about their favorite stock. And don't take weight loss advice from someone who is 50 pounds overweight.

When I wanted to build my book business, for example, I called people from all over the country who had similar businesses. I called my largest supplier and asked them who their top distributors were. I then called about 20 of them. I picked their brains about everything I could possibly think of. This was a never-ending process for about 15 months.

And in less than 12 months, I had built the largest business of its kind in the world. Not because I'm so smart... but because I found out where the knowledge was and systematically proceeded to hunt it down.

Was it a lot of work? Whew!! But I don't regret it for a moment. It was part of the process of developing myself into the person I wanted to become.

It wasn't just a way to make money. The money is long gone. But the knowledge, the self-confidence and the incredible belief in my abilities stay with me even today. It's part of the foundation of who I am now.

It reminds me of what a body builder I used to work out with a number of years ago said about his methods and dedication to working out. He was not just big... he was perfectly proportioned as well.

He said, "I get to carry my trophy around with me forever."

Learn what you need to know to get what you want. It's the surest, fastest way. Then go about using what you've learned and YOU'LL get to carry YOUR trophy around with YOU forever, too.

[winston]

Anything you desire, the Universe can find a way to let it happen within the context of people & natural, joyful desires. It must be, for this is a joy-based Universe.

And so, as you watch children playing in the mud and having great joy in it, you might not enjoy playing in the mud, but they do. And so, there's somebody enjoying doing something you dont want to do.

And that pretty much applies to everything. There's someone who would enjoy doing every thing that you dont want to do.

And if it really came down to where there was really not one person willing to do that thing, you would develop another way of approaching it. There are a lot of things that were in your history that you no longer participate in. You left them behind because no one wanted to do them.

Excerpted from a workshop in Albuquerque, NM on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003

All Is Well

[winston]

You’re not ever going to teach them how to vibrate, nor would you want to change them all to a place of vibrating just like you. Your work is not to fix them; they are not broken.

Your work is to choose from among all of that which feels best to you, and fixate on it as long as it gives you pleasure and joy. And in doing so, you will align with the Energy of your Source, and you will live a magnificent experience.

You just have to not let your joy depend upon what anybody else is living, ‘cause that’ll get you every time.

Excerpted from a workshop in Tarrytown, NY on Saturday, May 8th, 2004

All Is Well

[winston]

So, Where Is The Gold Dust? By Russ Sutton, RN

During the course of my career, I have heard this question hundreds of times, "Where's the dust?" Once you have realized what your goals are, have written them down and made your vision board and have given effort into achieving them, you may experience a time where you are not getting the results you had anticipated...if any at all. You look to see what it is you have done incorrectly, or perhaps, something you have missed entirely. You go back and forth, searching for that part of the puzzle that is in the wrong spot. You may have looked at others who are experiencing the success you thought you would attain. 'They are doing it, why haven't I' you may ask.

Allow me explain to you, from the beginning, what I tell those who pose this question to me.

First, it is of utmost importance to set goals you really want. Not something you think or have been told you want. Next, write them down as I have outlined in previous articles. Build a vision board or a treasure board of those ideas of your new life. Act as though this new life is already yours. Live accordingly. If you want to be a millionaire, find out what millionaires do. Where they go. Where they live. Who they associate with. Know everything you can find out about millionaires, and mimic them.

Set your mind as though you already are a millionaire. When you awaken in the morning, think of yourself as a millionaire. Brushing a millionaire's teeth, shaving a millionaire's face, etc. The same is true with any goal you may have. You must first, BE a millionaire.

Second, you must DO what a millionaire would do. Think, always as a millionaire. Immmerse your mind into that of a millionaire. Only then will you HAVE what a millionaire has.

The most important point to remember, and this is priceless, you create your own reality. What does that mean? It is very simple really. Your reality is what you think it is. There is no other force as great as your thought. Your though brings about everything in your life. If you think you are going to be rich, you will be. If you think you are going to fail, you will. If you think there are reasons you have not achieved you dreams, there are. If you think the others you see that are prospering have something over you, they do. Do you get this? Think about it. Once you have put some thought into this, ask yourself again, 'why can't I get what I came for?' 'Where is the Dust?'

You see, you have the steering wheel to your life. You are the one who will make or break your life. You have the will to better yourself. You are the one holding yourself back! You are the only stumbling block that matters. I know, there are a million excuses you can use to counter those statements. And for every one, I challenge you to think of one way you can get around that barrier. Look into the mirror and try to explain why you cannot find a way around a barrier. You have convinced yourself there is a problem, therefore, you are the only one that can convince yourself otherwise.

If you are looking for reasons you haven't achieved your goals, you will find them and, they will multiply as long as you continue to search for them. Your thoughts are your reality. Get it? You think and it is given. If you think someone is getting results because they know something you do not, then they do. However, if you see that same person getting results, and wish them even better results, knowing your results are going to be what you wish them to be, you will find yourself achieving even greater than you thought.

You see, this is not a competition. You cannot compete with yourself. You can only, honestly work to get what you want. There is no competition because there is only you in the equation. What the other is doing has no bearing on you. You are the only one who has your goals. You are the unique individual with a unique vision for your future.

So, you see, there is no dust. There is nothing you need to achieve your dreams that you do not already possess. It is all within you. All of the problems and all of the answers are in your mind. You create and can overcome all of the barriers to your success. All you have to do is believe this. Its true! All you have to do is believe that what you are doing to achieve your vision is correct. If you are not competing, have crystal clear goals, are being true to yourself and are doing all you can to realize your goals...you already have! That's right! Your goals are there for you to simply reach out and take. Believe this and you will soon see it is very true.

Author's Bio

Russ is a teacher and student of personal development. He has been personally mentored by a long list of experts including, Lee Bower, James Arthur Ray, Bob Proctor, Dr. Joe Dispenza as well as others. Russ has taken this information one step farther and is applying it to business. He now assists entrepreneurs who wish to be successful by teaching them a business they can conduct achieving time and financial freedom. Visit Russ for additional information

[millionairemind]

A long article. It's worth the read if you are feeling down, either thro' losses in the market, job loss...

Pick yourself up, dust it off and start again..

Bouncing Back from Tough Times with Self-Encouragement
By Jim Rohn

Here is a familiar scenario for all of us; you may even be going through something like this right now: You have an exciting goal in mind, you've done your homework, you think you're amply prepared . . . but things just don't work out. You've probably had times when you thought you were doing what you were supposed to do, but you were misinformed. You thought you had it all laid out, but it just didn't work. You burned the midnight oil day after day after day, but it didn't seem to help. You couldn't seem to change the end result.

These are the times when you have to be your own best cheerleader. And there are two ways to keep yourself encouraged.

Number one: Take responsibility for the missed opportunity or the misrepresentation. Learn from the fact that even though you made the best presentation possible, your client wanted it a different way. Be prepared for the letdowns that happen every so often. Know that this lost opportunity just set you up to take advantage of the next one. Realize that you can make the necessary alterations next time. Make the changes that will make the difference. Study your mistakes and learn from them. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes, simply acknowledge them and learn from them. Remind yourself that you're smarter than your bank account leads you to believe.

Encouragement practice number two: Remind yourself that you're bound to get better. Don't get down on yourself. Don't beat yourself up. It's the next opportunity that matters, not the last one. The last one matters only in that you must learn from your mistakes. But the next one gives you the opportunity to show that you have learned from your mistakes. You can do it better next time. You just have to practice. Keep trying until. Until what? Until you've got it down.

If you figured out what went wrong last time, then you know how to make it right next time. If you figured out what it was in your presentation that didn't work, don't say that next time. If you figured out that the reason you didn't close the deal this time was because you didn't have all the facts and figures in place, have all the facts and figures in place next time. Don't beat yourself up for messing up. Pat yourself on the back for figuring it out.

You need to encourage yourself. You need to pump yourself up. You need to be your own cheerleader. Why? Because you can't wait and hope that someone else will come along and cheer you up . . . make you feel better . . . tell you that you'll do better next time. You have to rely on yourself. You have to have faith in yourself and your ability to figure out what works and what doesn't. You have to have the inner belief that everything you're doing, you're doing for a positive outcome in the future. You have to encourage yourself with future successes.

When you miss an opportunity, are unprepared for an opportunity, or suffer a setback while realizing your goals, you need to encourage yourself by immediately getting back into line.

There's an old cowboy saying, "Fall off a horse seven times and you're a real cowboy." If you fall off a horse, get right back on. If you fall off track, get right back on. If you fall away from your disciplines, get right back to them. If you fall out of habit, get back into the habit. Something goes wrong, do what you can to make it right.

If you fall off . . . get back on. If you fall off the horse, that is, the horse of habits or disciplines or progress, get back on. It may be hard. It may be a bit frightening. But get back on. Keep your resolve alive and active and well. Cheer yourself on to victory. You can do it.

Where the Miracle Begins
Sometimes, defeat is the best beginning. Why? Well for one thing, if you're at the very bottom, there's only one way to go — up. But more importantly, if you're flat on your back, mentally and financially, you'll usually become sufficiently disgusted to reach way deep down inside yourself and pull out miracles. Pull out talents and pull out abilities and pull out your desires and determination. When you're flat broke or flat miserable, you'll eventually become so disgusted that you'll pull out the basic essentials required to make everything better.

It's in the face of adversity that things begin to change, that you begin to change. With enough disgust, desire, and determination to change your life, you'll start saying, "I've had it. Enough of this. No more. Never again!"

Here's where the miracle begins. "I've had it. Enough. No more. Never again." These words and these thoughts really rattle the power of time and fate and circumstances. And these three things, time and fate and circumstances, all get together and say, "Okay. Okay. We can see that we have no power here; we're facing some major resolve! This guy's not going to give up. He's had it. He's done with all this nonsense. We'd better step aside and let this guy get by!" Inspiration through disgust.

A lot of people don't change themselves. They wait for change. These poor unfortunate folks accept their defeats and wallow in their self-pity. Why? Because they refuse to take control of the situation. They refuse to take control of their life, their career, their health, their relationships, their finances. They refuse to take responsibility and get sufficiently disgusted to change it.

If you are disgusted, if you are in the need of some change, if this book finds you in the middle of your own personal slump, then I have some words to offer. Your present failure is a temporary condition. It is only a temporary condition. You will rebound from failure, just as surely as you gravitated into failure.

One time, when I was in the midst of a bout of failure, somebody suggested that I should tell myself, "This too shall pass." I firmly believe that you're only given as much as you can handle, as much negativity, as much failure, as much disappointment. This too shall pass, if you grasp for a new beginning. You need to pull yourself up and move back into the world with a plan.

As foolish as it might sound, you should be thankful for your current limitations or failures. They are the building blocks from which to create greatness. You can go where you want to go. You can do what you want to do. You can become what you want to become. You can do it all, starting now, right where you are.

A father talks about his daughter. She's gone through some pretty tough times, and as he tells it, she's a pretty tough person. He has a unique way of describing his daughter's situation, though. While most parents would be frantic, even for their kids who are grown and gone, this man just smiles and says that his daughter is like a frog in a jar of cream: She keeps kicking and kicking and kicking, and pretty soon the milk will turn into a lump of butter and she'll be able to jump out. That's an interesting illustration of tenacity, because that's how it really works. You've got to keep trying and trying and trying. You've got to have enough resolve to do it until.

Some of the most inspiring success stories have started with failure. Longfellow started in failure. Michelangelo started in failure. Lincoln started in failure. Rod Serling wrote 40 stories before he had one that was accepted. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper that felt he had no talent. Richard Byrd crashed his plane on his first solo trips before he became one of the world's greatest explorers. And the success stories continue.

Be grateful for your adversity. At the same time, make sure that it’s working for your future, not against you. Make your failures give birth to great opportunity, not prolonged agony. Make your disgust lead to inspiration, not depression. The world will willingly sit by and let you wallow in your sorrows . . . until you die broke and alone. And here's what else the world will do. The world will step aside and let you by, once you decide that your present situation is only temporary. The doors will open once you decide to get back on your feet and make your mark.

You have to care. In your own enlightened self-interest, give a run at adventure. Keep your eyes firmly set on achievement. Don’t settle for mere existence and self-pity. Make a commitment to excellence. And remember, it is your challenge, your own personal challenge, to use all your gifts and skills and talents and knowledge to survive and succeed.

Increasing Your Resiliency

Resilience is the ability to return to the original form after being bent, stretched, or compressed. That's the dictionary's definition of resilience. It’s the ability to readily recover from illness, or depression, or adversity.

In our lives, resilience specifically means being able to withstand setbacks, broken hearts and broken dreams, financial crisis, loss of loved ones, loss of enterprise, and loss of health. How would you ever handle it if you lost everything you had today? What would your next step be? How long would you be depressed and upset and angry? What would it take for you to pull yourself up and start all over again? How resilient are you? Could you handle it? Could you learn from all of your disappointments and start all over again? What would it take?

Number one, it would take a lot of self-discipline. It would take a lot of positive self-talk to muster up the energy to begin again. It would take a lot of concentration to block out the noise and the clutter of all the negative voices trying to get through, as well as the negative voices of others around you. That’s a lot! It would take a lot of discipline to balance the fear and anxiety with the knowing that, if you did it once, you can do it all over again.

It would also take a lot of self-reliance. Whether your losses had anything to do with you or not, your future success has everything to do with you. It would take a lot of self-reliance to avoid blame. What's happened has happened. You would need to get on with your life and begin again.

It would take a lot of faith. It would take a lot of faith and trust in God to move ahead.

If you lost everything tomorrow and you were gathering all the courage to try again, it would take a lot of self-appreciation. You need to know in your heart and mind that you have the skills, the talent, and the strength to do it one more time.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, no matter how large or how small. You lose a client, one of your biggest ones. This client accounts for more than 25 percent of your gross revenues. Losing this client is going to hurt, financially and emotionally. Losing this client is going to negatively affect things for a while. The first thing you do is figure out why you lost this business. What role did you play; in what way are you responsible? You can't just rant and rave, yelling and screaming at everyone in the office. Even if it was the wrongdoing of someone else, you can't act like this, because it's not professional. You'll lose respect. And respect is hard to regain once you've lost it, whether it’s the respect of those you work with, your trusted colleagues, or your valuable support people. You have to approach the situation rationally and figure out how to bounce back from your loss.

You have to evaluate the situation and then start a plan to recapture the lost business. Consider how you can increase your market share with other businesses. Maybe you can network with associates to bring in a similar client or even a better one! You can't sit back and dwell on what's happened. You've got to get back into the marketplace and recapture what's been taken from you. Get back at it and replace what's gone.

Perhaps your loss is a personal loss. Maybe you’ve recently been faced with the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a very special friendship. If your loss is a deeply personal one, you must approach the situation a little differently. You must be patient with yourself and give yourself time to grieve, time to mourn, time to regroup.

The stages we go through in loss, be it the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, or the death of an enterprise, are beautifully defined in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' book On Death and Dying. Whether the death is a literal one or a figurative one, the stages are the same: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And only by going through these stages, and reaching acceptance, can we rebound and begin again.

It's said that children are more resilient than adults. Why? Maybe it's because they don't evaluate their current situation based on past experiences. They approach it in a fresh way, a new way. In their own minds, they deal with loss much better than adults.

Children who grow up in the unfortunate circumstances of poverty or abuse or neglect and later become successful are known as dandelion children. If they can succeed and prosper with terrible conditions, they can grow anywhere. It's important to be more like a dandelion child. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed, despite our current conditions. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our losses. To be resilient.

Cultivating a resilient character turns what others would call failure into success. A resilient person won't give up. A resilient person will, in spite of all obstacles and set-backs, keep doing it until.
In their book The Resilient Self, Steven and Sybil Wolin have studied resilience and have found seven key characteristics which compose it.

Number one: Resilience requires insight. You need to develop the ability to ask tough questions of yourself and be honest with your answers. If you had something to do with your loss, be honest and responsible for it.

Number two: Resilience is independent. As a resilient person, you can count on yourself to bounce back into life.

Number three: Although resilience is independent, it's also tied to others. The more people you are responsible to, the greater your motivation to begin again. The stronger the reason, the stronger the action.

Number four: Resilience calls for initiative. You need to develop the ability to take charge of the situation, to take charge of the problem. You need to stand up and do whatever is necessary to get back on course.

Number five: Resilience has an element of creativity. With resilience, you are able to look at a situation and creatively determine the best way out. You are enterprising in your approach toward starting over.

Number six: A resilient person has humor. You may cry until you start laughing, but a sense of humor is so important when turning your life around. You've got to take your goals seriously, and you've got to take yourself seriously. But you've also got to be able to laugh at yourself and your situation at times. Somebody says, "You'll look back on this and laugh someday." Well, maybe today is the day to start.

Number seven: A resilient person has a strong sense of morality. Whatever you do to get back on your feet, whatever you do to bounce back into life, make sure it's moral. Make sure that your upcoming success is at the service of others, not at the expense of others. Success, if it is yours to keep, must be at the service of others.

The more obstacles you face and overcome, the more times you falter and get back on track, the more difficulties you struggle with and conquer, the more resiliency you will naturally develop. There is nothing that can hold you back, if you are resilient.

[winston]

How To Use The Power of Intention For Success By David Bohl, Personal Coach

Intentions differ from desires, and consciously focusing on your intentions can go a long ways toward achieving success. Simply put, intentions are goals. Another way to look at intentions is as thoughts that help us fill a need. The need can be such things as money, property, love, or relationships. The main purpose of our goals or intentions, though, is to eventually be happy or fulfilled.

In contrast, desire is the act of attaching feelings to a goal. We may desire something without ever achieving it. An important step towards fulfilling your goals is to realize that desire is passive, while intentions imply action. Once you can separate your intentions from your desires, there are a few things you need to do to make those intentions work for you:

Banish Negative Thoughts
Most people develop goals, then are overrun with thoughts as to why they cannot achieve their goals. Sometimes we subconsciously have negative feelings about our ability to achieve a goal which we are not even aware of. Even so, our unconscious beliefs have a way of manifesting themselves into reality, so it is important to examine your own feelings about your goals and intentions. Once you discover the negative thoughts you have associated with a particular intention or goal, you can work to transform them into positive ones.

Renowned psychologist Carl Jung once said, “What you are unconscious of will become your fate.” Take a moment to write your intentions out, then write down the feelings you associate with your intentions. Do not edit your feelings before writing them out. Examine them and see where your negative beliefs or feelings are. Only then can you take steps to make them positive.

Destroy Your Ego
Your ego is how you feel about yourself, who you are, and what you do. We tie our feelings of success to those things that define our egos – what we have and how others think of us. We tend to define ourselves by what we do not have, rather than by what we do have. In order to achieve your goals through your intentions, you must become aware of your own ego, how you view yourself, and how you find your self worth. Learn to value yourself by the good things you have in your life already, rather than by what you are missing.

Only when you can separate your ego from your goals or intentions are you truly free to succeed.

Focus on Your Intentions
Most people tend to focus on what they do not have, or what they do not want, rather than what they do have or what they do want. Again, this type of negative thinking becomes self fulfilling. In order to achieve your goals, think of them in a positive light. Rather than tell yourself you cannot do something, or do not have enough of something, focus on your intention.

Tell yourself that you are going to fulfill your goal, and allow that positive focus to be your driving force towards fulfillment.
Take some time and decide what would bring you happiness and fulfillment in life – a fancy car, a loving family, a fast-paced career, or a lot of money in the bank. Do not base your happiness on what your friends or family expect from you, or what you believe is acceptable in society. Dig down deep inside and examine your own heart to determine where your happiness comes from.

Once you know what will bring you happiness, write down your intentions to get there. Start each sentence with, “I am going to…” Make each intention a positive affirmation of ability and action. Once you have been able to identify exactly what you want out of life and how to get there, you will have created your own personal roadmap to bring you success. Whenever you find yourself doubting your own abilities, repeat your intentions to yourself positively. Negative thoughts creep up on everyone, and you must be able to not only identify them when they appear, but turn them around and make positive affirmations from them. It is amazing just how much that simple shift in state of mind can affect the outcome of your efforts.


Author's Bio

Personal Coach David Bohl shares the viral message "Slow Down FAST" and helps people raise the roof on all facets of their lives without risking implosion. Get some must-haves for persevering in challenging times!

[winston]

The Universe knows all things and is responding to the vibration that you are sending. When you are sending your vibration on purpose, you are orchestrating what the Universe is aligning for you.

Excerpted from a workshop in Atlanta, GA on Sunday, September 13th, 1998

All Is Well

[winston]

Multitasking is Out, Pinpointed FOCUS is IN! - By Rhonda Hess ***

To do two things at once is to do neither. - Unknown

Have you ever had this experience?...

You're working on a project that requires creativity, such as writing your e-zine or designing a marketing campaign, and suddenly the phone rings, jolting you out of deep concentration. Even if you don't answer the phone, it takes a few beats before you can re-anchor into what you were doing before.

That time lapse is your "mental CEO" shifting from one task, with a specific goal and set of "rules," to another, with a completely different goal and set of rules. That shift takes time. The more complex the tasks, the longer the shift takes.

What else are you trying to do while reading this article?

Sure, we can multitask. We might even believe we can do it without losing efficiency. But we would be fooling ourselves.

It has been proven in scientific studies that toggling between tasks slows the brain down. In effect, multitasking makes us momentarily stupid -- unable to establish priorities, focus, or integrate anything new.

Have you ever tried to read your email while listening to a teleclass? How about trying to have a serious conversation on your cell phone while driving?

Yes? Then you know that neither was done with your full presence or capacity. It's as if you weren't there for half of the time. You neither fully understood the emails nor fully integrated what the teleclass offered. Too little of your consciousness was on driving -- scary -- and you couldn't fully connect in the conversation.

We all know that multitasking has real costs. So why do we still do it?

It's ingrained in our habits. All the "time-saving" devices of our technological age encourage us to be distracted and lose the ability to focus. And that's a significant loss because focus is what brings prosperity. Distraction keeps us from it.

Focus means your full attention. Here are five daily practices to attain pinpointed focus and stop multitasking.

1. Clear your desk of anything unrelated to your current goal. Things command attention. The less you have before you, the less likely you'll be distracted.

2. Schedule your time into blocks so that you can focus in on one individual task at a time. Include separate blocks for completing high payoff actions, emailing, working with clients, planning, etc. Then set sacred boundaries around those tasks. Complete one, then move on.

3. Do the most important thing first. High payoff actions are the things that will have the biggest positive impact on your success. What will bring you the results you want most quickly? Put that first, always.

4. Take short breaks away from technology between time blocks or tasks. Take a walk around the block, play music, do something physical or creative. This will clear your mind and help your mental CEO recalibrate to the next task.

5. Plan for tomorrow. Schedule 1 to 3 high payoff activities for the next business day.

Become a master single-tasker!

Take the next 30 days and replace your multitasking habits with these five daily practices and see how much more you accomplish and with less stress.

About the Author:
Rhonda Hess is founder of Prosperous Coachâ„¢, a membership community to take your coaching business from startup to prosperity. Rhonda's mission is to help coaches charge what they're worth and make it big in coaching on their own terms.

Her premier program -- The Coach's Power Path -- takes all the guesswork out of how to get clients and build a financially successful coaching business. Whether you are an Emerging Coach or Established Coach, the Power Path walks you step by step through exactly what to do, how, and when, so you arrive quickly at your next level of coaching success.

[winston]

Why We Avoid Resistance by Kevin Eikenberry

Princeton University's WordNet 2.1 defines resistance as the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree
with. If you make a short list of things you like, relish or love, I doubt the word resistance will show up on your list.

Resistance isn't something that most of us cherish or are drawn to - at least personally. True, some may enjoy observing resistance as a third party to it - which could be one explanation for boxing, professional wrestling and the success of the Jerry Springer Show - but few of us look for or enjoy resistance.

Which is why we so often choose to avoid it.

Here are seven major reasons why people tend to avoid resistance.

We are taught to avoid it. As kids, we are taught to agree - or at least get along - with our teachers, our parents,
other authority figures and other kids (or at least not make our disagreement or disapproval public), and while the purposes for these behaviors might not be completely about resistance (they may also be about respect among other things), most people seem to connect the lesson to avoiding resistance.

In fact, there is a common phrase that reinforces this teaching - "taking the path of least resistance."

We don't want to be called names. Extensions of the "that's what I was taught" reasoning are the thoughts that "I don't want to rock the boat, or cause a scene." If you avoid resistance the boat may stay stable, but if you do confront
issues, propose potential changes or just not agree with someone you might be called names - like "rebel" or "troublemaker."

We think resistance is a bad thing. If you think all mushrooms you see in the woods are poisonous, you'll avoid them. If you think all Clint Eastwood movies are Westerns and you don't like Westerns, you'll avoid anything starring Clint. Likewise, if your belief is that resistance is inherently negative, you'll tend to avoid it.

We take it personally. If someone resists your idea, you might take that resistance as a personal attack. Have you
ever been told your idea was stupid or that your approach wouldn't work? Even if the comment wasn't a personal attack,
it often leaves us feeling that way. Since most people don't like to be attacked (even verbally), logically, you can avoid that feeling by avoiding the resistance.

We don't know how to deal with it. If you have long avoided resistance, you might not know how to deal with it in a
positive and constructive way. Resistance is like many other things, if you don't have knowledge and the proper tools,
you might shy away from it.

We think it will lead to conflict. For many people resistance and conflict are synonymous. And if you don't like conflict and see it as the necessary outcome of voicing your resistance; you'll likely avoid the resistance in the first place.

We think avoiding it is the easiest approach. Humans are basically lazy. Since most people consider "the path of
least resistance" to be the equivalent of the "easiest path", that is often the one selected. It only makes sense, after all, to avoid something we think is bad and that would be difficult to do something about anyway, right?

So is all of this avoiding such a bad thing?

Generally, to be blunt, yes.

Why?

Resistance promotes growth. In the physical world without an opposing force (resistance) we couldn't strengthen our
muscles.

In the interpersonal world, resistance is a sign of energy; energy that can be used in positive ways, but only if it is explored.

If no one disagrees with a new idea (offers some resistance) will a better idea be found?

Without opposition (or resistance) how many new products would be created?

Without some admission of problems (a sign of resistance) will teams or relationships ever be revitalized?

Ask yourself which of the excuses outlined above have you used in the past, and how would you benefit from overcoming
your urge to avoid some resistance today.

[kennynah]

what is "success" ?