Archive for the 'Personal Development' Category

Quickly Attract Wealth With The Law Of Attraction!

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
by Dick Ingersoll

Numerous people were prompted to find out about the Law of Attraction from the movie The Secret or by seeing the instructors from The Secret on Oprah. Attracting abundance is in all likelihood the most common desire, and yet it’s one of the most difficult to do. Notwithstanding, the most common problems in attracting money are simple to short-circuit. Once these problems are dodged, attracting money is not tough to do!

The most prominent problem with attracting wealth is that most people urgently require the money and select money as their first manifestation goal. Yet, due to the need for money and the never-ending negative thinking encircling money (”how will I ever pay that bill?”, “oh no, my power is going to be shut off”, “I’ll never pay back this student loan”), any attraction dealing with money is likely to be set-back by day-to-day negative thoughts and feelings. This causes a negative attraction which can offset or even entirely wipe out your endeavors to attract money.

Manifestation and attraction works when you take a positive, light-hearted and playful approach. Patience and detachment are the keys to successful manifesting. Since money is such a charged subject, it is difficult for people to detach themselves from their attraction attempts long enough for the money to manifest. Meanwhile they continue thinking their daily thoughts (”I can’t afford these gas prices!”, “I wish I could afford a vacation”, “I’m not paid enough”) and these thoughts bring about negative feelings towards money that push their desires away.

The way to break through this is to start smaller, and concentrate on things other than wealth. Start out by trying to manifest something simple, like a red rose. Beware, depending on what you envision, you may get a actual rose or you may wind up with a box of tissue that sports a big red rose on the side. Be as specific as you can in your imaginings, and always place yourself in the picture. See yourself holding a rose, or whatever little desire you’re trying to manifest.

Once you manifest your first little thing, repeat this procedure two or three times. Each time, what you’ll discover is that your desires are manifesting, and that will add faith to your technique. When you return to manifesting money, start by picking a smaller sum of money that you can believe in. Five hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, anything so long as you can earnestly believe that you are able to achieve that money. Keep an uninvolved and playful state of mind - this will bring your manifestation into your life more quickly. Because you succeed progressively, your faith will progress, and your manifestations will materialize faster. Also you will acquire a true realization that you’ll be able to manifest your desires, and then you can begin working on attracting larger sums of money while knowing all along that you’ll bring home the bacon. As faith builds up and begins developing into conclusive knowns for you, your entire life will brighten and you’ll feel the magic that is in the universe around you.

Best of luck and may you attract your every desire!

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Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
by Kim and Charles Petty

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular? Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

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Creative Notions

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
by Kim and Petty Charles

People seem to have the misconception that only a select few are able to unleash a steady flow of creative genius. That is not true at all. The fact is, creativity is very much like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to consistently give out great results. If you don’t practice harnessing creative thinking, this skill will very much atrophy into inexistence. But keep working and this skill will soon come to you in a snap.

So how do you unleash your creative thinking? Well, the first thing is to become a human leech. No, we’re not talking about just sucking the blood out of every living being available, we’re saying that you should take in as much knowledge and learning you can find. Read everything available — good and bad, and keep your mind open to the infinite possibilities of the universe. The more you know, the more you’ll want to know, and the more your faculty of wonder will be exercised. Prepare to be amazed at little facts that add a bit of color into your life.

Focus on a creative activity everyday. Yes, it’s an effort. Even doodling is a creative activity. Don’t let anything hinder you. Mindlessness may be a creative activity, but for people who are just starting out to unleash a little bit of creative thinking in their lives, it is helpful and encouraging to have concrete evidence, that, “hey, what I’m doing is getting somewhere.” So why don’t you try it. Practice drawing for a couple of minutes each day. Bring out your old camera and start snapping photos like crazy. Keep a journal and make a point to write in it religiously. Another cool idea is to write by describing something with your five senses. Try to avoid vague adjectives like “marvelous,” “amazing,” and “delicious.” Before you know it, you’ll have built yourself a tiny portfolio, and you’ll be amazed at the growth you’ve undertaken after amassing all those works of art. Who knows, you might actually take to liking those things you do everyday. Pretty soon those things will become a part of you and you’ll be addicted to these creative exercises.

Think out of the box — or don’t. Sometimes, constraints are actually a good thing. Limitations discipline you to work within your means. It enables you to be more resourceful. Creative freedom is great, but limitations enforce discipline.

Try something new everyday and let your experiences broaden your perspective. Explore a new district in your neighborhood. Spend an afternoon in a museum to which you’ve never been before. Chat up someone on the bus. Open up to the people around you. As you thrust yourself out of your comfort zone more and more each day, your sense of adventure grows and so does your zest for life. Think about it. When was the last time you did something for the first time? If it’s been a while, I tell you, you’ve been missing out on a whole lot of experiences that could’ve added to your growth, emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually. Why don’t you try bungee jumping today? Not only will you learn, but you will also have plenty of stories to share, enabling you to practice your storytelling skills and making you the life of the party.

Embrace insanity. No, not to the point of practically admitting yourself into the mental ward. As John Russell once said, “Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.” Exactly! Every creative thought was once deemed insanity by other “normal” people at one time or another. Luckily, that didn’t stop the creative geniuses from standing by them. The thing is, sanity or being normal confines people to think… well, normally. Withink limits. Creativity is essentially breaking through barriers. Yes, this includes the bizzarre and the downright strange. I’m not saying that you yourself should develop a creative personality. That might go haywire. An example of a creative personality would be George Washington, who often rode into battle naked, or James Joyce, who wrote “Dubliners” with beetle juice for an intense fear of ink, or Albert Einstein, who thought his cat was a spy sent by his rival (or in thinking creatively in this case, the term could probably be “archnemesis.”) It’s important that your creativity doesn’t get you detached from the real world completely.

I hope this article has inspired you to start thinking beyond your “limits.” If you follow these steps pretty soon you’ll be living a life full of interesting adventures. Unleashing your creative thinking will bring about a new zest for living life.

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What Innovation Can Do to Your Life

Friday, April 11th, 2008
by Kim and Charles Petty

It’s a talent that everyone has, yet they think they don’t. The power of innovation. If you’ve ever marvelled at somebody’s creative prowess, guess what, you can create and innovate too. It just takes time. Everyone is born creative. The box of crayons in kindergarten were not limited to those who possessed potential; because the truth is, everybody has potential.

You know how long it took to learn to ride a bike or drive or to never commit the same mistake again? It’s the same with innovation. It takes a bit of practice and a lot of time before this mind function comes easily when called. This article will teach you a few tips on how to bring innovation into your life.

Don’t listen to what other people say. Follow the beat of your own drum. Allowing for the input of other people will only bring cacophony to the music you are trying to make. If you have an original idea, don’t waste your time and effort trying to make people understand. They won’t. And the help you will probably get comes in the form of negative feedback. If all those geniuses listened to their peers, we would probably still be living in the middle ages.

Spend time on it. I cannot stress that enough, although, please do not mistake this tip to tell you to quit your day job entirely. Do not. This involves some tricky time management but with a little discipline you’ll be able to squeeze both in.

Exercise. Take a walk. Run a mile or two. Send all those endorphins coursing through your veins. Exercising certainly clears and relaxes your mind and allows for anything to pop up.

Record your dreams. Aren’t some of them just the craziest things that your conscious mind would never have thought of? If you’ve had these dreams before, and I’m sure have, this only shows you the untapped innovative power you have lying within. So jot down those notes. Those dreams may just create an innovative spark in you.

Find your own style. You can always tell a Van Gogh from a Matisse. You’ll know Hemingway wrote something by the choice of words on the paper. So it is the same with you. People will appreciate your innovation more because it is uniquely yours and that no one else would have thought of what you were thinking. That will let people see how valuable an asset you are.

Don’t hide behind nifty gadgets or tools. You don’t need the most expensive set of paints to produce a masterpiece. The same way with writing. You don’t need some expensive fountain pen and really smooth paper for a bestseller. In fact, J.K. Rowling wrote the first book of the Harry Potter Series on bits of tissue. So what if you’ve got an expensive SLR camera if you’re a crappy photographer? Who cares if you’ve got a blinging laptop if you can’t write at all? The artist actually reduces the number of tools he has as he gets better at his craft: he knows what works and what doesn’t.

Nothing will work without passion. What wakes you up in the mornings? What keeps the flame burning? What is the one thing that you’ll die if you don’t do? Sometimes people with talent are overtaken by the people who want it more. Think the hare and the tortoise. Ellen Degeneres once said that if you’re not doing something that you want to do, then you don’t really want to do it. And that’s true. Sometimes you just want something so bad you become a virtual unstoppable. And that is passion. Passion will keep you going.

Don’t worry about inspiration. You can’t force it; inspiration hits when you least expect it to, for those unpredictable yet inevitable moments you should prepare. An idea could strike you on the subway, yet alas, you poor unfortunate soul; you have no sheet of paper to scribble down a thought that could change the world. Avoid these disasters. Have a pen and paper within your arm’s reach at all times.

I hope this article has helped you bring more innovation into your life. Keep in mind that you’re doing these things for your own satisfaction and not anybody else’s. But soon enough they will notice, and everything should snowball from there.

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Impossible is Just a Word

Friday, April 11th, 2008
by Kim and Charles Petty

Everyone, at some point of his or her life, has dreamed of being somebody special, somebody big. Who hasn’t fantasized about being the one who hits the game-winning homer? Who hasn’t dreamed of being the homecoming queen? And how many times have we dreamed of being rich, or successful, or happy with our relationships?

Often, we dream big dreams and have great aspirations. Unfortunately, our dreams remain just that - dreams. And our aspirations easily collect dust in our attic.

This is a sad turn of events in our life. Instead of experiencing exciting adventures in self actualization, we get caught up in the humdrum of living from day-to-day just barely existing.

But you know what? Life could be so much better, if only we learned to aim higher.

The most common problem to setting goals is the word impossible. Most people get hung up thinking I can’t do this. It’s too hard. It’s too impossible. No one can do this.

However, if everyone thought that, there would be no inventions, no innovations, and no breakthroughs in human accomplishment.

Remember that scientists were baffled when they took a look at the humble bumblebee. Theoretically, they said, it was impossible for the bumblebee to fly. Unfortunately for the bumble, bee no one has told it so. So fly it does.

On the other hand, some people suffer from dreaming totally outrageous dreams and not acting on them. The result? Broken dreams, and tattered aspirations.

If you limit yourself with self-doubt, and self-limiting assumptions, you will never be able to break past what you deem impossible. If you reach too far out into the sky without working towards your goal, you will find yourself clinging on to the impossible dream.

Try this exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down some goals in your life. Under one header, list down things ‘you know you can do’. Under another header, write the things ‘you might be able to do.’ And under one more, list the things that that are ‘impossible for you to do.’

Now look at all the headers strive every day to accomplish the goals that are under things ‘you know you can do’. Check them when you are able to accomplish them. As you slowly are able to check all of your goals under that heading, try accomplishing the goals under the other header-the one that reads ‘you might be able to do.’

As of the items you wrote under things I could do are accomplished, you can move the goals that are under things that are ‘impossible for you to do’ to the list of things ‘you might be able to do.’

As you iterate through this process, you will find out that the goals you thought were impossible become easier to accomplish. And the impossible begin to seem possible after all.

You see, the technique here is not to limit your imagination. It is to aim high, and start working towards that goal little by little. However, it also is unwise to set a goal that is truly unrealistic.

Those who just dream towards a goal without working hard end up disappointed and disillusioned.

On the other hand, if you told someone a hundred years ago that it was possible for man to be on the moon, they would laugh at you. If you had told them that you could send mail from here to the other side of the world in a few seconds, they would say you were out of your mind. But, through sheer desire and perseverance, these impossible dreams are now realities.

Thomas Edison once said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Nothing could be truer. For one to accomplish his or her dreams, there has to be had work and discipline. But take note that that 1% has to be a think-big dream, and not some easily accomplished one.

Ask any gym rat and he or she will tell you that there can be no gains unless you are put out of your comfort zone. Remember the saying, “No pain, no gain”? That is as true as it can be.

So dream on, friend! Don’t get caught up with your perceived limitations. Think big and work hard to attain those dreams. As you step up the ladder of progress, you will just about find out that the impossible has just become a little bit more possible.

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SELF IMPROVEMENT AND SUCCESS

Friday, April 11th, 2008
by Kim and Charles Petty

Everything that happens to us happens in purpose. And sometimes, one thing leads to another. Instead of locking yourself up in your cage of fears and crying over past heartaches, embarrassment and failures, treat them as your teachers and they will become your tools in both self improvement and success.

I remember watching Patch Adams - its my favorite movie, actually. Its one great film that will help you improve yourself. Hunter “patch” Adams is a medical student who failed to make it through the board exams. After months of suffering in melancholy, depression and suicidal attempts - he decided to seek for medical attention and voluntarily admitted himself in a psychiatric ward. His months of stay in the hospital led him to meeting different kinds of people. Sick people in that matter. He met a catatonic, a mentally retarded, a schizophrenic and so on. Patch found ways of treating his own ailment and finally realized he has to get back on track. He woke up one morning realizing that after all the failure and pains he has gone through, he still want to become the a doctor. He carries with himself a positive attitude that brought him self improvement and success. He didn’t only improved himself, but also the life of the people around him and the quality of life. Did he succeed? Needless to say, he became the best damn doctor his country has ever known.

So, when does self improvement become synonymous with success? Where do we start? Take these tips, friends *Stop thinking and feeling as if you’re a failure, because you’re not. How can others accept you if YOU can’t accept YOU?

*When you see hunks and models on TV, think more on self improvement, not self pitying. Self acceptance is not just about having nice slender legs, or great abs. Concentrate on inner beauty.

*When people feel so down and low about themselves, help them move up. Don’t go down with them. They’ll pull you down further and both of you will end up feeling inferior.

*The world is a large room for lessons, not mistakes. Don’t feel stupid and doomed forever just because you failed on a science quiz. There’s always a next time. Make rooms for self improvement.

*Take things one at a time. You don’t expect black sheep’s to be goody-two-shoes in just a snap of a finger. Self improvement is a one day at a time process.

*Self improvement results to inner stability, personality development and dig this . SUCCESS. It comes from self confidence, self appreciation and self esteem.

* Set meaningful and achievable goals. Self improvement doesn’t turn you to be the exact replica of Cameron Diaz or Ralph Fiennes. It hopes and aims to result to an improved and better YOU.

*Little things mean BIG to other people. Sometimes, we don’t realize that the little things that we do like a pat on the back, saying “hi” or “hello”, greeting someone “good day” or telling Mr. Smith something like “hey, I love your tie!” are simple things that mean so much to other people. When we’re being appreciative about beautiful things around us and other people, we also become beautiful to them.

*When you’re willing to accept change and go through the process of self improvement, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is. The world is a place where people of different values and attitude hang out. Sometimes, even if you think you and your best friend always like to do the same thing together at the same time, she would most likely decline an invitation for self improvement.

We should always remember that there’s no such thing as ‘over night success’. Its always a wonderful feeling to hold on to the things that you already have now, realizing that those are just one of the things you once wished for. A very nice quote says that “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” We are all here to learn our lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, officemates, neighbors they are our teachers. When we open our doors for self improvement, we increase our chances to head to the road of success.

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Spiritual Growth: the Spiritual Challenge of Modern Times

Friday, April 11th, 2008
by Kim and Charles Petty

To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task. Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, gadgets, and tools as well as entertainment through television, magazines, and the web have predisposed us to confine our attention mostly to physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the material and spiritual aspects of our lives?

To grow spiritually is to look inward.

Introspection goes beyond recalling the things that happened in a day, week, or month. You need to look closely and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically examining your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you have, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, on the good traits you must sustain and the bad traits you have to discard. Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any skill, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.

To grow spiritually is to develop your potentials.

Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. When you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the difference between these two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Christianity and Islam see that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology view that self-development is an end by itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for meaning.

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all things. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether we believe that life’s meaning is pre-determined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we discover this meaning, there are certain beliefs and values that we reject and affirm. Our lives have purpose. This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during trying times; and gives us something to look forward to—a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a drifting ship at sea.

To grow spiritually is to recognize interconnections.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all creation, live and inanimate. Thus we call other people “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our link to other living things through the evolution theory. This relatedness is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you.

Growth is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day encounter. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.

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Don’t Let Time Get Away From You

Monday, April 7th, 2008
by Elliott Roberts

Time is among the most valuable of resources and all you can do with it is use it. You cannot save it and once spent, you can never get it back. You cannot buy more and you cannot steal it from someone else.

Spending time wisely naturally plays a big role in the level of success a person can achieve. You can read all the self help literature you want but without some sort of plan for your day, your day will simply “happen” to you. You will not accomplish much and you will miss out on new opportunities because you will be in such a constant state of being behind, that you will be out of time for anything else.

Start out by planning your day ahead of time. The key is to schedule a routine time either first thing in the morning or sometime the night before, and stick with it. Make note of what needs to be done for that day. Set new goals and review those previously set.

Your projects also need start and stop times so that they don’t consume your whole day. The notion of a schedule will help you stay focused, as well. Make a routine for recurring tasks such as managing email and project implementation. Stick to those schedules so that they don’t eat up too much time, as they are tasks that really have no end.

Lastly, take your bigger projects and divide them into smaller more manageable tasks. They will get done quicker because you won’t dread them so much, and your other, smaller tasks will not suffer because of it.

Planning may be key, but acceptance is important too, for even the best made plans can be thwarted by unexpected tasks. Realize that it is okay, deal with the situation and move on. It is so easy to put a small task aside to be completed later, not realizing the pile up you will soon be facing.

They usually only take a minute so handle them and move on. You will feel better, be more productive and suffer less stress. Much of your day can also be eaten up by over thinking the start of a new project.

More time is often spent avoiding it than working on it. It has to get done no matter how much you wish it didn’t. So decide whether you are going to work on it now or later, then move on and continue managing your day.

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Spending Time Wisely

Monday, April 7th, 2008
by Elliott Roberts

Time is a precious commodity and if yours is getting away from you, you are in need of the self help practice known as time management. It is too easy for life’s interruptions to get the best of you and make you a slave to everyone else’s agenda.

Too often we work in reverse, taking care of what has already happened, rather than ensuring a desired effect the first time around. Whether you spend your time or waste it, once it is gone there is no getting it back. Therefore, it is essential to use your time wisely in order to achieve what you desire in life, at home, and on the job.

Your first step is to plan your day. Create a routine for writing down the tasks you need to complete for the day, as well as to set and review your goals. This could be at night before you go to bed or first thing in the morning.

Time management begins with planning your day. Set a time each day or the night before to think about what needs to be done that day. Schedule this time just like an appointment and stick to it every single day.

This will allow the eventual completion of the big project, as well as attention to all other matters of the day. Perhaps most importantly, you need to create routines. Your day planning itself should be a routine, as should all your small recurring tasks such as managing email, reading the news, and project implementation.

Planning may be key, but acceptance is important too, for even the best made plans can be thwarted by unexpected tasks. Realize that it is okay, deal with the situation and move on. It is so easy to put a small task aside to be completed later, not realizing the pile up you will soon be facing.

We have many pitfalls in our day that work against our time management efforts. We tend to spend too much time contemplating the start of a new project and often avoiding it. So just start it. Then finish it. It is bad practice to pick it up, think about it and put it aside for later only to repeat the process again in an hour.

Either finish it at the moment or schedule a more appropriate time and forget about it until then. Unless deeply focused on one project, handle as many as you can of the small, unexpected tasks as they come, rather than putting them off until later. This will prevent them from piling up and leaving you feeling overwhelmed.

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Set a Goal and Congratulate Yourself.

Friday, April 4th, 2008
by Elliott Roberts

We all play different roles in life and one can only assume that you want to achieve your maximum potential in all of them. My primary roles are Self, Wife, Mother, and Professional. Let’s begin by asking a simple self help question, “If you don’t set goals for yourself, how do you know if you have accomplished anything?”

But you will not be well rounded and most effective in all areas of your life until you take the time to think about what is important to you, write it down, then cross it off and recognize it once it has been accomplished. This simple self help method is called “goal setting.”

The concept of “goals” is common in the work place but when it comes to using it around the house, some folks perceive it as too big and cold home management.

Managing your household is as complex as managing a business, and equally as important. If you are not comfortable with the term “goal setting” for whatever reason, come up with something else. “Life list” is a term on the rise and many prefer it because it sounds friendlier and transitions nicely from work place to household management. Call it what you want, put your lists on pretty stationery, whatever it takes to get you to participate because success outside the home is largely dependent upon success inside.

Brainstorming is an effective way to start setting your goals. This has to be done in a quiet place, free of distractions, so you can think about what you want to accomplish in your lifetime. Put aside cost and your perception of what is possible. Write down everything that comes to mind that you want to do and be, today and in the future. This exercise will give you the basis for your goals.

Now you are ready to make your lists. Goals come in many forms. You will start by making a heading of short term goals and another for long term goals.

A long term goal might be to buy a bigger house or become debt free. Take it a step further and in addition to “short term” and “long term”, create your own categories so that every thing that came from your brainstorm has a heading under which to sit.

Make it enjoyable but realize, you are taking a powerful first step toward realizing your dreams because once you chart and realize your successes, you will be amazed by how motivated you are to achieve more, and how easily those achievements will come.

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