We’d like to have our relationships with our customers fit together as smoothly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle just snap into place. But it’s easy to screw things up if we’re not careful. In the last two months I’ve had a chance to watch an air conditioner repair company make all of these mistakes. They showed me several ways this relationship can get really screwed up, take twice as long to get half as much done, and leave everyone really ticked off. Some people seem to have the sole purpose in life of serving as a bad example, (….)
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action,
learning,
persistence,
service
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it – but all that had gone before.” Jacob Riis It can be hard to keep going when it feels like nothing is happening from all your efforts. You work and work on something, you give it your very best, and you feel like you’re going in (….)
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action,
discipline,
persistence,
success
The world lost a unique genius with the passing of Steve Jobs this week. In his honor I’d like to reprint the commencement address he gave at Stanford University in June, 2005. In it he covers some of the important topics that we talk about in the Daily Gratitude newsletter and the courses that I offer on business and personal success, telling how he applied these ideas in his life. It’s inspiring, and he will be missed! ———————————————————- I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never (….)
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action,
learning,
passion,
persistence,
risk
“There is a great opportunity at this time for people who will create a vision and pursue it with determination and purpose.” Wallace Wattles One common error in thinking is the belief that in some way all the real opportunities are monopolized by others. We look at the very rare successes in high technology, like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, and cry because we can’t do that. What we ignore is the people who become rich by baking cookies, cleaning carpets, making ice cream and fixing cars. As Wattles says, since so few people in any industry operate in the (….)
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action,
motivation,
passion,
purpose,
success
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Peter Drucker If you’re like most people, you have more than one thing to do. You have a bunch of little, easy things and you have a couple of big, complicated things. It’s so easy to fall into the habit of doing the little things first. You can convince yourself that it’ll only take a short time and you can get those little things out of the way. And at the end of the day, what have you gotten done? A few little things, and no big things. Next (….)
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action,
discipline,
goals,
persistence
“The person who can drive themselves further once the effort gets painful is the person who will win.” Roger Bannister Big wins in our lives don’t usually come easily, or everyone would have them all the time. But that’s a mistake we all make when we see others score a victory. We see the victory but not the work that went into it. One thing that successful people have is discipline. That’s part of the hard work, making yourself work when you don’t feel like it. Bob Proctor wrote a book, “Born Rich,” which he later turned into a seminar (….)
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action,
discipline,
goals,
passion,
purpose
“When we’re in complete inner alignment of thought, feeling, desire, intention, attitude, expectation, and so on, we move rapidly, even instantly, into the destiny that we’ve imagined for ourselves.” Jesse Jennings One of the hardest things for us to do is to get our inner and outer world into the kind of alignment that our quote suggests. You can simplify the list by using just three general areas to get into alignment. Those are thoughts, emotions (feelings) and actions. Starting with your thoughts, you need to be clear about what you want. Here’s a clue: you don’t want money or (….)
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goals,
purpose,
thoughts
“We must live purposefully from within instead of accidentally from without.” Raymond Charles Barker Many people who write about personal success and goals use the metaphor of a ship to describe our travels. It’s used a lot because it’s actually a really good way to visualize our progress through life and the obstacles that we face. The ship leaves port to sail to its destination, and on the way it has to deal with ocean currents, winds and storms. It’s never a straight path, it’s a zig-zag course and the ship is hardly ever pointed right at the destination. Does (….)
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purpose,
success,
vision
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” Thomas Alva Edison Do any of you like to work Sudoku puzzles? Both Sandy and I enjoy solving them, but since I have the competitive male ego, I like to work the more difficult ones. One thing I’ve noticed with the tough puzzles – you can get to the point where you’ve got little numbers written in everywhere and no pattern to be seen. In fact, it can look like you’ve totally screwed up and you have to start over. (….)
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persistence,
purpose
“I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.” Julia Ward Howe I’m convinced that there are three basic types of lives that people live in the world. The most common life is just existing. Going through the motions every day, just like the day before. The writer, Thoreau, referred to this as “living lives of quiet desperation.” Doesn’t sound very appealing, does it? Then there’s the people that live lives of ambition. They seek to become successful, to succeed in life in a great way, and their self image is built on (….)
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giving,
life,
motivation,
purpose,
service,
vision
In my Daily Gratitude newsletter I’ve written about compassion as a sign of spiritual growth. How do we know where we are spiritually? Just look at our circle of care and compassion. The wider it is, the deeper the spirituality. After all, the Dalai Lama has defined his religion as compassion – for all humanity and the planet, too. I was thinking about this as I was reading material about 60′s singer/songwriter Phil Ochs. A Texan by birth, Ochs moved to New York City and became an integral part of the folk music scene there. He’s remembered for some of (….)
Tagged as:
passion,
Spirituality
One of my recent Gratitude newsletters struck a nerve with a lot of people on the mailing list, so I thought I’d post a slightly expanded version here. Comments encouraged! “A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer with machine shop tools.” — Robert Hughes We humans are the most creative people when it comes to delay and excuses. I’ve written many times about how our subconscious mind dislikes it when we take risks with something new. It doesn’t think that anything new and risky can be safe, so it makes us uncomfortable! We (….)
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mind,
risk,
subconscious
“There are six mental faculties that we have, and how we use them sets the course for our life.” – Bob Proctor You can think of this post as outlining a workout at the gym for your mind. It’s like the different muscle groups in your body – they all have different functions, but work together for your health. The difference is that most people can’t even define their mental faculties, much less know how to use or develop them. This post should help. As our quote from Bob says, using these powers correctly is the difference between having the (….)
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meditation,
memory,
mind,
perception,
reason,
subconscious,
will
A few years ago Dan Pink published his book on right-brain holistic thinking, “A Whole New Mind,” which I thought was really interesting. Now he’s moved on to a related area with a new book, “Drive,” which describes the latest research on motivation and performance. The conclusions are shocking – everything we thought we knew about motivation is wrong! Especially about money. More money can actually lead to worse performance. But here – watch this summary of his talk, with fantastic graphics to engage all parts of your mind. He points out that the old wisdom about motivation was based (….)
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mind,
motivation,
passion,
purpose,
science,
vision
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.” William Arthur Ward I think that behind the dreams of each of us is a common purpose. We want to make a difference in the world. I find that many people have never recognized that grand purpose because they don’t think of themselves as someone who could do that. But it’s not that hard. I finally realized after several years of writing and rewriting my purpose that behind every version was the same fundamental truth –
Tagged as:
passion,
purpose
“Teach your children well, And feed them on your dreams, The one they pick’s, The one you’ll know by. ” Graham Nash Once there was a young boy growing up here in the Phoenix Arizona area who liked to dig in the dirt. He didn’t just like to dig in the dirt, he was passionate about digging in the dirt! He thought it was neat that he could find little fossil shells and things. Most parents would have tried to get him to clean up and find something more useful to do, but he was fortunate and had parents that (….)
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passion,
purpose,
science,
vision
If we want to be in harmony with the Law of Gratitude, we have to stay focused on what we want, not what we don’t want. This can be tough when we have to confront life every day, with all its challenges. It can also be tough if we don’t know what we want. I am continually amazed by the large number of people that I meet that don’t know what they want. Oh, they may think they know, but mostly what they want is to avoid discomfort. For life to be smooth. In other words, they are tiptoeing through (….)
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passion,
purpose,
vision
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – John Hancock, in the Declaration of Independence Every country and culture in the world has their history and their heros, and the more I learn about them, the more impressed I am with the universal human spirit and how much we all have in common. In that history, we all have much to be grateful for. The United States, like many countries, started with (….)
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passion,
purpose
In a recent study of super-high achievers, scientists found that one characteristic they shared was that of constantly trying new ideas, even though most of the new ideas didn’t work out. Ordinary people are more conservative and want to be sure something will work before they try it. I think the reason is that we’ve been taught to be grateful for our successes and not for our failures. What if we were taught wrong? What if we took Thomas Edison’s approach? He said that he never failed, he just discovered what didn’t work. If we treated every outcome as a (….)
Tagged as:
persistence,
risk,
success
“The majority of people meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” Napoleon Hill The quote from Napoleon Hill is very intriguing because it seems to indicate that having a plan that fails is different from failing! As a matter of fact, it even seems to indicate that success can and is accomplished even though plans fail. Why, perhaps having plans that fail is a normal and customary event on the road to success! Wouldn’t that be something! Maybe, instead of beating ourselves up, we could actually (….)
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marketing,
persistence,
risk,
success