Newsletter for October 2003:
Your Questions Determine Your Success
Contents:
- This Months Thought
- Your Questions Determine Your Success
- Quotes of the Month
- Strictly Business: Do What You Do Best!
- Humor: Really, Really BAD Groaners!
This Months Thought
Allocate resources so your most important projects get your best efforts. Do the most important things when you are awake, rested, focused and eager. Arrange you budget so there is enough money, enough time, and enough "space". First things deserve the very best of your key resources!
Your Questions Determine Your Success
Everyone has heard the phrase, "First things first!" In some ways, it has become a cliché, but notice that highly successful people are always asking themselves key questions and taking action based on the answers. What are my "first things"?
What are my most important projects? What one thing more than all the others, will actually make a difference? What can and SHOULD I focus on? Where can I start? What can I do right NOW to move forward?
Most of us ask really dumb questions. Now, I don't mean to be insulting, and I certainly include myself as someone who frequently asks silly or flat-out dumb questions. This week, I've caught myself asking, "Do I have to?"
I've asked, "Why me?" (REALLY dumb!)
To a huge degree, the quality of our results equals the quality of our questions, and there is no escape. If I want to achieve more, have more, be and do more, the quickest, easiest and surest route to success is to ask better, bigger questions!
Practice asking yourself empowering questions. Write them down on cards, or partner with a friend and insist that everyday you will focus on asking the BEST questions you can think of! Questions like:
What am I most grateful for in this situation?
What can I learn from this?
What one thing, more than all the others, will move me forward today?
What's the most life-enhancing thing I can do today?
What's my number one priority to achieve my most important goal?
And, of course, once you have asked and answered your key questions, you MUST take action! Once they have asked and answered highly effective questions, successful people assemble the tools, people, time, energy and other resources to create precisely the outcomes they truly want!
They leave nothing to chance. If there are projects they wish to accomplish, they organize around those outcomes. They delegate everything else. They cancel appointments, send apologies and skip meetings, they move money into the right accounts, and adjust their schedules so their most important projects get their best energy of the day.
Is that how you do it? Often it appears that people do exactly the reverse.
The errands, tasks, and "stuff" of the day get their best energy. Money goes to bills and "necessities". Time goes to work and friends and "resting up", and what's left over is available for their goals. No wonder they spend their lives caught in "the thick of thin things"!
How about you? Too many of us are pursuing our most important goals with the "left-overs" of life!
This month, I suggest three key steps:
- Affirm the most important projects on our dream or wish list. What's on your list of most important things?
- Ask yourself empowering questions about what's possible? What will move you forward? Who will help you? Where can you start? What's next?
- Would you like help asking better questions? Do you need time, space and opportunity to define your values, clarify your priorities and plan your outcomes? Do you need better strategies for success?
Allocate resources so your most important projects get your best efforts. Do the most important things when you are awake, rested, focused and eager. Arrange you budget so there is enough money, enough time, and enough "space". First things deserve the very best of your key resources!
Quotes of the Month
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." -- Ayn Rand
"If you want to get somewhere you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up." -- Norman Vincent Peale
"One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar." -- Helen Keller
"People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals; that is goals that do not inspire them." -- Anthony Robbins
Strictly Business: Do What You Do Best!
This month the old adage to focus on what you do best and hire someone to do everything else came home loud and clear.
I have an acquaintance whose business requires extensive bookkeeping and accounting functions. He used to have a full- time bookkeeper to support his real-estate and investment interests, but last year, he decided that was "too much, I could do some of it myself". Well.
As you might guess, now it's tax season and his books are a mess. The truth is that he's not a detail person. He does not enjoy data entry on the computer, and he kept "putting it off until later. I always thought I'd catch up on the weekend, or next week."
Unfortunately, that never happened.
My acquaintance is extremely good at investing, and his passion, talents and interests are in the creative, entrepreneurial side of his business. Ironically, he is very good at reading financial statements to evaluate a possible investment. But as a bookkeeper, he needs to fire himself!
We all have our areas of expertise and passion. In our areas of strength, we are "geniuses". Outside those areas, however, we are doomed - doomed to frustration, exasperation, and sometimes outright failure.
Do what you love. Do what you do best. Emphasize your talents and give your customers the extras that only you can give them. But for goodness sake, hire someone else to do the things you can't do, won't do, or do badly. You can't afford to spend your life being inefficient, wearing yourself out, and spending the rest of the day being cranky.
Go with your strengths! You'll make more money, have more fun, and be much more successful!
Humor: Really, Really BAD Groaners!
If you can read these and not groan out loud, consider yourself a very disciplined person!
Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted.
A jumper cable walks into a bar. The barman says "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."
A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says, "Sorry we don't serve food in here."
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."
Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was brilliant.
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"
"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The green, green grass of home'." "That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome." "Is it common?" "It's not unusual."
Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."
Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad...or maybe my older brother Colin; or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I'm pretty sure it's Colin.
Rodger Blaker is a life coach who works with Professionals, Entrepreneurs / Business Owners and Transitioners. Ready to achieve more? Imagine what's possible with a coach! For info on resources for your success, visit: //www.rodgerblaker.com
GIVE A GIFT TO A FRIEND! Please forward this copy to your friends and colleagues! That's how I grow!