Continuous Self Improvement…Hallmark Of Success
It is said that success is a process. It is achieved through ‘works in progress’. In other words, to attain the tomorrow you crave, you have to start yesterday. The future life of success you desire will arrive if you work on your dreams and aspirations at the appropriate time.
Be anxious to improve your circumstances. You can choose a career path. It could be through formal or informal education. Take all necessary steps you deem fit, staying focused with a teachable attitude.
Getting a mentor may help if you do not know where to start. The mentor will have the responsibility of setting for you a standard that is higher than you are. He will set realistic goals for you to attain over time.
What does the creative energy in you need for ignition? Do you need to read up or gather information about an issue? Do you need to access the internet for some life changing experience? Do you need to attend seminars, workshops or listen to some cds or watch some videos on particular issues related to your career path? What is keeping you in the dump?
The beauty of it all is that the power to improve yourself is within you. It is all in your mind. You must have the willingness to improve otherwise you stagnate and very soon you won’t be relevant anymore…because we live in a constantly changing world.
Every successful person will tell you that to become successful, you must continuously make efforts to improve your finances, business, your life, relationships and infact your health as well. These are all related and for you to be a winner, you have to work hard at each of them. If you make money and you are not healthy, you have not achieved success.
To unlock the entrance to a great future, you must take continuous self improvement as a religion. You have to be addicted to never ending learning. If you stop, you will stop growing and that my friend, is very dangerous.
SPICES
If you don’t program yourself, life will program you……Les Brown
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement..…Unknown Author
Perfection does not exist – you can always do better and you can always grow….Les Brown
You can’t have a better tomorrow if you think of yesterday all the time…..Charles F. Kettering
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday……..Abraham Lincoln
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have mastered, you will never grow…C. R. Lawton
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after….Oliver Goldsmith
Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think…….Benjamin Disraeli
Self Branding Tips You Should Not Ignore
You are the message you send out to those you interact with in your neighborhood, work place or other relationship situations. Your words, actions or inactions define who you are. They mirror who you are and that is your image. If you are conscious of this, it will aid you on your way to the success place.
Self Branding amounts to anything you do to differentiate and market yourself. It is said that good products sell themselves. As you brand yourself, you are trying to earn a reputation people can buy into. Your self brand must be built on authenticity because how you are perceived is crucial in your quest for success. The most important ingredient to achieve your goal is your ability to maximize the asset that is in you.
However, you will do well to avoid the following distortions.
• Dishonesty: If you have no integrity and lack moral principles, sooner than later the word will be out. Your reputation will be ruined.
• Lack of team spirit: If you find it difficult to help for overall good because of inconvenience, you won’t get far. Develop the attributes of a team player.
• Unprofessional workmanship: Refuse to be identified with shoddy or substandard service. Prove your worth always in your chosen field.
• Untrustworthy and inconsistent: If you can’t be trusted and people find it difficult to vouch for your ability to fulfill obligations, you can’t make a success of your life. You word should be your bond.
• Lack of a sense of humor: You should be able to poke jabs at yourself if the need arises. A good sense of humor makes the world go round. This is one tonic you should not lack if you want to brand yourself properly.
• Easily upset: Don’t let your fuses go off often. Don’t wear your feelings on your sleeve. Your facial expression must not give away how you feel about issues. Avoid overreaction to unintended wrongs. If things do not work out the way you want, let superior argument prevail. Don’t exaggerate your opinion of self.
Successful people take all these into consideration on a second by second basis. Smart folks capture time to brand themselves because it makes for success in life.
If you do a self assessment of your image and you are not satisfied with the outcome, you may have to change your mental, moral and spiritual mindsets. This will give you a positive character required to achieve success while presenting you with opportunities and possibilities where obstacles existed hitherto.
SPICES
You are just anybody without your identity…Grenville Main
We are no doubt in the Great Age of the Brand…….Tom Peters
Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind…..Walter Landor
Study the public behavior of top stars and you can detect a keen attentiveness to brand value…Peter Bart
To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance….Eric Hoffer
Education Is…The Foundation of Success
For a long time, the norm was for most parents to insist that their children go to school. They will work hard to keep them in school. The idea is that with good education, the child will get a good job and a secure future.
Unfortunately, they did not observe that most of the things taught in schools are outdated and have little or no relevance to the future. The rules of the game of life are changing. Getting a good formal education does not guarantee financial freedom or a secure future anymore. We now live in a rapidly changing world with constantly changing rules and ideas about almost everything.
For a modern day educational system to be relevant, it must include financial intelligence and entrepreneurship with a good dose of investment mentality or awareness. The student while in school must be equipped to be both an employee and an employer of labor on graduation.
Mergers and Acquisitions, Layoffs, Automation, Downsizing, Rightsizing, Global Economic Meltdown and the likes are terms we are all very familiar with. These have inflicted a lot of pains on individuals and families. The educational system should prepare people to think about their future including life after retirement and old age. The pension scheme has failed yet we live in a world where spending is emphasized to the detriment of saving. Sadly, financial institutions that are supposed to help you develop the saving culture will encourage you to get into the credit trap while their chief executives engage in manipulating the books to support their extravagant and sometimes ridiculous life styles.
Today, we have a lot of rich and successful people who did not have formal education in the real sense of the word. They abound in the entertainment and business world, in science and technology and other fields of human endeavors. One thing is certain. They discovered what they were good at or what they had passion for and invested quality time polishing their skills. They learnt investment and wealth creation principles along the line. Some of them like Bill Gates have amassed stupendous wealth.
It is said that if you are not in the know, you cannot be in the flow and if you are not informed, you are deformed. If you are a parent, invest some time to discover what your children are good at. You may not herd them all off to the formal sector since some of them may have their calling in the informal setting.
SPICES
You can get all A’s and still flunk life….Walker Percy
Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes…Panchatantra
Education is the movement from darkness to light.….Allan Bloom
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child….George Santayana
Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity………Aristotle
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world……Heinrich Heine
An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life….Author Unknown
War of Wants…Winning Tips
It is said that human wants are insatiable. With the global economic meltdown, incomes are shrinking coupled with job losses. As a result, poverty is knocking at so many doors. This calls for tough choices to be made to stay afloat. You must watch your wants and needs.
Most developed economies have made provisions for the basics for their citizenry. Some parts of the world are not so lucky due largely to system failure.
In which ever part of the divide you belong to, you need to take charge of your financial life. You have to make an effort to put what is left of your money into positive, wealth creation, personal growth and development projects. This way, you will create your own world of financial freedom. As a sine qua non for winning, you should see personal growth as an ongoing process towards self-actualization
The following tips and tricks which are not necessarily in order of priority will help you win the war of wants and consequently secure you a future devoid of financial friction.
• Live Smart: This first step is very crucial. You must make effort to live below your income deliberately in order to save for investment to create wealth. From what you save, you invest some while some will go into self development -.financial intelligence and entrepreneurship. Financial discipline is required here.
• Build Your Assets: Acquire assets not liabilities. Anything that does not bring you returns is a liability. Spend your savings on things that will help to build your investment portfolio like bonds, mutual funds and stocks that will yield great benefits over time.
• Money Discipline: This will help you to study your financial habits, enabling you to cut down on impulsive buying…buying on real needs and not on feelings. Keep an account of your financial transactions and try not to make the same mistake twice. Make educated buying decisions by comparing prices. Every penny/cent saved or lost counts. If you keep loosing more, that amounts to disaster in the making over time.
• Delay Gratification: Keep putting off or cut down on your expensive lifestyle. This way, your financial worth will be on the increase. At a more auspicious time, spoil yourself a little.
• Real Estate: The only estate that is real is real estate. Build on it. The value hardly depreciates. Any investment here is a winner any day if done wisely. Ask all the relevant questions and get the professionals involved…Valuers, Attorneys.
• Explore Investment Opportunities: From your savings, you can take advantage of opportunities as they come. Opportunities never last and it is the key behind most success stories. You can create stupendous wealth for your future by opportunities taken today.
• For Posterity: Invest in the financial education of your children. This will make them have value for money. Acquaint them with basic investment and financial skills necessary for wealth creation.
You cannot afford to ignore these tips because that will be at your own peril. All of them will help you to increase your net worth if not anything else. It is said that what you save will save you and what you keep will keep you. Avoid the credit trap, no matter how enticing it may appear. Learn to put away a little of your income regularly for investment and self development. You may not be rich but you definitely will be able to take care of your bills later in life when you may not be active anymore.
SPICES
Readjusting is a painful process but most of us need it at one time or another….Arthur C. Benson
To the question of your life, you are the answer, and to the problems of your life, you are the solution….Joe Cordare
There is a deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it……Elizabeth A. Behunke
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life….….Muhammed Ali
The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results……..Edward De Bono
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their new environment….Charles Darwin
To Achieve Success, You Have To Pay The Price
To arrive at the success place, at some point you must work long and hard. This may involve going beyond the usual 8/24 or 5 to 9. If you study the lives of successful people, you will discover that a good percentage of them paid the price in advance. This is one attribute of any endeavour worthwhile in life.
It is usual to crawl before walking, to travel before arriving. Every worthwhile venture requires some level or degree of apprenticeship or tutelage. Ask the Artist, ask the Netpreneur, Ask the Lawyer, ask the Bricklayer. They paid their dues learning the ropes in time, sweat, tears and discipline. If you add entrepreneurship and financial intelligence to any of these professions, the winner instincts will come to the fore. With these, success is almost guaranteed.
In life everything has a price. Jim Rohn says that “We all must suffer from one of two pains-the pain of discipline or the pain of regrets. The pain of discipline which weighs very little will lead to the success place while the pain of regrets which weighs tons will come as a result of failure.
To achieve success, you need to find out what the price is and pay upfront. This comes with discipline, persistence and commitment. It is love for what you do that will keep you going if for any reason the passion dies otherwise you need to have it reborn or move to something new and exciting. However if you fail, you could try and find out why. A new approach may be the answer in order to avoid making the same mistake twice.
Success does not respond to wishes but to definite plans enrobed in definite decisions, through persistence. Ordinary people with no gift of words and little formal education have achieved great feats, accumulated stupendous wealth because they had as their road maps, persistence, purposefulness and concentrated effort.
Depending on your goals and your yardstick for success, the price might be inform of giving up the benefits of years of training, an enviable income paying job or career, family consideration amongst others. What are you prepared to give up in return for what you want? You may have to do what you despise to achieve your desire. There is a price for everything and hard work is still the price for success..
SPICES
It is never crowded along the extra mile…..Wayne Dyer
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step….Chinese Proverb
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.. Napoleon Hill
You are where you are today because you have chosen to be there….Harry Browne
Self respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price…S.L.S
Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential….Winston Churchill
For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won…..Lucy Maud
