Are your thoughts wrecking your life? | March 5, 2009

This week you've gotten a good status update on your life. Tuesday, you received a life check-up. Wednesday, you received the diagnosis. Today, you'll get the prognosis and cure.

Your diagnosis may have shown that you were a little -- or a lot -- dissatisfied with your life. The prognosis for a life that is not going well isn't good. Things will continue to coast along until some catastrophic event happens or you'll keep going in a disjointed and frustrating dance of highs and lows that leave you confused and even more unhappy. Your income won't increase. Your relationships won't get better. Your work will leave you less than thrilled.

But that doesn't have to be the case for you. Instead, you can go for the solution -- the cure -- to your dissatisfaction with your life. The cure is to first address your thoughts. I believe our thoughts create our lives. If we dwell on certain things, those things have a way of showing up. Don't believe me?

Research tells us that 87 percent of our self-talk -- the things we tell ourselves -- is negative. We tell ourselves such things as, "I'm not good enough," "I'll never make it," "I am too ...".

And so, that's what shows up in our lives. All those negative things we've been telling ourselves end up coming true. Self-fulfilling. And that makes us even more miserable.

So start taking charge of your life by taking charge of your thoughts. Now, this does not mean that one day you are beating yourself up with negative thoughts, then the very next day, you're Mr. or Ms. Positive. That's not what this is about at all. What I am saying is that you must become conscious of the power of your thoughts to create your reality.

Then work to change them. Read books that uplift, inspire and empower you. Surround yourself with friends and contacts who support you in your new quest. Educate yourself about achieving a big goal or dream.

Read my book, Zoom Power: Your Key to Hitting Your Personal, Business and Financial Targets. It includes strategies and suggestions for achieving your big goals and creating success. It also helps you develop the mindset to create success. When you finish reading Zoom Power, you'll have at least two things: the confidence and motivation to do something big and a plan to make it happen.

So don't just settle for life as it is now. Take charge of your life and take it to the next level when you harness the power of your thoughts and transform.

Go for the cure.

Is just OK good enough for you? Or do you want more? | March 4, 2009

Yesterday, we discussed life check-ups. As with a medical check-up, your life check-up may not have been particularly fun, but it was necessary. Your life check-up made you look at some critical areas -- are you getting the results you want out of life? Are you doing meaningful work? Are you revved up about your future?

Now, today, we will get the diagnosis. If you answered "no" on any of the five check-up questions, you have some level of dissatisfaction with your life. If you answered "no" to more than two areas, then you have a seriously high level of dissatisfaction. That's the diagnosis.

Your life is not in great shape. That may sound a bit harsh, but it's nothing you did not know. Having the check-up provided a way for you to get in touch with your emotions about it and ideally, a desire to change it. This was an important step. Many people prefer to coast through life striving for not much and receiving not much and telling themselves they are doing OK.

You've decided that will not do for you.

Now that you know what's wrong, let's figure out how to fix it. You can begin to take charge of your life. Now. Tomorrow, we'll look at the prognosis and the cure.

Focus on your race, not your neighbor’s | February 24, 2009

If you want to achieve a particular goal, you’ve got to zoom in on that one. Forget what the person next to you is doing. When you zoom in on something, you focus on it. It comes into sharp view. And that is what creates the power. I share the simple Zoom Power Equation in my book, Zoom Power: Your Key to Hitting Your Personal, Business and Financial Targets. Once you learn how to apply zoom power to what you do, you will see an increase in the results you produce. You will be able to lose the weight, write the book, launch the business, master the subject, whatever it is you want. But you’ve got to have focus — zoom power.

A lack of focus is the reason so many people produce subpar results, or less than what they want. It’s because they are too busy looking at what others are doing. And they are trying to do too much. The cliche “spread too thin” really is true. If you are stretching yourself in an unreasonable way, you may touch a lot of things, but not leave much of an impression.

Entrepreneur Alynetta Beck wrote an interesting blog post about our views of success. And she has a point: Many people base their success on what others do, and so they are always left disappointed. So decide to focus on what you truly want and what’s important to you. And create your own definition of success. Then zoom in on making it happen.

You’ll produce a lot better result that way.

Get the yucky thing done first | February 24, 2009

Take charge tip of the day: Get the yucky thing done first. You’ve procrastinated long enough and have made every excuse you can think of. That thing on your to-do list — you know, the one you really dread doing — isn’t going to go away. And it’ll sap your energy until you do it.

So do it. Do it or take it off the list, it’s just that simple.

Many times we put things on our to-do lists that are important but they are dreadful — maybe they aren’t all that interesting or exciting or perhaps they scare us a little. But if we don’t tackle the stuff we don’t want to do, we can’t enjoy the stuff we love doing.

I’ve been able to produce many good results, and it’s because I know the power of just jumping in and doing a thing. Some people look at the books I’ve written or the business I’ve built and say, “Must be nice…” Yeah, it is. And it can be nice for you, too. If you just decide to do.

I didn’t get any of the results I’ve had just because I’m so special and could sit back and watch things fall into place. Nor did I get them because I was content to wish for things to happen. I had to do it the old fashioned way. By putting in the time, and doing even the things I wasn’t all that excited about doing.

There is a quote that shows up in many forms, but it’s basically this: “Do the things today that others won’t do so you can have the things tomorrow that others won’t have.”

Most folks will keep putting off the important things and focusing on the easier but not all that impactful things. And the result is they never produce the results they want or are capable of producing.

So tackle that thing on your to-do list that you’ve been avoiding. If you can’t bear to think about doing the whole thing in one go, take it in doses. Just decide you’ll spend 20 or 30 minutes on it today, or you’ll do a certain number of repetitions or whatever is appropriate. Then tomorrow, tackle it again.

The point is to MOVE on it. Now get going.