Successful Strategies

We live in an amazing time. A time when the worlds of science and religion are coming together with the worlds of psychology and sociology to help us to understand how the creation process works. And once we understand that process, we can create the world of our dreams. Do you dream of great wealth, or romance? What about improved health or athletic abilities?

Some people call this process the Law of Attraction. Others call it the Law of Deliberate Creation. Whatever you call it; this process is how everything is created. And if you don’t learn how this process works, then you will create your life by default, meaning that you end up creating a life that you don’t want.

The first thing that you need to understand about this process is that thoughts are things. And not only are thoughts things, but they are very powerful and very important things. In fact nothing is ever created without starting out as a thought.

So we need to start thinking of thoughts as powerful forces of energy that can travel at the speed of…well at the speed of thought. Have you ever had the experience of thinking of someone, and just as you are thinking of them the phone rings, and it’s them, on the phone? If you have had this experience then you have experienced the power of thoughts.

The process of deliberate creation consists of 3 basic steps. The first step is to become very clear about what it is that you want. This sounds easy enough, but many people find it to be the hardest step. Step 2 is to experience the feeling of already having what it is that you want. This seems backwards to most people. For example, most people feel that they will be happy when they have money, when in fact, feeling happy first will actually attract the money. And the third step is to allow things to happen.

So let’s go over each step in detail. Step one is to become very clear about what it is that you want. Do you know what you want? Do you have an image in your mind that is so clear, that when you see what you want you will recognize it instantly?

I really like the story of the middle-aged woman who sat down on an airplane next to an attractive older man. As she sat down, the woman turned to him and said, “Excuse me sir, but I just have to tell you that you really look a lot like my third husband.” Then after a moment of silence, curiosity gets the better of him and he asks her, “Well, how many times have you been married?” She smiles, and replies, “Twice.” Now there is an example of a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and recognizes it when she sees it. In fact, I’ve been told that is a true story and that they did in fact get married.

Now let me give you a hypothetical example of someone who thinks he knows what he wants, but really doesn’t. Suppose a guy wants a new car. So he goes into the car dealership and tells the salesman that he wants to buy a new car. Of course the salesman is going to ask him WHICH car he wants. But what if he says that he wants any car he can get. The salesman will then explain that he can’t write out a sales agreement for “any car.” The man will have to decide which car he wants. This may seem like a silly example, but let me ask you again, what is that you really want?

One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to the law of attraction is that they focus on what they DON’T want. Now the law of attraction basically says that what ever we focus on, we get more of. But the problem is that our minds can’t process the concepts of “not”, “no” and “don’t.”

When I speak in front of groups I like to demonstrate this principle with the following exercise. I tell them that for

5 second I want them to concentrate as hard as they can on NOT thinking about Pink Elephants! Then I look at my watch as I shout, “no pink elephants, no pink elephants!” Obviously, the more they try not to think about pink elephants, the more they are thinking about pink elephants. Then I demonstrate that the best way to not think about pink elephants is to choose something that is not a pink elephant, and then focus on that.

I use pink elephants as an example because that is not something that people normally think about. But with that example in mind, you will soon be able to see examples all around you of people attracting what they don’t want. For example, suppose a young woman complains that all the guys she meets are “losers!” And that she feels like she has become a “loser magnet.” What’s the solution? She should decide exactly what type of guy she DOES want to meet, and imagine meeting just such a guy.

Another example: suppose a friend tells you that their biggest fear in life is “Bankruptcy.” And that they think about that every day! How can you help them to avoid bankruptcy? Again, the answer is for them to choose something that is NOT bankruptcy and focus on IT. Perhaps they could focus on what their life would be like if they got a raise, or were offered a better job at twice the salary. Those things are definitely not bankruptcy.

And that brings us to the next step in the law of attraction, or the law of deliberate creation. Once you have a clear idea of what it is that you want, you must experience the feeling of already having it. Athletes do this all the time.

I love the story of the Olympic ice skater who was interviewed as he walked off the podium after having received a Gold Medal. The interviewer asked him to describe the feeling of having the Gold Medal placed around his neck! His reply was that it was no big deal, because he had already been experiencing that feeling for months! His comment may not have made for a great interview, but it is a great lesson in how to win a gold medal.

The final step in this process is to allow good things to come into your life. This may seem so obvious that you not think it worth mentioning. But I have found that people, who have yet to achieve major successes in their lives, don’t really understand how this works. The best example I can think of is one a friend of mine told me about. My friend is extremely successful and has made millions and millions of dollars. And one time after a speech he had given, someone from the audience came up to him and made the comment, “Wow, you must really be driven!” My friend told me that the comment bothered him. As if the person making the comment was suggesting that his success had come as a result of his working harder, or putting in more hours, than other people. And after much thought, he decided that his success had come not as a result of him being “driven” but he had been “drawn” to success. In other words, he had such a clear vision of the things that he wanted to achieve that it was almost as if that vision drew him in.

And there you have it. That is how you create the life of your dreams. I urge you to make these three steps a part of your daily life. Once again; here are the steps. First, figure out exactly what it is that you want, then experience the feeling of already having it and then allow it into your life. I know that this process seems simple, but don’t let it’s simplicity fool you. This is the process of creation.

I would love to hear your success stories. You can contact me at robertsmap@comcast.net

Robert Higginson is a 50 year old man whose passion is public speaking and helping others achieve their dreams.

Fear of Loss is a real human fear and it is a powerful innate characteristic indeed. As a matter of fact one of the closing techniques in salesmanship training is to use the “fear of loss trial close” on the buyer.

It goes something like this; “so you like this new 50 series BMW don’t you and the price is good too, you even said it your self; how about we do a credit check and you can driver her home tonight?”

Buyer; “Oh, I don’t think so, it is a beautiful car, but I have to think about it for a few days.”

Seller; “Well, this is the last one in stock here on the East Coast, she will not last by the end of the day tomorrow, in fact I am surprised she is still here today. Are you sure you want to risk it?”

The fear of risk that something bad may happen if you do something or fail to do something has kept many a man from reaching his full potential.

The saying; “No Risk; No Gain” is also appropriate here, as you cannot succeed unless you push the envelope and go beyond the common accepted way of doing things or general understood limits. Without risk, we would never have put anyone on the moon. Without risk there would be no drivers in NASCAR and if there were they would all drive around the track at 55 mph, not 200 + mph, you see?

Risk and fear is something you must over come in your life. That is not to say you take fool hardy risks, it means you should live life and make all your endeavors count, do not settle for less or be led by fear or risk. Be strong, have strength of character and when you must do not be afraid to; Go for it. Think about this for awhile when you get a chance.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

What does “Lessons from My Garden” have to do with “getting organized? One of the things I’ve learned after 20+ years as an organizing consultant is that organizing has something to do with everything!

Here’s how organizing principles apply to the art of gardening:

“Half of any job is using the right tool!” (Note I said “using” – not “having!”) It took a blister to convince me to buy a new pair of loppers to finish trimming the butterfly bushes. With the new tool, pruning was easy and painless.

“Today’s mail is tomorrow’s pile.” While it’s certainly important to clean up the trash, weeds, and other undesirables in your garden, if you limit yourself to that activity, you can work very hard and see little results. One of the things my landscape designer taught me was to pick one small area and plant beautiful things to inspire me to keep going. With Paper Tiger, we encourage you to start using Paper Tiger to organize your desktop – you can worry about all those old piles later! After you get the new system in place, you can incorporate the old files into the new system – and if you don’t, they’ll eventually be old enough that tossing them will be easy. In the meantime, you have what you need to do today’s work, and you won’t be creating new unidentified piles!

“Clutter is Postponed Decisions®.” One of the first steps in creating any rewarding garden is determining what kind of garden you want – vegetable, herb, cutting, perennial, etc. As great as all those options are, if you try to have all of them in the same space, the result will be disappointing. Or, to apply another Paper Tiger principle, “Put like items together!” Create a specific area in your garden for herbs, another for cut flowers, etc. In the same way, you can create separate

“locations” in Paper Tiger for personal papers, active projects, CDs, clients, etc.

“Successful organizing begins with a vision.” The most beautiful gardens are first planted in someone’s mind! The initial question I ask every client is “If we were to meet three years from now, what has to happen for you to feel happy about your progress?” Their answers are varied, and include such statements as “I’ll be making $100,000/year,” or “I’ll be taking six weeks of vacation every year,” “I’ll be working at home,” or “I’ll have a full-time assistant.” If we don’t have something to aim for, we’ll never get there.

“Organizing doesn’t have a ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’” The most exciting aspect of my work is the “art of organizing.” I frequently tell my clients, “You paint a picture for me of what you want to accomplish, and I’ll help you create and sustain an environment to make that happen!” What works beautifully for one client would be a complete disaster for another.

“Organizing is a process not a destination.” A garden, like organizing, is a continual process of reassessing what you like, what you don’t, rearranging existing plants, and trying new varieties. And so it is with organizing! Continually asking three questions: “Does it work?’’ “Do I like it?” “Does it work for the others I care about?” Be willing to take risks, don’t worry about mistakes, and just keep learning!

© Barbara Hemphill is the author of Kiplinger’s Taming the Paper Tiger at Work and Taming the Paper Tiger at Home and co-author of Love It or Lose It: Living Clutter-Free Forever. The mission of Hemphill Productivity Institute is to help individuals and organizations create and sustain a productive environment so they can accomplish their work and enjoy their lives. We do this by organizing space, information, and time. We can be reached at 800-427-0237 or at www.ProductiveEnvironment.com

Find a higher reason to reach your goal than just the goal itself

I need to be mentally sharp, physically and emotionally alert, and spiritually on top of things in order to do a good job for my clients.?Knowing that none of these are possible without good physical fitness, when I feel like skipping or cutting a workout short, I repeat my mantra “Strong body, strong mind, strong spirit,” and picture all of the people counting on me to help them.?This is a far more effective motivator than simply visualizing a fit body (which doesn’t cut it for me after about 15 minutes on the rowing machine!) and reminds me of the higher purposes for getting fit.?

Figure out for yourself how you can expand your perspective on reaching your goal – what things will it bring into your life besides the obvious, immediate benefits? Who else will

benefit and how might that inspire you to greater effort??For example, a goal of getting up an hour earlier to have time for meditation might be hard to maintain on its own merits if you’re not a morning person.?But if you focus on how the calmer mindset and less rushed schedule will make you a better parent, spouse or employee, you may find that the higher benefits outweigh your immediate resistance.

(c) Soni Pitts

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of SoniPitts.Com. She specializes in helping others reclaim “soul proprietorship” in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them.

She is the author of the free e-book “50 Ways To Reach Your Goals” and over 100 self-help and inspirational articles, as well as other products and resources designed to facilitate this process of personal growth and spiritual development.

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If you do your best, you probably will be the best and will become a success. You will stand out from the crowd since so few people actually get around to doing their best.

Do your best then and become a success because the average person seldom does their best and your efforts will stand out like a skyscraper amongst mud huts.

Many people spend about 80% of their free time watching TV instead of working on their skills or goals or the overwhelming chores that tend to pile up on us all.

I was at a seminar last weekend. There were 2,600 people in the audience. The organizer had given up doing workshops for smaller groups.

The reason he gave up was that out of the 30 people who attended the workshop only two would go on and put what they had learned into practice.

28 out of 30 don’t usually do their best. This gives a huge opportunity to the remaining two who take action.

Any one can make promises about what they will do. But few people actually put in the effort necessary to execute their promises to themselves or others.

Many have no idea what real effort is about. Occasionally some exceptional people show us all what humans are capable of doing if they do their best.

Paddy Doyle recently won the world’s fittest man competition. He has run, cycled and swum huge distances and has completed 3250 sit ups as well!

Very few people do any sit ups and, of those who do, few will go beyond 20.

Geoffrey Boycott, the great batsman, praised the New Zealand batsman Brendon McCullum for not smiling when he had scored 50 runs. Boycott commented:

“Don’t smile till you’ve got a hundred runs; then you can smile. That’s what it’s about. Get big scores. All batsmen should keep that in mind.

When they get to 50, they should say: ‘that’s only half the job’. Get your head down and get another 50. You don’t smile until you get back in the pavilion and have got some runs.”

In other words don’t be easily satisfied. Don’t praise yourself too soon. Do more!

Tiger Woods, after the third round at the St Andrews Open in July 2000, was practising until 8.45 p.m. Even the man considered to be the best golfer in the world was not content to sit back after another successful day. He did more.

Tiger Woods has controlled his thinking from an early age and has programmed his thoughts to make him expect more and do far more than the recognized high standards of most golf professionals.

Some times it is enough to do just a little more

than the average.

A few extra hours of work could make you stand out from the rest.

A writer who does a little more research or a bit more thinking about the best words to use in his or her book can transform the book.

A little more attention to detail could make a failing business successful. A good copy writer can transform an ad with just one word and even just one letter.

The person who refuses to live an ordinary life often realizes how little is the extra effort it takes and yet the rewards for this small extra effort are out of all proportion to what it costs.

The mediocre person thinks that he’s taking the easy way but in the long haul he’s taking the hardest way of all because he must spend his entire life existing on the poor financial results that his average work produces.

A retired business executive was once asked the secret of his success. He replied that it could be summed up in three words. These three words were: “and then some”.

He discovered early in his life that the difference between the ordinary people and the higher echelons could be explained by the fact that the top people did what was expected of them and they then did more.

They were sensitive to the needs of others and then gave even more help. They dealt with their responsibilities fully and then worked some more.

They were the same at home as at work. They were reliable friends and considerate neighbours and then exceeded expectations.

A hotel employee went out of his way to put up two elderly people in his own room when the hotel was overcrowded.

A while later the elderly couple turned out to be the owners of the Waldorf Astoria. Guess who they put in charge? The man who had looked after them – and then some.

A little bit extra every day becomes a huge amount over a lifetime. If you want to experience something extraordinary, then you must do that bit extra every day. There is, of course, no law which says that you can’t do a lot extra!

About the author

John Watson is an award winning teacher and fifth degree black belt martial arts instructor. He has recently written several books about achieving your goals and dreams.

If you would like to check out “The 36 laws To Ignite Your Power” by John Watson please visit the following URL: http://www.motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php

If you are interested in one of the best sellers of self help check out Stuart Goldsmith’s ‘ The Midas Method ‘ at the link below: http://www.motivationtoday.com/the_midas_method.php

One of my absolute favorite quotes is from Dwight D. Eisenhower. If you have been a subscriber for long you may have heard me use it before. Eisenhower said that, “The history of free men is never written by chance, but by choice – their choice.”

What a powerful truth. We can, and do, write our own history. That is, when our life is nearing the end, we can look back and see that the history we leave behind, the legacy that we leave for our children, is the accumulation of the choices we made all along the way.

As I think about this, I realize that some may view it from the back end and it may seem hopeless, but we can be proactive about it and decide now that we will begin to make choices that will bring us to our desired end.

Before I talk about privilege, opportunity, and responsibility, I want to make something perfectly clear, and it is something that you must embrace if you are going to see your life continually improve and change for the better. I believe that…

Anyone can have as much money as they choose to.

Anyone can weigh what they choose to.

Anyone can have the job they choose to have.

Anyone can have the level of peace that they choose to have.

Anyone can do anything they choose to do.

They ability for us humans to choose is incredible, but it also brings with it philosophical truths as well. Primarily the power to choose brings with it privilege, opportunity and responsibility. When we see how all three of these play out in our lives, and when we discipline ourselves to make the choices that will bring us to our desired outcome – watch out – because you will be UNLEASHED!

The Ability to choose is a Privilege. Dogs don’t have it. Cows don’t have it. Trees and flowers don’t have it. The only living creatures that have the ability to choose are humans. All of the rest of living creatures live by instinct, or in the case of trees, flowers etc, they live wherever they are planted (I guess they must have to develop a great deal of contentment!).

Have you ever viewed your ability to choose as a privilege that you have been given? That is one of the more motivating factors in my life for being disciplined and making choices. Exercise your privilege today. Make choices today that will make you, your family and your community better off!

The Ability to choose is an Opportunity. Every one of us has the opportunity to improve ourselves. There are too many stories of people who have lost 200 pounds, left behind fortunes while only earning $20,000 a year and multitudes of other success stories

for me to believe otherwise. In fact, I myself have seen it in my own life. What an opportunity! Yet many believe that it is impossible – that they don’t even have the opportunity. Not true at all. Take advantage of the opportunity you have every single day of your life to change – because you can!! Make choices today that will make you, your family and your community better off!

The Ability to choose is a Responsibility. We do not live our lives in a vacuum. We live them in the context of our families, our communities, our businesses and the organizations we belong to. We have a responsibility to make right choices that will positively impact all of those around us!I have four children. The choices I make each day, maybe even every moment, will affect them for the rest of their lives. Do I have a responsibility to them? You bet! I want to discipline my life in such a way that they become all that they can be and that our family and eventually the families that they will start, will become great!

When I think of choices that changed history, I think of Rosa Parks who made a choice that would bring her into the forefront of America’s news of the day and eventually the history books. One day, Parks, an African-American, decided that she would not give up her seat on the bus to a white person. She made a choice. It was undoubtedly one she had thought of for sometime. It was her privilege as a human to make this choice, regardless of what others thought and regardless of what the outcome would be. It was an opportunity to make a statement and to stand up for what was right. It was her responsibility to generations of minorities who would come after her to make this choice. She did, and America changed.

Like Rosa Parks, and countless others who daily make choices that produce change, it is those who will dare to dream of a better life, those who will risk failure, those who will make the right choices who will change themselves, their families, their businesses and organizations and yes, even their world! The ability to choose is an incredible privilege, an outstanding opportunity, and an awesome responsibility! Use it!

About The Author:

Chris Widener is a popular speaker and writer as well as the President of Made for Success, a company helping individuals and organizations turn their potential into performance, succeed in every area of their lives and achieve their dreams.

To see Chris “live” at the upcoming Jim Rohn Weekend Event as he speaks on the subject of Secrets of Influence go to http://Chris-Widener.InspiresYOU.com/ or call 800-929-0434.

Signs of Discontent

You don’t need a degree in psychology to know when you’re off-track, but sometimes it creeps up on you. It can seem like you wake up one day and realize that things are not right. These are a few of the signs:

• You don’t want to get out of bed.

• You have a hard time motivating yourself to do routine tasks.

• You have doubts about yourself.

• You feel mildly depressed for days at a time.

• You sometimes overeat and/or use alcohol and drugs to feel better or escape.

• You often feel chronically tired, deenergized, and listless.

• You worry about how you will keep things together.

• You feel bored or restless.

• You wish you were somewhere else.

• You often have headaches, stomach upset, and other body aches and pains.

• You sleep too little or too much.

• You have frequent bad dreams or nightmares.

• You oversleep.

• You complain and nag.

Feeling dissatisfied with your life is not a pleasant experience, but it can lead you in a positive direction. These feelings may be important because they are telling you that your actions are out of synch with your values, goals, or talents.

Rediscover What Is Important to You

Imagine that your life is handed back to you and you are able to do anything you want. What is important to you? What values will

direct you? Consider each word on the following list individually. It is not necessary to force-rank them or compare them against each other. Assign a rating to each word:

1 = Critically important to me

2 = Important to me

3 = I can live without it

Acceptance by others

Accomplishment

Activity

Admiration

Appreciation

Authority

Beauty

Being liked

Being well-paid

Calm

Casualness

Certainty

Challenge

Choice

Comfort

Community service

Competition

Creativity

Enjoyment

Ethics

Excellence

Excitement

Fame

Financial security

Fitness

Flexibility

Fortune

Freedom

Fulfilling my potential

Fun

Growth

Harmony

Health

Helping others

Honesty

Independence

Informality

Leisure

Making a difference

Mastery

Morality

Nature

Novelty

Originality

Peace

Personal development

Pets

Pleasure

Popularity

Power

Prestige

Privacy

Prosperity

Quality

Recognition

Relaxation

Respect

Risk

Solitude

Spirituality

Stability

Status

Stimulation

Surprise

Time for friends

Time for my family

Uniqueness

Variety

Wealth

Wisdom

Now make a list that summarizes your most important values. If you think of something that isn’t listed, feel free to add it.The final part of this process (and this is a very streamlined version of what is possible) is to compare how you are currently spending your time with your list of most important values. How well do they match each other? What clues can you find that will help you find more satisfaction in your life?

Things that don’t match:

What I can do about it:

Garrett Coan is a professional therapist,coach and psychotherapist. His two Northern New Jersey office locations are accessible to individuals who reside in Bergen County, Essex County, Passaic County, Rockland County, and Manhattan. Garrett also offers online and telephone coaching and counseling services for those who live at a distance. He can be accessed through http://www.creativecounselors.com or at 201-303-4303.

Alcohol Abuse information, tips, recovery and treatment.

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Ask yourself the following:

1. I have created a life-strategy plan for the next:

a.  20 years.................Yes	 Nob.  10 years.................Yes	 Noc.  5-years..................Yes	 Nod.  1-year...................Yes	 Noe.  1-week...................Yes	 No

If you knew how to create a life strategy and implement it, would you be interested in doing so? ……………….Yes No

Very few people take the time to think through, and commit to paper, a life strategy for the future.

Surely, we all set certain life goals such as finishing High School, obtaining a college degree, attaining a specific professional position, reaching an athletic goal, or achieving a particular level of personal income.

However, in general, few people look to the future and fashion a wide-ranging and cohesive life strategy that would reach 5-10-15, or even 20 years into the future.

Normally, people maintain much shorter life-strategy horizons because it is difficult and very challenging to look far into the future and predict an outcome. In addition, most people, from an early age, do not learn why it is important to create a life strategy.

The lack of long-term life-strategy horizons could also be an intrinsic consequence of our culture and its orientation to instant gratification and wanting everything NOW! You could say a lot about the importance of living in the moment and of not being obsessive to the point of planning one’s life down to the last detail. After all what about spontaneity and embracing the naturalness of life as it unfolds?

We could not agree more.

However, we have always encouraged people to develop some form of a life strategy so they have something to look forward to, and, at the same time, set productive goals that have meaning, substance, and represent a raison d’être for their many years of living.

A life without some life strategy is like a boat without a rudder.

Your boat will definitely get you somewhere due to the forces of wind and water currents, but where you end up may not be where you really want to go.

For that reason, it is important to give your life some direction to end up where you want to be in life in the future.

Bear in mind that you do not have to give up spontaneity or the natural evolution of your life to embrace a life strategy even 20 years into the future. It is equally important to be open to all possibilities in your life so

that you do not overlook opportunities that might come to you.

You will discover that when you have a life strategy that has a 15-20 year horizon you will be continually refining your life strategy as you gain more knowledge and experience in your life. Additionally, you will also learn to fine-tune opportunities as they present themselves, which further enhances the fulfillment of your life strategy.

Consider a long-range life strategy as a chart of your future, which has elasticity so that you can tweak it from time to time to perfect its outcome.

Conversely, you should build your life strategy on a solid foundation of clear life-goals.

Goals like self-reliance, financial self-sufficiency, and entrepreneurialism.

For instance, let us say that one of your major long-term goals in a 20-year life strategy is to retire a multi-millionaire at age 50. That certainly is a reasonable and worthy goal for anyone. However, let’s say you get within 10 years of your goal and lose everything in a bad business deal. At that point, you literally have to start over to rebuild whatever portion of your multi-million dollar retirement nest egg that you had already accumulated.

Does your life strategy change? Yes, it certainly does.

The biggest change is that you now have to extend your retirement age to 60 instead of 50. Then again, based on all of the knowledge, valuable contacts, and business savvy you have acquired in your life thus far you might be able to shorten the time horizon to your goal.

More often than not that is exactly what happens with entrepreneurs who encounter a major setback, they come back even stronger. As a result, the life-strategy goal of retiring a multi-millionaire does not change, only the timeline changes.

Clearly, developing a life strategy makes a lot of sense and can be useful to just about anyone.

In future articles, we’ll discuss these questions: How do you go about creating a life strategy? What are the steps, and how do you maintain a life strategy over time in order to reach your goals?

About The Author

Charles and Holly Egner are veteran entrepreneurs. They have trained, coached, and mentored hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs. Their last entrepreneurial venture sold for just under $400 million in 1999. BuildOnYourDreams.com was founded to help promising entrepreneurs to build the business of their dreams.

For a f.ree Life Strategy Planning Teleseminar, visit http://www.BuildOnYourDreams.com today.

Recently I stumbled across a list of Microsoft Interview questions and was amazed by how the questions challenged me to look beyond the ordinary. I share some of the questions for you here in the hopes that you also will recognize the spark of creativity that is required to solve these fascinating puzzles.

Questions 101

The experts tell us that we each have somewhere around 60,000 thoughts every single day. What most people don’t realize is that the average person asks themselves the same questions over and over again.

Same question. Same Answer. Within this pattern is a trap of monumental proportions.

A true treadmill.

“Why does this always happen to me?”

“How come I never have enough money?”

“Will my business ever be successful?”

“Why aren’t I making any sales?”

Boring! Tragic!

There is much to be learned by understanding that the quality of your life depends upon the questions that you constantly ask yourself. If you want to experience the type of life you truly deserve we need to shake things up a bit the Microsoft Way!

Focus the Microsoft Way!

Bill Gates is a puzzle aficionado. I was fascinated with this because puzzles were originally created as a means of hiding or disguising knowledge by breaking the wisdom down into smaller pieces. Long ago I learned that the best teachers were those that asked the most intriguing questions. Needless to say, the same can be said of companies.

This list of questions is fascinating and will definitely stretch your boundaries. Remember….think outside the box, look at them as a puzzle and search for the possibilities. The sky is the LIMIT! May the creative force be with you!

“Why are manhole covers round?”

“How many gas stations are there in the United States?”

“How are M&M’s made?”

“You have been assigned to design Bill Gates bathroom. Naturally, cost is not a consideration. You may not speak to Bill. What would you do?”

“How would you explain how to use Microsoft Excel to your grandma?”

“Explain a scenario for testing a salt shaker.”

“How would you design a coffee-machine for an automobile.”

“How would you go about building a keyboard for 1-handed users?”

“How would you build an alarm clock for deaf people?”

Interesting aren’t they? Were you disturbed by these questions? Or were you fascinated by the possibilities they presented? I

can understand why Microsoft is such a successful organization when creativity of this nature is expected right from the first job interview.

Internet Marketing Expert, Mark Hendricks said it best when he stated; “Problems have solutions, they are made that way.”

Apply this logic to your life and business!

It seems that the software developers Microsoft first ask themselves, “what is it that you want to experience?” Then, they build a belief system to ensure that experience is supported and created. This is incredibly shrewd knowledge that we can all apply to our lives and businesses.

Upon first reading the questions I couldn’t help but sympathize with those prospective employees who had perfect scholastic records but lacked the imagination to confront the possibilities. Success in life often has very little to do with book smarts. Great technology starts with great attitude.

So what is it that you want to experience in your life or business? Believe it or not, limitations live only in your mind. But if you use your imagination, your possibilities become limitless.

Those individuals who live truly fulfilling lives discover that they have managed to challenge their current realities by confronting their imaginations for what is truly possible. When I worked through the above questions I quickly discovered that “HOW” I confronted a problem determined the RESULT I could achieve. How quickly can you change your beliefs about what is possible?

Albert Einstein once said that “the mind that solves a problem is very different from the mind that first confronted it.” From this simple statement we can begin to appreciate that within every question lies either a prison of limitations or an endless series of possibilities. The choice is clearly yours.

So the next time you are confronted with a problem in your business or personal life that seems monumental, I challenge you to ask yourself….”Why are manhole covers round?”

That ought to change your focus around long enough to be able to look at the problem through a new set of eyes.

Harald Anderson is the co-founder of Artinspires.com a leading online gallery of Motivational Posters. “When Art Inspires, Dreams Become Realities. His goal in life is to become the kind of person that his dog already thinks he is. http://www.artinspires.com/

Ten years ago I went into the studio and recorded a 56-minute video for teenagers called “Three Keys To Greatness.” Although my focus was for teenagers, the principles I shared certainly apply to adults as well.

Recently I was asked to list these three things using one to two sentences for each. Now for your benefit here they are again.

1) Setting Goals.

I call it the view of the future. Most people, including kids, will pay the price if they can see the promise of the future. So we need to help our kids see a well-defined future, so they will be motivated to pay the price today to attain the rewards of tomorrow. Goals help them do this.

2) Personal Development.

Simply making consistent investments in our self-education and knowledge banks pays major dividends throughout our lives. I suggest having a minimum amount of

time set aside for reading books, listening to audiocassettes, attending seminars, keeping a journal and spending time with other successful people. Charlie “Tremendous’ Jones says you will be in five years the sum total of the books you read and the people you are around.

3) Financial Planning.

I call it the 70/30 plan. After receiving your paycheck or paying yourself, simply setting aside 10% for saving, 10% for investing and 10% for giving, and over time this will guarantee financial independence for a teenager.

If a young person, or for that matter an adult, focused on doing these three simple things over a long period of time I believe they will be assured success!

To Your Success,

Jim Rohn

Reproduced with permission from Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine.Copyright 2005 Jim Rohn International. All rights reservedworldwide. To subscribe to Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine, go tohttp://Jim-Rohn.InspiresYOU.com