You become an achiever by achieving your goals. If you achieve your goals, you’re an achiever. If you don’t achieve your goals, you’re not an achiever. This is a simple, binary way to think about achievement. To achieve means to reach, attain, or accomplish. What you choose to reach, attain, or accomplish is up to you. The difference between an achiever and a non-achiever is largely a matter of attention. Non-achievers give their goals little attention, if they bother to set goals at all. Achievers give their goals sufficient attention so as to reach, attain, or accomplish those goals. Non-achievers reach, attain, and accomplish something other than their goals. Quite often they will reach, attain, and accomplish someone else’s goals, without consciously making those goals their own. To be an achiever, you must give your goals sufficient attention to reach, attain, or accomplish them. This means you must withdraw much of your attention from activities that are not directly leading to the accomplishment of your goals. In a given week, where is your attention going? If you aren’t habitually obsessing over your goals, then what are you obsessing over instead? What do you normally put ahead of your goals? Do you manage to watch some TV or movies? Do you keep up with email, social media, and text messages? Do you attend to the social obligations that your family, friends, and co-workers expect from you? What exactly are you reaching, attaining, or accomplishing in a typical week? Are you making progress on your goals by giving them many hours of attention, or are you putting your attention elsewhere? Achievers accept that in order to achieve their goals, they must withdraw attention from non-goal activities. Achievers also accept that these competing interests may resist being put on the back burner. The cable company may try to talk you out of canceling. Starbucks may send you a reminder email if you don’t show up for too long. Your mother may nag you about something trivial. Achievers learn to decline these invitations for their attention by default. They keep putting their attention back upon their goals. You must especially be on guard for new invitations and opportunities that come up while you’re working on your goals. These hidden distractions can easily sidetrack you. If an opportunity aligns solidly with your goals, wonderful… take full advantage of it. But if it seems off-course with respect to your current goals, then stick to your path, and say no to the diversion. Generally speaking, it’s wise to be less opportunistic, so you can be more of a conscious creator. You’ll often make faster progress by creating your own opportunities instead of haphazardly chasing the random opportunities that others bring you.
The Scarcity of Attention
Attention is a limited resource. The ability to consciously direct your attention with good energy and focus is even scarcer than the time you have available each day. In any given week, there may be many interests competing for your attention: friends, family, co-workers, random strangers, corporations, organizations, government agencies, media, and more. And these days they have many different ways to reach you. Internally you have some competition as well: your physiological needs, your emotional needs, your cravings, your habitual behaviors, etc. You need to eat, sleep, eliminate waste, bathe, and so on. These activities require some attention too. Somewhere among those competing interests is another voice seeking your attention. This is your goal-oriented nature, your greater intelligence, your desire to live a life rich in meaning and purpose. This part of you craves achievement, and it won’t be satisfied by anything less. It wants you to set your own goals and to reach, attain, and accomplish them. How much of your attention are you giving to your achievement-oriented self? If you starve this part of yourself for attention, it will punish you with low motivation, low self-worth, and a general scarcity of resources. But if you give it the attention it craves, you’ll be rewarded with high energy, drive, passion, abundance, and a sense of purpose and contribution.
Directing Your Attention
Fortunately you have the power to consciously direct your attention. You can let your attention float around aimlessly. You can focus your attention on something other than your goals, such as the goals other people have for you. Or you can focus your attention on your own goals. To really move your life forward requires a major commitment of attention. If you want to improve your finances, you must put your attention on creating value for people, sharing that value, and intelligently monetizing that value. If you want to positively transform your relationships, then give that part of your life some intense and prolonged attention. Unfortunately we have the tendency to remove attention from those areas of our lives that aren’t doing so well. In the short term, it’s wise to shift focus when we feel overwhelmed because temporary diversions can help relieve stress. But for deeper transformation to occur, we need to put lots of attention squarely on those areas that scream for improvement. Setting goals requires focused attention. Planning out the action steps to achieve our goals requires even more attention. Executing those action steps takes more attention still. Achievers make such activities a priority in their lives. Non-achievers don’t. As you get older, keep raising your standards for what deserves your attention. Keep deleting and declining unnecessary fluff and obligations that might otherwise distract you from your magnificent goals. This will free up more attention to focus on your goals. Have you noticed that when you put your full attention on a goal and obsess about it, you can really move it forward quickly, and you do eventually achieve it? But when you let your attention become diluted by too many competing interests, then progress on your goal slows to a crawl, and you eventually lose your connection to the goal altogether. Goals require significant and prolonged nurturing until they’re achieved; otherwise they die.
Say No to Almost Everything
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. – Warren Buffet What does it mean to say no to almost everything? For me this means being able to work full-time on my goals, without letting anything get in the way. It means keeping my schedule free of distracting entanglements. It means that even when I work on goals that seem to be put on my plate by someone else, I must either make those goals my own (and say yes to them), or I must reject them and not give them any attention. If I cannot make a goal my own in some way, it doesn’t deserve my attention. Even a goal like doing your taxes, you can make your own. You can commit to keeping your finances up to date and in good order. You can choose to pay the tax contribution for whatever reasons appeal to you. But if you can’t make a goal your own, and you try to work on it anyway, then you’re fighting yourself, and your progress will be stunted and inconsistent, which is an enormous waste of precious attention. Don’t dwell in the land of half-commitments. Put your full attention on your own goals, including goals you’ve made your own. If you have a job, then either make the commitment to do your very best at that job, or vacate the position and let someone else do it better.
Put Your Goals First
Many achievers have jobs. Many achievers have families. Many achievers have competing commitments of various kinds. But achievers don’t use their job, kids, and other commitments as excuses for not giving sufficient attention to their goals. For everyone who uses these to excuse their inability to set and achieve goals, there’s a real achiever who started from a more challenging position and used those same elements to help motivate them to achieve their goals. Where non-achievers see excuses, achievers find drive. A good way to put your goals first is to set high-quality, holistic goals to begin with. Don’t squander your attention on shallow pursuits like making money for its own sake. Set goals that will help you grow, build your skills, create value for others, and do some good in the world. Ask yourself: Does the goal seem meaningful and intelligent when you imagine yourself 20 years past its achievement? Deliberately put your attention on your goals. When you catch yourself standing in line, dwell upon your goals. Visualize yourself taking the action steps. Make this your default behavior instead of pulling out your phone to attend to something trivial. Carefully plan out the action steps to achieve your goals. If you received my latest newsletter, you’ll find an extensive how-to article about planning the achievement of your goals. Clear time to work on your goals, and make this time sacred and inviolable. If you can only clear a small slice out of each week to work on your goals, then consider setting a goal to reach the point where you have the freedom to devote as many hours to your goals as your energy allows. What specific goals would you need to set and achieve to make that a reality? Imagine being able to devote most of your time every week to working on your most important goals, without anything getting in the way. Many people live this way, and they love it. Why not you?
The Goal of Freedom
One of my past goals was to remove financial scarcity as a potential source of distraction, so I could spend most of my time each week working on my goals, whether they were income-generating or not. I want to center my life around personal growth pursuits and share what I learn as a legacy for others. I devoted a significant amount of attention to that goal over a period of years until it was achieved, and after that I could continue to maintain such a lifestyle with relative ease. I know that some people think it’s unusual to have the freedom to immerse oneself in setting and achieving goals that may have nothing to do with making money or having a job, like traveling around Europe for a month or going vegan or exploring open relationships, but this kind of freedom is important enough to me that I made achieving this goal my top priority for years, sticking with it until it was achieved. It was challenging but definitely worthwhile. I know many people who’ve achieved similar goals. Generally speaking, they tend to be the happiest people I know. Instead of taking orders from someone else as their daily routine, they put their attention on their goals, desires, and interests. They make it a priority to maintain this freedom. They don’t use a job, kids, or the lack of money as excuses — just the opposite in fact. From these people I commonly hear stories of setbacks recalled with laughter and good cheer, not with fear or regret… like the time a couple of friends had to sleep in a park because they had no money for a place to stay. What non-achievers fear as roadblocks are merely stepping stones (and entertaining future stories!) for achievers. If lifestyle freedom is important to you, then make that your primary aim. Put the attainment of this goal first in your life. Working to achieve this goal must become more important to you than keeping up with social media, pleasing your parents, watching your favorite TV shows, and other distractions. If anything else is truly getting in the way, then either drop it from your life, or find a way to turn it into an advantage that increases your drive and motivation. It’s easy for me to tell the difference between people who are committed to achieving lifestyle freedom vs. those who aren’t committed. The ones who are committed are obsessed with the goal; they think of little else. I can’t get them to shut up about it! They’re constantly trying to figure out how to make it a reality. They work hard at it. They stumble and keep right on going. Usually the goal takes longer than they’d like. They often want it to take less than a year. It usually takes 2-5 years to reach the point of financial sustainability. The achievers make it obvious that they’ll get there no matter how long it takes. For them the goal is mandatory, not optional. The non-achievers talk about the goal as a distant fantasy. It’s a wish, a dream, a possibility… something that would be nice to have if and when the planets align properly. Their action plan consists mainly of reading books about the Law of Attraction and listening to Abraham-Hicks recordings. They treat the goal as a casual desire but not a serious commitment. They disrespect the tremendous force of will that’s required to achieve it. They virtually never get there. If the goal of lifestyle freedom matters to you, then drop, cut, and burn whatever distracts you from it. Put your attention squarely on that goal, and obsess about it until you achieve it. If you need more time, cancel cable TV, close your social media accounts, and keep your phone powered off during daylight hours. Take breaks as you need them, but keep putting your attention back on this goal. If you do that, it’s a safe bet that you’ll achieve it. You’ll set yourself on the path to achieving lifestyle freedom when you stop putting other distractions ahead of that commitment.
I am sure that there are certain situations and circumstances in your life that you would like to change. Often, it is quite simple to make changes, but we let laziness, procrastination or fear to stand in our way. You might be surprised to hear that many of the changes you would like to make are within you reach, and often, within your immediate reach. For example, you might always complain that you have no time to read. If reading is so important to you, what’s so difficult to arrange your day so that you can find the time? You can always get up half an hour earlier in the morning, or give up half an hour of watching TV in favor of reading a book. Do you want to learn a foreign language, swim twice a week or arrange your wardrobe? These are simple to accomplish goals, but you might always seek excuses why you don’t have the time for them. You simply do not give them any priority, and prefer to stick to your comfort zone. Sometimes, we might encounter situations and circumstances that we are unable change. What should we deal with such situations? If you cannot change a situation, accept it, and learn to live with it. Sure, this requires a certain degree of self-discipline and inner strength. You might complain, resent the situation and the people involved and be unhappy. This would not help change the situation, and you will be creating suffering and unhappiness for you.
You cannot always change a situation or circumstances, but you can change your attitude toward it.
Changing external situations and circumstances might not always be possible, but changing your attitude is possible. Read this sentence several times and try to remember it. You cannot always change situations and circumstances, but you can certainly learn to change your attitude. Instead of feeling resentful, frustrated and unhappy, you can learn to be calm, accept the situation, and not fight with it. You can try to look at the situation dispassionately, and try to find out what you can learn from it.
Are there people you cannot get along with at work?
Do you have neighbors you do not like?
Is your boss too demanding?
Will you leave your job or go live somewhere else because of that? Often, by accepting the situation, it will stop bothering you, or a solution might come along. Various situations and circumstances could be lessons you need to learn, and after learning and acknowledging the lessons, the situations and circumstances will start to change. If you accept what you cannot change and learn to live with it, it will stop to be an issue and stop to bother it.
When you accept what you cannot change, you save yourself a lot of energy and time, and can devote your time to better things than thinking about the situation you cannot change. When you accept what you cannot change, sometimes, even without any effort on your part, as if miraculously, things start to change and improve. Some people might misinterpret what I said and think that accepting situations means giving up. Others might regard acceptance as an excuse for laziness and doing nothing. This is far from the truth. Acceptance of situations that you cannot change is wisdom and not passivity, and has nothing with giving up and should not be an excuse for passivity. You cannot change the past, and regretting and feeling bad about it is not going to change it. However, you can learn to stop dwelling on the past and move on. If you don’t like one of your colleagues at work and you do not get along with him, anger and resentment would not help. However, you can try to be friendly and stop being resentful. Suppose it is raining outside, but you need to go to work, go the grocery or meet friends. You cannot stop the train and you cannot fight the rain. Would you give up and stay at home, or wear a raincoat and go outside despite rain? If it is very hot outside and you need to go somewhere, will anger and unhappiness change the weather? You can let thoughts about the weather to cause you suffering and unhappiness, and you can accept it and live with it. When you change your attitude toward people, situations or circumstances they stop bothering you and they stop causing you suffering. When you change your attitude, you start to feel better, you become happier, recognize opportunities to make changes, and on many occasions, the situations or circumstances you could not change, begin to change. By changing your attitude, situations and circumstances would start to change, as if by magic. Are there any tools that can help you change your attitude? Yes, there are a few, such as repeating affirmations, practicing visualization and developing inner peace. Let me know what you think below! Source
Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realising that life is made up of little things. – Frank A Clark.
Little things are happening around us every day.
Every moment, in fact, we are encountering little things. Yesterday, when I was walking into a shop, a woman smiled at me. I smiled back and thought to myself, “That was such a small thing but it made me happy to be acknowledged by a stranger.”
Often we dismiss the small stuff because we are caught up in the bigger picture. We’re working towards our goals that are afar off and forget to stop and “smell the roses” along the way.
Not every little thing is as positive as a happy face or a helping hand, though.
Little negative things happen, too. Things go wrong some days. We can focus on them so heavily that they take over our lives.
Instead of letting frustration get the better of us, being able to see small positives will pull us through each of those negative days. Wonderful things are all around us if we could but notice them.
It all depends on our outlook and attitude. Does small stuff make you sparkle inside?
Consider the following situations:
SCENARIO ONE: YOU’VE HAD A BAD DAY.
So nothing went right for you today? You had to start one of your jobs three times before you got it right; your friend forgot it was the day to meet you for lunch – and so on.
These negative things can be blown out of all proportion causing you to label the day a failure.
** Get back your sparkle **
If you focus on positive aspects of the day, your face will turn from a scowl to a smile. It’s not easy to see the positives because several happenings, one after the other, can really cloud any sunshine.
Maybe the job you started three times was very impressive when you eventually finished it. Be grateful and smile. Maybe your mum/spouse had your favourite meal ready when you arrived home. That’s enough to warm anyone’s heart – and tummy.
Seeing the happiness that little things can bring will change your opinion of the day. It really wasn’t so bad after all, was it?
“As you start and end your day, say ‘thank you’ for every little thing in your life, and you will come to realise how blessed you truly are.” Unknown.
SCENARIO TWO : BIG THINGS ARE A PRIORITY NOW.
When you were a kid, your day was filled with little things that brought a smile to your face. You ran outside in the rain; you looked with wonder at the first strawberry growing on your plant; you sat on your swing and laughed as the breeze blew through your hair.
Now, though, there’s no time for the playful things of life. The big things have taken over. Rush to the bus so that you get to work on time; cancel morning tea with your friend because an important meeting has suddenly been scheduled – and so on and on.
** Get back your sparkle **
One way to cope with the busyness of life while you make sure you put some small stuff back into the mix, is to follow the five/two and two/five rules.
On week days, schedule five jobs for the day that must be done, but schedule two things for yourself that you love to do.
At the weekend the numbers reverse. Do five things for yourself – a family picnic, coffee with a friend – but schedule two jobs that must be done to keep your life afloat.
“I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things . . . I play with leaves, I skip down the street and run against the wind.” Leo Buscaglia.
SCENARIO THREE: PEOPLE ARE ANNOYING YOU.
Well, that’s part of life, eh? People annoy us, of course. Family, friends, ones we love, people in our work situation, all annoy us at times. Dealing with annoyances isn’t easy.
I find that instead of managing the day as things happen, I try to set the agenda or feeling for the day myself. That way I can better deal with whatever comes along.
** Get back your sparkle **
I’ll tell someone I love them, compliment someone on their work or how they look, drop a coin into the busker’s hat, and generally be on the lookout for opportunities to pass happiness on. This makes me happy inside, as well as the other person.
Of course, every day isn’t going to go along like this – in a positive way. There’ll still be difficulties to overcome and disappointments to handle. But we won’t come crashing down as far as we might have, had we not started the day off positively.
So try to factor the small stuff into every day. You set the agenda and see the difference that makes, to you and others.
“You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow annoy you.” Robert Anton Wilson.
SCENARIO FOUR: SMALL STUFF THAT DOESN’T SPARKLE.
One weekend we looked after two children while their mum flew interstate for a job interview. The 10-year-old asked me a question, when we were getting ready for a picnic. “Why do you worry so much about little things?” I was taken aback. When I thought about it, I found, to my surprise, that I do this a lot.
Little things annoy me, like: Where are the scissors? (I always put them back in their appropriate place, but other family members don’t.) Why is the ‘phone ringing just when I’m ready to leave for an appointment?
** Get back your sparkle **
Instead of just accepting that these things happen, I was displaying annoyance. I could see that these little things were setting the tone for the day. I wasn’t in control at all, they were.
From that moment on I decided to monitor my behaviour to my own and others’ advantage. These are only little things but the minute I accepted that things happen and worked around the issues without getting cranky, the day was happier.
In this scenario, attitude is key. How easy it is to change our attitude! I could see beyond the trivial to the many good things about the day.
“Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odourless but all together perfume the air.” Georges Bernanos.
Which leads me to wonder – are there really any little things in life?
I’m reminded of the words of Bruce Barton: “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.”
From now, I’ll look at small stuff in a different light.
It’s the small stuff that can reach inside ourselves and out to others, and change a day entirely. When we stop concentrating on annoyances, minor problems, or the busyness of life, we are open to seeing little miracles all around us.
Smile and let the sun shine through you to others with whom you come in contact each day. You don’t know when the little things you do and say will make a difference – somewhere.
The world might be a better place because of the small stuff that you were responsible for, that grew and grew into bigger stuff. Please let me know what you think below. Source
"Most people want to be happy but their habit is to be worried or frustrated or stressed," says motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
But changing that habit isn't as hard as you might think.
“We all want to be able to change the way we feel. Emotion is created by motion. The way you move determines the way you feel. I have this deal with myself called ‘priming.’ It’s ten minutes, I put music on , I do this massive change in my breathing and then I do this 3-step process,” said Robbins.
1. 3-minutes of gratitude—Think about 3 things I’m really greatful for. 2. 3-minute prayer for family and friends. 3. 3-minute process of the top 3 things I want to accomplish.
“My deal is 10 so there is no excuse not to do it,” said Robbins. Let me know what you think below! Source
“How can I become more productive?” is a question that will continue to always come up.
Everyone wants to get more done and feel a sense of accomplishment as each day comes to an end. There are a million different productivity tips out there, but here a five ways to increase your productivity levels that have worked wonders in my own life.
1. Arrive early, stay later
Living in a congested city such as Chicago, I have found that if I start my workday before everyone else, I can save time by beating traffic and getting to my most important tasks right away. Sitting in traffic will do nothing but frustrate you and set a negative tone for the rest of your day. The same goes for when the end of the work day rolls around.
Your ability to save these extra hours can not only increase your productivity levels drastically, but help you become one of the highest paid and most productive people in your field. Arriving early and staying a little bit later could make all the difference in the world.
2. Plan each day the night before
This is a total game changer. If you spend just 15 minutes before you go to bed the night before creating your to-do list and prioritizing it, you will have a head start on your day when the morning rolls around. After I create my to-do list, I pick the most important tasks and put a little star next to them reminding me that these are the tasks that need to be done to push me forward with achieving big goals.
3. Leave the office for lunch
This is something so small that can have such a powerful effect on how you work for the remainder of your day. Getting out of your work environment for lunch can ease stress levels, refresh your creativity and help you to re-focus for when it’s time to go back to work. I often take a short walk to clear my head and think about how I want the rest of my day to go.
4. Minimize distractions
This seems self-explanatory, but in this day and age, distractions are everywhere. If you work from a computer, as most do, there is the temptation to check social media and surf the Internet, among many other things. When it’s time to work, work! If possible, close your door and have a "do not disturb" sign hanging on the door so your co-workers know not to bother you.
Every company has those employees that love to talk about what was on TV the night before instead of actually getting important things done. Don’t let these average achievers hold you back. Set boundaries and try your very best to abide by them daily. Your ability to minimize distractions as much as possible can single handedly increase productivity.
5. Keep your goals in sight at all times
After setting extremely big and exciting goals that you want to accomplish, keep them in sight at all times. I keep a list of my goals in my phone, a note card that I carry in my pocket and in a spiral notebook. The main objective is to keep your goals in a place where you will end up seeing them many times throughout your day. When I glance down at my goals, my motivation levels to get things done goes through the roof.
Start to picture yourself as the most productive person in your field. How does it feel? What tasks are you spending the majority of your time on? What is your philosophy on personal performance? Be in competition with yourself to see how much you can get done. Have fun with it. Make it a game.
Always try to beat the person you were the day before. Keep track of your results and work every single day to be a highly productive individual and watch the small daily victories begin to transform your life.
