Completely Change Your Life

\r\n\nThe $25,000 Idea\r\n\nSimple Ways to Effective Goal Achievement\r\n\nExcerpt from How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds \r\n\nby Dr. Robert C. Worstell from notes on the talks of Earl Nightingale\r\n\n\r\n\nThe $25,000 Idea\nNow how do we separate the important tasks from the unimportant?\r\n\nDid you ever hear of the single idea for which a man was paid $25,000? And it was worth every penny of it.\r\n\nThe story goes that the president of a big steel company had granted an interview to an efficiency expert named Ivy Lee. Lee was telling his prospective client how he could help him do a better job of managing the company, when the president broke in to say something to the effect that he wasn’t at present managing as well as he knew how.\r\n\nHe went on to tell Ivy Lee that what was needed wasn’t more knowing but a lot more doing. He said, “We know what we should be doing. Now if you can show us a better way of getting it done, I’ll listen to you and pay you anything within reason you ask.”\r\n\nWell, Lee then said that he could give him something in 20 minutes that would increase his efficiency by at least 50 percent.\r\n\nHe then handed the executive a blank sheet of paper and said, “Write down on this paper the six most important things you have to do tomorrow.” Well, the executive thought about it and did as requested. It took him about three or four minutes.\r\n\n“Now number those items in the order of their importance to you or to the company.” Well, that took another three or four or five minutes.\r\n\n“Now put the paper in your pocket. And the first thing tomorrow morning take it out and look at item number one. Don’t look at the others, just number one, and start working on it. And if you can, stay with it until it’s completed. Then take item number two the same way, then number three, and so on, till you have to quit for the day.\r\n\n“Don’t worry if you’ve only finished one or two; the others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you could not have finished them with any other method. And without some system, you’d probably take 10 times as long to finish them and might not even have them in the order of their importance.\r\n\n“Do this every working day,” Lee went on. “After you’ve convinced yourself of the value of this system, have your people try it. Try it as long as you like. And then send me your check for whatever you think the idea is worth.”\r\n\nThe entire interview hadn’t taken more than a half-hour. In a few weeks the story has it that the company president sent Ivy Lee a check for $25,000 with a letter saying the lesson was the most profitable, from a money standpoint, he’d ever learned in his life.\r\n\nAnd it was later said that in five years this was the plan that was largely responsible for turning what was then a little-known steel company into one of the biggest independent steel producers in the world. One idea, the idea of taking things one at a time in their proper order. Of staying with one task until it’s successfully completed before going on to the next.\r\n\nFor the next seven days try the $25,000 idea in your life.\r\n\n\n\nTonight write down the six most important things you have to do.\r\n\n\r\n\n\nThen number them in the order of their importance.\r\n\n\r\n\n\nAnd tomorrow morning, go to work on number one. Stay with it till it’s successfully completed, then move on to number two, and so on.\r\n\n\r\n\n\nWhen you’ve finished with all six, get another piece of paper and repeat the process.\r\n\n\r\n\n\nYou’ll be astonished and delighted at the order it brings into your life and at the rate of speed with which you’ll be able to accomplish the things that need doing in the order of their importance. This simple but tremendously effective method will take all the confusion out of your life. You’ll never find yourself running around in circles wondering what to do next.\r\n\nThe reason for writing down what you consider only the most important things to do is obvious. Handling each task during the day successfully is important to the degree of the importance of the tasks themselves.\r\n\nDoing a lot of unnecessary things successfully can be pretty much a waste of time. Make certain that the tasks you take the time to do efficiently are important tasks, tasks that move you ahead steadily toward your goal.\r\n\nRemember that you need not worry about tomorrow or the next day or what’s going to happen at the end of the month. One day at a time, handled successfully, will carry you over every hurdle. It will solve every problem.\r\n\nYou can relax in the happy knowledge that successful tasks make successful days, which in turn build a successful life.\r\n\nThis is the kind of unassailable logic no one can argue with.\r\n\nIt will work every time for every person.\r\n\n\r\n\nIs Your Destination Clear?\nPeople can have anything they want. The trouble is that they don’t know what they want. The person who knows what they want knows what they must become, and they then fix their attention on the preparation of themselves toward that end.\r\n\nHave you ever noticed that ships operate essentially the same way people ought to, but so few do? Maybe you’ve never given it much thought, but at any given moment, a ship has a direction and a destination. That is, either she’s sailing to a predetermined port of call, or she’s in port, getting ready to sail to another one. You can ask the captain of any big, far-sailing ship where they’re going, and they can tell you instantly -and in one sentence.\r\n\nHow many people do you know who can do the same thing? It seems that most people want too many different things – or at least they think they want them – they’re unable to focus their efforts, their minds, and their hearts on anything specific. And all this leads to is doubt and confusion.\r\n\nThey’re like the guy who jumped on a horse and rode off in all directions at once. They don’t recognize how vital it is to pick one port that’s important, then sail to it, rest and refit for a little while, and then sail to another port.\r\n\nIn this way, in not so many years, a person can set and reach their goals, one by one, until finally they have a tremendous pile of accomplishments in which to take pride – they have all the things they want, just because they had the sense enough to realize they could do well with only one thing at a time.\r\n\nThere’s another analogy that fits here, and maybe it makes the most important point of all. If a ship tied to a dock for some reason had no place to go, she would stay there until she fell apart from rust and disuse. A ship’s engine isn’t started until she has some place to go. Here again, it’s the same with people.\r\n\nThis is why it’s so important that each of us has a port of call we want to reach – a goal – a place to get to where we feel will be better than the place in which we now find ourselves. \r\n\nIf we don’t, we might never cast off. We might never start our engines and know the thrill of sailing a charted course to a place we can’t see for fully 99 percent of the journey. But we know it’s there, and we know that if we keep sailing toward it, we’ll reach it.\r\n\nIf someone came up to you today and asked you what your next port of call is – that is, where you are going – could you answer him in one sentence, as could the captain on the bridge of their ship? If not, maybe you’d like to give that some thought.\r\n\nA clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Ari Kiev writes, “In my practice as a psychiatrist, I have found that helping people to develop personal goals has proven to be the most effective way to help them cope with problems. Observing the lives of people who have mastered adversity, I have noticed,” he writes, “that they have established goals and sought with all their effort to achieve them. From the moment they decided to concentrate all their energies on a specific objective, they began to surmount the most difficult odds.”\r\n\nSo writes Dr. Kiev in his book, A Strategy for Daily Living, “The establishment of a goal is the key to successful living. And the most important step toward achieving an objective is first to define it.”\r\n\n\nI’m sure you have at least 30 minutes a day in which to list your thoughts about possible goals.\r\n\nSet aside such a period each day for a month.\r\n\nAt the end of the time, choose from the possible objectives you have listed, the one that seems most important, and record it separately on a single card.\r\n\nCarry this card with you at all times.\r\n\nThink about this objective every day.\r\n\nCreate concrete mental images of the goal, as if you’ve already accomplished it.\r\n\n\nThe doctor points out, “You can determine your special talents or strengths in a number of ways, ranging from psychological tests to any analysis of the unexpressed wishes in your dreams. No one method works for everyone.”\r\n\n\nYou might start, for example, by clipping and saving magazine and newspaper articles that interest you for 30 days.\r\n\nAfter which, look for the pervasive trend or trends suggestive of your deep-seated interests and natural strengths.\r\n\nWhenever you discover a strength or talent, think of five possible ways to develop it.\r\n\nWrite these strengths down on your card as well, and check it periodically to keep them fresh in your mind.\r\n\nIf possible, have your card laminated and place it on your bathroom mirror so that it is the first and last thoughts of your day.\r\n\nThen focus your day’s energy on this goal and on activities that utilize these natural strengths.\r\n\n\nDr. Kiev continues, “Focus on one objective at a time. Like a microchip, the brain, set on a target, will call into play those mental processes that will bring your efforts to fruition. Your actions will conform to your expectations, thereby bringing about the event. If you believe that you will reach your objective, you will continue to work at a task until you have accomplished it.”\r\n\nSo, take the advice of the psychiatrist Dr. Ari Kiev and don’t be afraid of failure. As Herodotus wrote, “It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.”\r\n\nSit down and make a list of everything you want in life. When you do this, you will make some surprising discoveries. You might find that you have already managed to get many of the things you have wanted seriously. Or, if you don’t have most or all of them, chances are you are now in the process of getting them.\r\n\nIf your list contains some items you want very much but do not have, you might ask yourself why you have failed to get them. Chances are that you have not tried very hard. Or perhaps you felt, for one reason or another, that these things are completely beyond your ability to achieve. These wants make very worthwhile goals.\r\n\nIt’s a good idea to have two lists of things you want. \r\n\n\nThe first list would include those bigger goals that relate to your career or the overall good of your life or your family. These might include the position and/or income you are working toward, perhaps a higher educational degree, a certain amount of money in savings, a goal of height of business success, or that beautiful home you have had your eye on.\r\n\nThe other list could be a fun list. It might include the car you want for no good reason except it’s the car you happen to want, redecorating your house, getting new furniture, traveling to some special place – perhaps abroad – or buying a new wardrobe. This is a list of things you want just because you want them.\r\n\n\nYou should have long-range goals. These should be on your number one list, and each of them should be numbered in the order of importance to you. These are goals that might take five years or longer to achieve. They’re extremely worthwhile, and you should be working toward them daily. These are the goals that give meaning and direction and substance to your life.\r\n\nBut you also need short-range goals. These are the goals that add zest and interest to your life and break up the monotony of the long haul for the long-range goals.\r\n\nIf you’re honest with yourself about the things you want – not idle wishes that change from day to day but things you are serious about – you’ll find that they all can be yours, and in a surprisingly short time, if they are taken one at a time.\r\n\nIt’s been said, “People can have anything they want. The trouble is that they don’t know what they want.” Get off by yourself for a quiet hour or two, and make up your card and your two lists. It is a fun and rewarding exercise and will prove to be the first step toward living the life you most desire.\r\n\nThe great historical philosophers, teachers and prophets all agreed…\r\n\n\n\nDo you appreciate the life you have fashioned for yourself?\r\n\n\r\n\n\nWhen was the last time you assessed your long-term goals?\r\n\n\r\n\n\nAre you prepared to create new goals after you have accomplished your current goals?\r\n\n\r\n\n\n– – – –\r\n\nA man hunting tigers in India was suddenly surprised by a huge Bengal tiger -it was almost on top of him. The man raised his rifle and fired, but he overshot and missed. The tiger, frightened by the man and thrown off stride by the noise of the gun, leaped toward the hunter but the leap was too wide, and he missed his prey.\r\n\nThe man returned to camp and spent several hours perfecting his aim for short distances and quick firing. On the following day, he again stalked the tiger. Finally, he spotted the beast at some distance – practicing short leaps.\r\n\nWhat are your goals?\r\n\n\r\n\nResources\nGet your no-charge copy of\r\n\nEarl Nightingale’s\r\n\n2 Amazing Ways to Solve Your Problems\nAudio and PDF for this free special report is available for instant download.\r\n\nClick here now.\r\n\nThe post The $25,000 Idea Simple Ways to Effective Goal Achievement appeared first on Living Sensical.\r\n\n

(Edited from notes on a talk by Earl Nightingale.) You have only one boss and every person from the president of the largest corporation to the shoeshine boy has the same he is simply the customer. I want to tell you a little story that could make a wonderful difference in your life. You may already know about everything I’m going to tell you. If you do, you’re a remarkable person, and according to the latest statistics you belong to the top 5% of all the working people in the world. You’re to be congratulated. If you don’t know about the things I’m going to say, you’ve been holding yourself back, not only on the job but you’re also missing a big percentage of the greatest joy in life. I want to talk about your boss and your relationship with him. How you handle this relationship will determine your success or failure. It will determine how much money you make or do not make, and it will determine whether you’re a happy person or an unhappy person. So let’s talk about you and your boss. Who is your boss? You have only one and every working person, from the president of the largest corporation to the shoeshine boy, has the same boss. He is simply the customer. There never has been, there is not now, and there never will be any boss but the customer. He is the one boss you must please. Everything you own he has paid for. He buys your home, your cars, your clothes. He pays for your vacations and puts your children through school. He pays your doctor bills and writes every paycheck you will ever receive. He will give you every promotion you will ever obtain during your lifetime, and he will discharge you if you displease him. Sometimes, particularly these days of seemingly complex economics and big business, we lose sight of just what business is. It all started back during the most primitive times. A man, in order to fend for himself and his family, had to provide his own food and his own shelter. He had to do his own fighting and fashion his own rough clothes and crude weapons for hunting and materials for fishing. Later he had to manufacture his own farming implements. In short, each person had to personally take care of every department of his or her life. Naturally it came about that men and women with certain talents appeared. One person was particularly adept at fashioning spears, another at fishing, another at hunting, another at making garments, and so on. It was only natural that soon these individuals found that they could best spend most of their time in the pursuit of that at which they were most talented and trade their production for the production of others. As a result, the person who made spears found that others would give him a share of their food, clothing, and so on, if he’d provide them with spears. Thus, trade and commerce began. It’s far more complex today but still based on the same principle. A person’s money is the result of his production, and he trades it for things he needs and wants. And it’s here that logical discrimination comes into the picture. Since his money is the result of his work, it’s left to his discretion as to where he spends it. It is here that he assumes the role of boss. He will spend his money only with those whom he feels have earned it. And this is as it should be. You and I are exactly the same way. If someone treats you badly in any way, you instinctively feel that he has not earned your business and you will withhold it from him. Over a period of time this amounts to a really substantial penalty. Let’s say a family spends $100 a week for food, and because they’ve been mistreated or even get the feeling they’re not appreciated or liked, they stop doing business at one store and take their business to another one. That’s a penalty to one store of $5,200 a year and an increase of that amount at another store. In 10 years it amounts to $52,000. This amount of money can be lost by not realizing who the boss really is. The same thing applies to our clothes, drug items, hardware, cleaning, gasoline, automobiles, everything we purchase. The average family earns more than $42,000 a year. This money pays your salary and mine if we earn it. And our prosperity as individuals hinges directly on our attitude toward what we do for a living. The man who works on an automotive assembly line might not think much about the car at the point of sale, nor about the family who will eventually buy and travel in that car. But that family pays his salary, and they will withhold the purchase of the car on which he works if it does not earn their respect and admiration. If you doubt this even for a moment, think of the cars that once were popular and that can no longer be seen on the road. This applies to all products. Having earned a successful place in the economy should not be confused with keeping it. It must be earned every day, year in, year out. There’s not a single company that could not go out of business. Everything depends on how the boss is treated, the boss being the customer. And yet the customer is eminently fair, just as you are. He can be won back, and if he’s treated with the importance that he deserves, he can in a few years bring a lot of other people into your place of business. Let me tell you something you may not have thought about. If you get in your car and start driving across the country, you will pass many thousands of businesses, from small restaurants, drug stores, grocery stores, gas stations, to great sprawling corporate complexes covering hundreds of acres and employing thousands of people. By simply looking at each one you can tell how they’re treating the boss. Did you know that your rewards are in exact proportion to your service? That’s right. We’re paid exactly what we earn, but no more. And you can tell by looking at any business exactly what it has earned by seeing what it has. It’s the same with people. We get back exactly what we earn, but not a penny more. And this, again, is just the way it should be. A person might be underpaid for a while, but the scales of life must balance eventually and he will, in the end, receive just what he’s earned. There are of course two ways in which we’re paid for what we do. One is tangible in the form of money, and the other is intangible, but just as important. To many it’s more important. This latter form of payment comes in the form of inner satisfaction, in the form of joy as a result of accomplishment. It also comes in the form of satisfaction in position and the standing it gives us. So each of us is paid in these two ways: money and satisfaction. And there’s a very simple way to increase both of these forms of income. You may wonder how I can say that I can tell you of a simple way to increase your income from the standpoint of money as well as inner satisfaction. Yet I can, and you’ll be able to see and spend the results. First, I want you to understand and believe completely the great law that lies as the foundation of all life, business and personal. It is that our rewards in life will be in exact proportion to our service. The more you think about this and observe people and businesses in their true light, the more you’ll see the undeniable truth of it. Try as best you can to estimate the proportion of your total ability you have been giving to your work. I don’t think anyone gives 100%. I don’t think it’s possible to give 100% day in and day out. But estimate what you consider to be the percentage of 100% you have been giving to your work. Would you say it’s been 30%? 50%? Since your rewards will be in exact proportion to your service, you can increase your income both financially and from an inner satisfaction standpoint simply by narrowing the distance between what you have been giving to your work and the 100% of which it may be said you could give under ideal conditions. You don’t have to ask for a raise; the income will appear of its own accord and in the right time. You may want to question this, but try to take my word for it. The second point I want to make is this: If you will begin to do your work better, better than you’ve ever done before, you will immediately begin to receive incalculably more inner satisfaction. You’ll also find that what may have been a boring or uninteresting job will take on new meaning and interest. No matter what it is that you do during the entire working day, try in every case to do a little more than you have to, more than you’re being paid for. Because unless you do more than you’re being paid for now, you can’t hope for or justify an increase in pay. The third point is, each of us is interdependent. As I pointed out earlier, other people pay our salaries, buy our homes, clothe, feed, and educate our children. Therefore we depend on others for our very lives, just as they must depend on us. If we expect others to give us excellent service and fine products for the money we spend, doesn’t it make good sense that we should treat them the same way? Every hour spent at our work should be spent in the attempt to give the best of which we are capable, a baker’s dozen for the money our company’s customers spend for our products and services and with which our salaries are paid. A person who tries to get the maximum return for the minimum of effort is only kidding himself. Sooner or later the scales will balance. They must, for that is the law whether we like it or not. This kind of individual actually shrinks as a person, as a human being. He has no real place in a dynamic and swiftly changing world. The fourth point is to try each day to find some way in which the work you’re doing can be improved. Here again you’re guaranteeing an increase in your income in both categories. We all know the cynical type of individual who will laugh at this. I know them; you know them. But I don’t know one who could be said to be doing well, do you? I know lots of men and women at the top of their fields who live their lives every day in the way I have suggested. Rather than go along with someone who’s never proved in his own life that he knows what he’s talking about, I’d prefer to believe the one who said, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” I feel, as I’m sure you do, that he was more qualified to speak than the know-it-all who is behind in his installment payments. Anyway, it’s worth a test. If you’ll follow my suggestions for the next year, you’ll be a different person, living a rich, rewarding, and meaningful life. Four things, all of them simple. One, remember that our rewards in life will be in exact proportion to our service. Two, by giving your work a larger percentage of your capabilities and talents, you will, you must, increase your income substantially. Three, since our lives depend on others, treat others in every facet of your life exactly as you want others to treat you. If you expect others to give you excellent products and services for the money you and your family spend, then you should make certain that your job is handled as excellently as it is possible for you, since it is the money of others that pays your salary. Four, try to find some way every day in which your work can be improved. And above all, know your boss. He’s the customer. Treat him with the respect, care, courtesy, and good humor he deserves. Remember, he pays all your bills every month. He will buy everything you will ever own. He may be coarse, crude, ignorant, selfish, conniving, and a thoroughgoing savage. He often will be. Here it is more important than ever that you treat him with all the care and attention you can muster. If you don’t and if you permit his attitude to affect yours, you’re admitting that he’s the stronger person. If you respond the same way he conducts himself, you’re admitting you’re no better than he is. Most people, however, are nice people. They’re people like you and me who want to be liked and want to get along, who want to be friends. They have problems and sorrows of their own about which we’re not aware. They have bad days and disappointments. Make sure that the time they’re with you is a high spot in their day and that they’ll want to come back, not just because of your company, but because of you. If you’ll do these things for a year, you’ll be surprised and delighted, and you’ll find you wouldn’t live any other way for the world. If you’re already living this way, you know what I mean. Follow these steps for one year and you will be a different person, living a rich, rewarding, and meaningful life: Remember that your rewards in life are in exact proportion to your service. Increase your service to others and your rewards will increase in proportion. Give your work a larger percent of your capabilities and talents to serve “the boss.” Treat others in every facet of your life as you want others to treat you. If you expect others to give you excellent products and services for the money you and your family earn, make certain that your job is handled as excellently as it is possible for you. Find some way every day in which your work can be improved to benefit “the boss.”   This special report now available on Amazon BONUS Free special report with audio Visit http://calm.li/solution-report Sign up for your access to my membership library at no-charge. This is being added to weekly, so don’t miss out.  The post Business Sales & Income: How to Please Your Boss appeared first on Living Sensical.

7 Strange Secrets to Your Amazing Life …how many of these do you already know and use? Hi again , Life is generally found to be a natural system that works in spite of our Sciences and our News Media and our Politicians and Celebrities. That’s probably why we as a species have survived as long as we have. Because Nature wouldn’t let us quit. For a fact, the few people who are outrageous success (as well as the many, many people who live lives of regular success) know part or all of the natural system which makes success possible. Successful people tend to study successful people. This isn’t the same as finding yourself following followers. True successes find that certain principles (or Laws) continue to work regardless of the surrounding conditions. The people who hit onto these and use them consistently tend to have more success than those around them. There are a lot of man-made deserts on this planet where civilizations once flourished. Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Iraq are some of these. Nation-states which were once the center of trade and the “civilized” world now are having a rough time simply keeping their national budgets balanced. More recently, you can see the difference between North and South Korea. And how rapidly South Africa has changed with various administrations. The point is that there aren’t a lot of people in those areas who have figured out what principles successful people know and then apply them to their own lives. Not too surprising, all these principles aren’t secret. They’ve been written up time and time again. They trace back in our bestsellers over the ages to our oldest philosophies. And all those books are still in print, or can be found for free online. It takes looking. Do you want to be successful? Then you need to study successful people and the books they studied. Too simple. If you’re happy with what you have and the conditions around you, then just keep doing what you are doing. If you aren’t happy with your results, or want to do better, then you need to change what you are  doing and thinking. Because what you’ve done and thought up to this point has gotten you where you are. Doing more of the same will give you more of the same. There are systems at work. Most of these principles work together to create systems anyone can apply in their lives. As covered above, most of the successful people have figured out a few or quite a few of these. Steven Covey came up with his 7 Habits. Napoleon Hill published 13 in his Think and Grow Rich, but ended up with 17 principles as his system. Earl Nightingale is a favorite study of mine. He had an outrageously successful set of careers in his life. And left a wealth of data for you and I to be inspired and motivated by. If you boil these down, you’ll find that he had really just 7 points that he kept going back to. (And more about these is available in a short read called “7 Strange Secrets to Winning Big” that is linked in the show notes as a free download, as well as Amazon.) Here’s his list: 1. “We become what we think about.” Change your thinking, and you change what you can become or have in your life. 2. Test all conventional wisdom or advice you receive, read, hear, or observe. Only accept that data conditionally until you can test it fully. 3. The Golden Rule is the rule of gold. As you give openhandedly (and in excess) so you will recieve. Cause and Effect. You can’t get without giving. You have to have something valuable to offer before you can get something valuable in return. 4. The reason 2% make far more than the rest of the 98% is because they decided and set goals. Too simple. Focus on just one thing and you’ll get it. Focus on nothing and you get nothing. 5. The Gold Mine is between your ears. Practice thinking and you’ll sharpen your imagination, inspiration, and intuition. The ideas you get in your daily “thinking time” are all free. But you can use the best of these ideas to get any amount of riches you want. The trick is to practice thinking daily. 6. Attitude determines result. Norman Vincent Peale said this was his greatest discovery. A positive attitude creates positive results. A negative attitude creates negative results. Spend more time with positive people than negative ones and your life will have better results. Practice action to improve your attitude and results. 7. You river of interest creates your body of work. Find that “sweet spot” where your training and your interests overlap. Work in this area and create your best work routinely. If there is something more interesting, use what you already know how to do to pay for the training you need to move into that field. Follow your bliss in everything you do. Those seven points are a minimalist approach to living. And they can be fewer or more, depending on your preferences. The point is to have a system at the base of your mindset. Then stack your training and additional systems on top of this, or extended from it, to build your belief-system that will carry you comfortably through life. You can only become what you think about, and can only achieve what you want to be or have by getting and keeping in action. These seven points are a start. Change them as you like, test each of them for yourself. Good luck with this. And have fun. Until next time, Robert   Links 7 Strange Secrets to Winning Big (free download) | Book Links 7 Strange Secrets Podcast Episode Books by Earl Nightingale – The Strangest Secret Library The post 7 Strange Secrets to Your Amazing Life – Systems for Your Mindset appeared first on Living Sensical.

Nine Steps for Solving Any Problem (Taken from notes on talks by Earl Nightingale.) Transcript: For any problem, no matter how big or complex it may be, there is a solution. Use these nine steps to find it! What are the similarities in problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? Actually, they’re alike in many ways. A decision that must be made is little more than a problem awaiting a solution. We might even call it a simple problem. When we’re faced with a decision, we rarely have to choose between more than two or three alternatives, whereas, in solving a problem, we sometimes face what seems to be an endless list of possibilities. And, what about goal achievement? Isn’t a goal a point we wish to reach? The problem is to move from where we are now, to where we want to be. So, problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement are all closely related functions of creative thinking. It’s important that we keep this in mind. The first step in solving any problem is to define it. You should always be sure you understand a problem before you go to work on its solution. Next, you should write down everything you know about the problem. This information might come from your own experience, from books that contain background and statistical data, the Internet, or from friends and business associates who know something about the area in which the problem lies. Third, decide whom to see. List the names of people and organizations that are recognized authorities on the problem. This is your opportunity to go “all out” for the facts. After determining who can help you, contact them, talk with them, and pick their brains for all the information they possess that can help you solve the problem. After doing this, be sure to make a note of each thing that’s germane to the problem. Don’t risk forgetting anything that could help you find the solution. The fifth step in solving a problem creatively is called “Individual Ideation.” This is personal “brainstorming,” or thinking with the brakes of judgment off! Don’t try to decide whether an idea is good or bad -just write it down the moment it comes to you. You can pick and choose – what you’re after is a lot of ideas. Remember the four rules for brainstorming: (1) No negative thinking; (2) The wilder the ideas, the better; (3) A large number of ideas is essential; and (4) Combination and improvement of ideas is what you’re after. One idea often leads to another, better idea. Don’t worry if some of your ideas seem far-fetched or impractical. You’re looking for all the ideas you can possibly find. Don’t reject any write them all down! Then Group Brainstorm. This is your opportunity to put the minds of others to work on the problem. Handle this session the same way you did your “Individual Ideation.” No negative thinking, no criticism at this stage; the wilder the ideas the better; get as many ideas as possible; and, try for idea combination and improvement. Write down all the ideas the group comes up with. When you have all your ideas written down, rate them for effectiveness and facility. The effectiveness scale ranges from “very effective” to “probably effective” to “doubtful.” And the facility scale ranges from “easy” to “not so easy” to “difficult.” The rating of ideas will clearly indicate the likely success of any possible solution. Of course, it’s best to consider first the idea or ideas that are rated both “very effective” and “easy.” Suppose you’re a manufacturer. And suppose your sales and marketing team brainstorming comes up with some ideas to increase sales. Let’s say one of the ideas is to revamp completely one of the products that your company is offering to the public. Let’s rate this idea in terms of effectiveness. You know the present product meets a need and is acceptable to the buying public. What about an entirely changed product? Without a lot of marketing tests and then a period of actual manufacturing for sale, it would be hard to say just how effective this idea would be in increasing sales. Better rate it “doubtful” And how does this idea of completely revamping one of the products check out in the facility area -“easy,” “not so easy,” or “difficult”? It would be “difficult,” wouldn’t it? It would require new engineering, new tools, new manufacturing plans, new packaging, and new marketing methods. Suppose, however, that one of the salesperson’s ideas is to run TV advertisements for the company’s product on one of the major television networks. This would be “probably effective” and would be “not so easy,” but it could be done. Let’s say another idea is to set up a new sales incentive program, a program directed to those people who are at the front of the problem, the salespeople. If it were a well-designed and – implemented incentive program with predictable compensation for increased performance, it would stand a good chance of being “very effective.” It would be relatively “easy” to do. It should increase the company’s sales. There are many other evaluation yardsticks you might use. Two more are time and money. Try rating your ideas against these measurements. For example, in the case of a manufacturer who wants to increase its sales, certainly to change the product would take a great deal of time and money. And to advertise it on a popular network television program would cost a great deal. On the other hand, to introduce a new sales incentive program might be neither too costly nor too time consuming. Remember, when you evaluate your ideas, measure them against these four yardsticks: effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. Every idea you have may not be worth creative action, and that’s why you must skillfully evaluate each of them. But once you’ve carefully judged your ideas, take action. Enter your ideas into an “Action Plan”: decide who should do it, when it should be done, when to start, and how to do it. These are all important considerations because the execution of the solution is just as important as the solution itself. Be certain to give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. We work hardest and most efficiently when we know there is a definite time element involved. So, make a note of the date when you must put your solution to work. It’s good to remember that timing is often critical when a new idea is introduced. Carefully calculate the deadline in the light of the general situation. You might write down a second date -the one by which you intend to have the action completed and the problem solved. Remember what was said earlier about problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? They have a great deal in common. They can all be attacked in much the same way. For any problem … no matter how big or complex it may be … there is a solution. All you have to do is find it! History is filled with people who believed a problem did not have a solution and they did not find it, and people who believed there was a solution and they did find it -same problem, different perspective, one successful and one not. Which type of person will you be? Remember these steps for brainstorming your ideas: 1. Define the problem. 2. Write down everything you know about the problem. 3. Decide what people and resources to bring into the solution. 4. Make a note of everything that is germane to the problem. 5. Conduct a personal brainstorming Individual Ideation. 6. Utilize Group Brainstorming and rate your ideas for effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. 7. Evaluate your ideas for the best options. 8. Create an “Action Plan.” 9. Give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. This is an excerpt from a new release on Amazon, “2 Amazing Ways to Solve Your Problems.” Soon available on iTunes, Nook, GooglePlay, and Kobo. Get your complimentary PDF and audio files for this release – currently available only at LiveSensical.com.  The post Nine Steps for Solving Any Problem appeared first on Living Sensical.

The Great Problem-Solving Tool (Taken from notes on talks by Earl Nightingale.) Transcript: Successful people are not without problems. They’re simply people who’ve learned to solve their problems. All creatures on earth are supplied at birth with everything they need for successful survival. All creatures except one are supplied with a set of instincts that will do the job for them. And because of that, most creatures don’t need much of a brain. In the Pulitzer Prize – winning playwright Archibald MacLeish’s play The Secret of Freedom, a character says, “The only thing about a man that is man is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.” That’s uncomfortably true. Take the magnificent bald eagle for example. To see one of them swooping down and pluck a live and sizable fish from the water on a single pass is astonishing. More astonishing still is the eagle’s eyesight. And because of its need to see small rodents moving in the grass from high altitudes or a fish just inches under the surface of the water, its incredible eyes take up just about all the space in its head. For the eagle, its eyes are the most important thing, and everything else works in unison with them. Its brain is tiny and rudimentary. It doesn’t think or plan or remember; it simply acts in accordance with stimuli. And it’s the same with most other living creatures. Even the beautiful porpoise, with a much larger brain, and the chimpanzee are easily tamed and taught. Only one takes 20 years to mature and has dominion over all the rest on the earth itself, and has today the power to destroy all life on earth in a couple of hours. Only one is given the godlike power to fashion its own life according to the images it holds in its remarkable mind. The human mind is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the creatures on earth. Everything that means anything to us comes to us through our minds, our love of our families, our beliefs, all of our talents, knowledge, abilities. Everything is reflected through our minds. Anything that comes to us in the future will almost certainly come to us as a result of the extent to which we use our minds. And yet, it’s the last place on earth the average person will turn to for help. You know why? You know why people don’t automatically turn their own vast mental resources on when faced with a problem? It’s because they never learned how to think. Most people will go to any length to avoid thinking when they’re faced with a problem. They will ask advice from the most illogical people, usually people who don’t know any more than they do: next-door neighbors, members of their families, and friends stuck in the same mental traps that they are. Very few of them use the muscles of their mind to solve their problems. Yet living successfully, getting the things we want from life, is a matter of solving the problems that stand between where we are now and the point we wish to reach. No one is without problems. They’re part of living. But let me show you how much time we waste in worrying about the wrong problems. Here’s a reliable estimate of the things people worry about: Things that never happen: 40%. Things over and past that can never be changed by all the worry in the world: 30%. Needless worries about our health: 12%. Petty miscellaneous worries: 10%. Real legitimate worries: 8%. In short, 92% of the average person’s worries take up valuable time, cause painful stress, even mental anguish, and are absolutely unnecessary. And of the real legitimate worries, there are two kinds. There are the problems we can solve, and there are the problems beyond our ability to personally solve. But most of our real problems usually fall into the first group, the ones we can solve, if we’ll learn how. The average working person has at his or her disposal an enormous amount of free time. In fact, you’ll see if you’ll total the hours in a year and subtract the sleeping hours: If we sleep 8 hours every night, we have about 6,000 waking hours, of which less than 2,000 are spent on the job. Now this leaves 4,000 hours a year when a person is neither working nor sleeping. These can be called discretionary hours with which that person can do pretty much as he or she pleases. So that you can see the amazing results in your own life, I want to recommend that you take just one hour a day, five days a week, and devote this hour to exercising your mind. You don’t even have to do it on weekends. Pick one hour a day on which you can fairly regularly count. The best time for me is an hour before the others are up in the morning. The mind’s clear, the house is quiet, and, if you like, with a fresh cup of coffee, this is the time to start the mind going. During this hour every day take a completely blank sheet of paper. At the top of the page write your present primary goal clearly, simply. Then, since our future depends on the way in which we handle our work, write down as many ideas as you can for improving that which you now do. Try to think of 20 possible ways in which the activity that fills your day can be improved. You won’t always get 20, but even one idea is good. Now remember two important points with regard to this. One, this is not particularly easy, and, two, most of your ideas won’t be any good. When I say it’s not easy, I mean it’s like starting any new habit. At first you’ll find your mind a little reluctant to be hauled up out of that old familiar bed. But as you think about your work and ways in which it might be improved, write down every idea that pops into your head, no matter how absurd it might seem. The most important thing that this extra hour accomplishes is that it deeply embeds your goal into your subconscious mind, starts the whole vital machine reworking the first thing every morning. And 20 ideas a day, if you can come up with that many, total 100 a week, even skipping weekends. An hour a day, five days a week, totals 260 hours a year and still leaves you 3,740 hours of free leisure time. Now this means you’ll be thinking about your goal and ways of improving your performance, increasing your service six full extra working weeks a year, 61/2 40-hour weeks devoted to thinking and planning. Can you see how easy it is to rise above that so-called competition? And it’ll still leave you with seven hours a day to spend as you please. Starting each day thinking, you’ll find that your mind will continue to work all day long. And you’ll find that at odd moments, when you least expect it, really great ideas will begin to bubble up from your subconscious. When they do, write them down as soon as you can. Just one great idea can completely revolutionize your work and, as a result, your life. Each time you write your goal at the top of the sheet of paper, don’t worry or become concerned about it. Think of it as only waiting to be reached, a problem only waiting to be solved. Face it with faith and bend all the great powers of your mind toward solving it. And believe me, solve it you will. This puts each of us in the driver’s seat. This is an excerpt from a new release on Amazon, “2 Amazing Ways to Solve Your Problems.” Soon available on iTunes, Nook, GooglePlay, and Kobo. Get your complimentary PDF and audio files for this release – currently available only at LiveSensical.com.  The post The Great Problem-Solving Tool appeared first on Living Sensical.

“The Greatest Problem Solving Tool” https://livesensical.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/20151015-TheGreatestProblemSolvingTool.mp3 “9 Steps for Solving Any Problem” https://livesensical.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/20151015-9StepsForSolvingAnyProblem.mp3 Show Notes: 2 Amazing Ways to Solve Your Problems An excerpt from the Amazon #1 bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds By Robert C. Worstell – edited from notes on the talks of Earl Nightingale PDF for a special report based on this episode is available for no-charge download Click Here Now. I – Nine Steps for Solving Any Problem For any problem, no matter how big or complex it may be, there is a solution. Use these nine steps to find it! What are the similarities in problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? Actually, they’re alike in many ways. A decision that must be made is little more than a problem awaiting a solution. We might even call it a simple problem. When we’re faced with a decision, we rarely have to choose between more than two or three alternatives, whereas, in solving a problem, we sometimes face what seems to be an endless list of possibilities. And, what about goal achievement? Isn’t a goal a point we wish to reach? The problem is to move from where we are now, to where we want to be. So, problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement are all closely related functions of creative thinking. It’s important that we keep this in mind. The first step in solving any problem is to define it. You should always be sure you understand a problem before you go to work on its solution. Next, you should write down everything you know about the problem. This information might come from your own experience, from books that contain background and statistical data, the Internet, or from friends and business associates who know something about the area in which the problem lies. Third, decide whom to see. List the names of people and organizations that are recognized authorities on the problem. This is your opportunity to go “all out” for the facts. After determining who can help you, contact them, talk with them, and pick their brains for all the information they possess that can help you solve the problem. After doing this, be sure to make a note of each thing that’s germane to the problem. Don’t risk forgetting anything that could help you find the solution. The fifth step in solving a problem creatively is called “Individual Ideation.” This is personal “brainstorming,” or thinking with the brakes of judgment off! Don’t try to decide whether an idea is good or bad -just write it down the moment it comes to you. You can pick and choose – what you’re after is a lot of ideas. Remember the four rules for brainstorming: (1) No negative thinking; (2) The wilder the ideas, the better; (3) A large number of ideas is essential; and (4) Combination and improvement of ideas is what you’re after. One idea often leads to another, better idea. Don’t worry if some of your ideas seem far-fetched or impractical. You’re looking for all the ideas you can possibly find. Don’t reject any write them all down! Then Group Brainstorm. This is your opportunity to put the minds of others to work on the problem. Handle this session the same way you did your “Individual Ideation.” No negative thinking, no criticism at this stage; the wilder the ideas the better; get as many ideas as possible; and, try for idea combination and improvement. Write down all the ideas the group comes up with. When you have all your ideas written down, rate them for effectiveness and facility. The effectiveness scale ranges from “very effective” to “probably effective” to “doubtful.” And the facility scale ranges from “easy” to “not so easy” to “difficult.” The rating of ideas will clearly indicate the likely success of any possible solution. Of course, it’s best to consider first the idea or ideas that are rated both “very effective” and “easy.” Suppose you’re a manufacturer. And suppose your sales and marketing team brainstorming comes up with some ideas to increase sales. Let’s say one of the ideas is to revamp completely one of the products that your company is offering to the public. Let’s rate this idea in terms of effectiveness. You know the present product meets a need and is acceptable to the buying public. What about an entirely changed product? Without a lot of marketing tests and then a period of actual manufacturing for sale, it would be hard to say just how effective this idea would be in increasing sales. Better rate it “doubtful” And how does this idea of completely revamping one of the products check out in the facility area -“easy,” “not so easy,” or “difficult”? It would be “difficult,” wouldn’t it? It would require new engineering, new tools, new manufacturing plans, new packaging, and new marketing methods. Suppose, however, that one of the salesperson’s ideas is to run TV advertisements for the company’s product on one of the major television networks. This would be “probably effective” and would be “not so easy,” but it could be done. Let’s say another idea is to set up a new sales incentive program, a program directed to those people who are at the front of the problem, the salespeople. If it were a well-designed and – implemented incentive program with predictable compensation for increased performance, it would stand a good chance of being “very effective.” It would be relatively “easy” to do. It should increase the company’s sales. There are many other evaluation yardsticks you might use. Two more are time and money. Try rating your ideas against these measurements. For example, in the case of a manufacturer who wants to increase its sales, certainly to change the product would take a great deal of time and money. And to advertise it on a popular network television program would cost a great deal. On the other hand, to introduce a new sales incentive program might be neither too costly nor too time consuming. Remember, when you evaluate your ideas, measure them against these four yardsticks: effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. Every idea you have may not be worth creative action, and that’s why you must skillfully evaluate each of them. But once you’ve carefully judged your ideas, take action. Enter your ideas into an “Action Plan”: decide who should do it, when it should be done, when to start, and how to do it. These are all important considerations because the execution of the solution is just as important as the solution itself. Be certain to give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. We work hardest and most efficiently when we know there is a definite time element involved. So, make a note of the date when you must put your solution to work. It’s good to remember that timing is often critical when a new idea is introduced. Carefully calculate the deadline in the light of the general situation. You might write down a second date -the one by which you intend to have the action completed and the problem solved. Remember what was said earlier about problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? They have a great deal in common. They can all be attacked in much the same way. For any problem … no matter how big or complex it may be … there is a solution. All you have to do is find it! History is filled with people who believed a problem did not have a solution and they did not find it, and people who believed there was a solution and they did find it same problem, different perspective, one successful and one not. Which type of person will you be? Remember these steps for brainstorming your ideas: 1. Define the problem. 2. Write down everything you know about the problem. 3. Decide what people and resources to bring into the solution. 4. Make a note of everything that is germane to the problem. 5. Conduct a personal brainstorming Individual Ideation. 6. Utilize Group Brainstorming and rate your ideas for effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. 7. Evaluate your ideas for the best options. 8. Create an “Action Plan.” 9. Give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. II – The Great Problem-Solving Tool Successful people are not without problems. They’re simply people who’ve learned to solve their problems. All creatures on earth are supplied at birth with everything they need for successful survival. All creatures except one are supplied with a set of instincts that will do the job for them. And because of that, most creatures don’t need much of a brain. In the Pulitzer Prize – winning playwright Archibald MacLeish’s play The Secret of Freedom, a character says, “The only thing about a man that is man is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.” That’s uncomfortably true. Take the magnificent bald eagle for example. To see one of them swooping down and pluck a live and sizable fish from the water on a single pass is astonishing. More astonishing still is the eagle’s eyesight. And because of its need to see small rodents moving in the grass from high altitudes or a fish just inches under the surface of the water, its incredible eyes take up just about all the space in its head. For the eagle, its eyes are the most important thing, and everything else works in unison with them. Its brain is tiny and rudimentary. It doesn’t think or plan or remember; it simply acts in accordance with stimuli. And it’s the same with most other living creatures. Even the beautiful porpoise, with a much larger brain, and the chimpanzee are easily tamed and taught. Only one takes 20 years to mature and has dominion over all the rest on the earth itself, and has today the power to destroy all life on earth in a couple of hours. Only one is given the godlike power to fashion its own life according to the images it holds in its remarkable mind. The human mind is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the creatures on earth. Everything that means anything to us comes to us through our minds, our love of our families, our beliefs, all of our talents, knowledge, abilities. Everything is reflected through our minds. Anything that comes to us in the future will almost certainly come to us as a result of the extent to which we use our minds. And yet, it’s the last place on earth the average person will turn to for help. You know why? You know why people don’t automatically turn their own vast mental resources on when faced with a problem? It’s because they never learned how to think. Most people will go to any length to avoid thinking when they’re faced with a problem. They will ask advice from the most illogical people, usually people who don’t know any more than they do: next-door neighbors, members of their families, and friends stuck in the same mental traps that they are. Very few of them use the muscles of their mind to solve their problems. Yet living successfully, getting the things we want from life, is a matter of solving the problems that stand between where we are now and the point we wish to reach. No one is without problems. They’re part of living. But let me show you how much time we waste in worrying about the wrong problems. Here’s a reliable estimate of the things people worry about: Things that never happen: 40%. Things over and past that can never be changed by all the worry in the world: 30%. Needless worries about our health: 12%. Petty miscellaneous worries: 10%. Real legitimate worries: 8%. In short, 92% of the average person’s worries take up valuable time, cause painful stress, even mental anguish, and are absolutely unnecessary. And of the real legitimate worries, there are two kinds. There are the problems we can solve, and there are the problems beyond our ability to personally solve. But most of our real problems usually fall into the first group, the ones we can solve, if we’ll learn how. The average working person has at his or her disposal an enormous amount of free time. In fact, you’ll see if you’ll total the hours in a year and subtract the sleeping hours: If we sleep 8 hours every night, we have about 6,000 waking hours, of which less than 2,000 are spent on the job. Now this leaves 4,000 hours a year when a person is neither working nor sleeping. These can be called discretionary hours with which that person can do pretty much as he or she pleases. So that you can see the amazing results in your own life, I want to recommend that you take just one hour a day, five days a week, and devote this hour to exercising your mind. You don’t even have to do it on weekends. Pick one hour a day on which you can fairly regularly count. The best time for me is an hour before the others are up in the morning. The mind’s clear, the house is quiet, and, if you like, with a fresh cup of coffee, this is the time to start the mind going. During this hour every day take a completely blank sheet of paper. At the top of the page write your present primary goal clearly, simply. Then, since our future depends on the way in which we handle our work, write down as many ideas as you can for improving that which you now do. Try to think of 20 possible ways in which the activity that fills your day can be improved. You won’t always get 20, but even one idea is good. Now remember two important points with regard to this. One, this is not particularly easy, and, two, most of your ideas won’t be any good. When I say it’s not easy, I mean it’s like starting any new habit. At first you’ll find your mind a little reluctant to be hauled up out of that old familiar bed. But as you think about your work and ways in which it might be improved, write down every idea that pops into your head, no matter how absurd it might seem. The most important thing that this extra hour accomplishes is that it deeply embeds your goal into your subconscious mind, starts the whole vital machine reworking the first thing every morning. And 20 ideas a day, if you can come up with that many, total 100 a week, even skipping weekends. An hour a day, five days a week, totals 260 hours a year and still leaves you 3,740 hours of free leisure time. Now this means you’ll be thinking about your goal and ways of improving your performance, increasing your service six full extra working weeks a year, 61/2 40-hour weeks devoted to thinking and planning. Can you see how easy it is to rise above that so-called competition? And it’ll still leave you with seven hours a day to spend as you please. Starting each day thinking, you’ll find that your mind will continue to work all day long. And you’ll find that at odd moments, when you least expect it, really great ideas will begin to bubble up from your subconscious. When they do, write them down as soon as you can. Just one great idea can completely revolutionize your work and, as a result, your life. Each time you write your goal at the top of the sheet of paper, don’t worry or become concerned about it. Think of it as only waiting to be reached, a problem only waiting to be solved. Face it with faith and bend all the great powers of your mind toward solving it. And believe me, solve it you will. This puts each of us in the driver’s seat. Earl Nightingale’s 8 Step Method to Solve Any Problem from Robert C. Worstell on Slideshare.net Also, please enjoy this short video on problem solving… https://livesensical.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/8WaysToSolveProblem.mp4 The post Two Amazing Ways to Solve Your Problems appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) The Flame of Hope Every person is born with the basic drive to persevere. No matter how crushed, how defeated, how demoralized, when all hope seems gone, there is, in the healthy person, a small, indistinguishable flame of hope – like a faint but persistent pilot light that stays alight, much like the fire ancient man used to carry with him as he moved from place to place. Almost everyone comes to a place in life when going on seems futile, even ridiculous – when he seems overwhelmed by a suffocating mattress of events and situations, and desires just to sit down in the middle of the road and let the world and everything in it go to blazes. So he sits down for a while. But then the vibration of the world seems to make itself felt in his bones. Pretty soon, he raises his head and begins to look around. After a while, he takes a couple of deep breaths, gets slowly, painfully to his feet, wobbles there for a minute or two, and then he starts out again. Often as not, around the next bend in the road, he’ll find the reason he kept going. And he’ll shudder at the thought of how close he came to giving up. His hope lies in movement and time. If he does not get up and start moving again, he’s done for. But he has this natural drive to keep moving along the road. As long as he keeps heading for what he’s looking for, what seemed like the end of the world for him will be nothing more than a bad dream, and a part of the preparation he needed to qualify for the achievement his perseverance has brought. Movement, time, and the law of averages; I remember reading about the manager of a major-league ball club who kept a rookie on the team and in the lineup because even though he wasn’t hitting anywhere near what was expected of him, when he struck out, he struck out swinging. He wasn’t just standing there watching strikes go by. And, as the manager expected, he soon started getting wood on the ball and bringing his average up to where it belonged. Discouragement seems to be part of life, but the reason people prevail is because of this built-in drive to keep going. Please download this transcript with our compliments: The Flame of Hope from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post The Flame of Hope appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) The Difference Between the ‘Haves’ & the ‘Have Nots’ Meet two kinds of people – the Haves and Have Nots – and the one decision that separates them. I once had occasion to visit Charleston, South Carolina. I had never been there before, so I hired a taxi to drive me around the historic old town. I particularly wanted to see the Battery, where the famous shot was fired on Fort Sumpter. Along this beautiful drive, some of Charleston’s oldest and finest homes look out over the bay. I commented to my cab driver on what lovely homes they were, and he said, Yeah, some of those homes have 40 rooms. Then he thought for a moment and said, And every one of them is owned by a crook. The truth was those homes were built by the men and women who made the largest contribution to the city of Charleston. But that is how the Have Nots of the world justify themselves and their lot in life. They think people who earn the big money that allows them to enjoy luxurious lifestyles are crooks, lucky, endowed with more brains or talents, privy to occult secrets, or born into wealth. Yet these are only excuses. People who fail to make the grade financially are seldom honest enough to admit that they really didn’t try and keep trying. So in order to justify their failure or mediocre lives, they dream up and pass along these excuses. I’ve discovered that the only difference between the people who earn big incomes and those who earn small incomes is that those earning big incomes decided to earn more. Without the decision to earn more, you can’t possibly think of ways to increase your income. This decision is the simple, yet elusive, difference between the Haves and the Have Nots. The moment you decide to go after wealth, success, or anything you desire in life, that is when you will start thinking about ways to accomplish it. What’s more, you cannot simply make the decision once and then relax. You must make the commitment again and again, and continually overcome your fears to turn back toward safety. The Have Nots do not want to do more than they have to – and that is why they continue to have not. Growth can feel uncomfortable, as it pushes us to step out of our comfort zone – to do more than what’s required of us. This is the trap of the Have Nots, and it is why so few people commit to the decision to become Haves. I remember reading that the employees at Macy’s department store in New York had grumbled because the company had been hiring executives and managers from outside the company. So Macy’s management put in a free management training program for its employees so that it could promote from within the organization. However, only about 3 percent took advantage of the training, even though it was free. All they had to do was stay after work for a few hours. Similarly, only about 3 percent of all American armed force veterans have taken advantage of their GI Bill educational allowances. That 3 percent figure keeps popping up in cases like that. It seems that only about 3 percent of people are seriously interested in investing a part of their time and energy in programs to help them get ahead in the world. The rest yell and flail around for pay raises and more fringe benefits. But when it’s suggested that they might do something to improve themselves, make themselves more valuable, they don’t want to do it. Success is available to everyone who commits to being successful. I hope you’ll decide to become a Have person. If you’ve read this far, you have probably already made that essential decision. Here are the next steps: 1. Start getting up a little earlier than you’re accustomed to. This gives you extra time that 95 percent of the people in this world are not using at all. One hour earlier a day gives you six extra 40- hour weeks a year. During this extra hour, take a refreshing shower, dress, get yourself a fresh, hot cup of coffee or tea, and then sit down to a clean sheet of paper. 2. Decide what you want in life. More wealth? Success? Happiness? More time with your family? At the top of the paper write down your goals. For example, let’s say you write down the amount of money per year that you intend to earn soon. That’s your financial goal. You don’t have to tell anyone. It’s nobody’s business but yours. 3. Start to think. Think about your goal and what it will mean to you and your family. See how many idea you can come up with to help you reach that goal, ideas to improve what you now do for a living. Ways of increasing your contribution to match your income goal. 4. Try for five ideas every morning. Write them down and save those sheets of paper in a special ideas file. Focus on ideas within your line of work or expertise or area that you are most interested in. To think well and profitably, you must discipline your thinking. Keep your thoughts on course, controlled, and focused. Many or perhaps most of your ideas will prove fruitless. But some of them will be very good. A few will be excellent. And every once in a while you’ll come up with something truly outstanding. 5. Develop a sense of expectancy. That is, try to hold the feeling that the goal you’re shooting for is a sure thing and that it’s only a matter of time before it’s realized. Henry Ford didn’t start making cars until he was 45. A friend of mine started a new company at 65. He’s still going strong, and his new company has sales of better than $300 million a year. It’s never too late. 6. Change your attitude. Attitude has been called the most important word in the language. William James put it this way: The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. To change your attitude, begin to act like the person you most want to become. If you were already in possession of the goal you’re shooting for, how would you conduct yourself in all of your affairs? How would you dress? How would you talk? Well, do it now, and tomorrow, and the next day. Begin now to act the part of the person you most want to become. And you will end up becoming that person. The German philosopher Goethe gave us the secret when he said, Before you can do something, you must first be something. Practice your new attitude every day – every waking hour. Practice focused thinking a few minutes every morning and you’ll find yourself thinking all day long. The late renowned psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow found that people who live close to their true capacity have a pronounced sense of well-being and considerable energy. They see themselves as leading purposeful and creative lives. Isn’t that what we all want to do? I believe it is. And it all begins the moment you decide to become a Have person and leave the Have Nots to their complaints and excuses. Five ideas a day is 25 a week if you don’t think on weekends. That’s more than 1,000 ideas a year. One idea can get you to that income you’re shooting for. The law of averages swings so far in your favor you just can’t miss. There are two kinds of people: the Haves and the Have Nots. The Have Nots think the only people who earn large incomes resulting in successful, luxury lifestyles are crooks, lucky, endowed with more brains or talents, privy to occult secrets, or born into wealth. These are only alibis, a way for the Have Nots to justify their failure or mediocre lives. Learn the secrets to a successful life among the Haves and leave the Have Nots to their complaints and their alibis. Please download this transcript with our compliments: The Difference Between the ‘Haves’ & the ‘Have Nots’ from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post The Difference Between the ‘Haves’ & the ‘Have Nots’ appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Falling Isn’t Failing … Unless You Fail to Get Up For those who have tried repeatedly to break a habit of some kind, only to repeatedly fail, Mary Pickford said, Falling is not failing, unless you fail to get up. Most people who finally win the battle over a habit they have wanted to change have done so only after repeated failures. And it’s the same with most things. The breaking of a longtime habit does seem like the end of the road at the time – the complete cessation of enjoyment. Suddenly dropping the habit so fills our minds with the desire for the old habitual way that, for a while, it seems there will no longer be any peace, any sort of enjoyment. But that’s not true. New habits form in a surprisingly short time, and a whole new world opens up to us. So, if you’ve been trying to start in a new direction, you might do well to remember the advice of Mary Pickford: breaking an old habit isn’t the end of the road; it’s just a bend in the road. And falling isn’t failing, unless you don’t get up. Please download this transcript with our compliments: Falling Isn’t Failing Unless You Fail to Get Up from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post Falling Isn’t Failing … Unless You Fail to Get Up appeared first on Living Sensical.

A Winning Attitude (An excerpt from the besting series How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Our attitude will determine whether we tend to be lucky or not. People who expect to be lucky, who expect good things to happen to them more often than bad, actually go through life from one piece of good fortune to another. I know there are cynics who don’t believe all of this, but it’s true all the same and it’s been proved hundreds of thousands of times. It doesn’t mean you can pick the winner at the track or bet on the right team. There are too many variables in such things. But we get from life what we tend to expect from it. We do the things we make up our minds to do, live in the towns or areas we want to live in, and work at the jobs of our choice – once we learn the magic of putting our minds and attitudes to work in our lives. The person with the attitude that he can’t do something, will seldom do it. The person who believes he can does – perhaps not the first time, but his attitude gives him the confidence to stay with it until it’s been accomplished. When I was starting out to build my business, I used to call on advertising agencies in Chicago. I met a lot of receptionists and telephone operators and give my greeting and ask how they felt and I recall hearing on several occasions, in fact, most of the time the response, “I’m tired.” I’d say, well, it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning. How can you be tired already? No sleep last night? “No,” The receptionist would say, “I got plenty of sleep. I’m just tired in the mornings.” These people had tired attitudes. They expected to be tired, but if they were leaving on vacation that morning or a special weekend were coming up, chances are they’d get up feeling great. Nearly every time I started something of some size and risk. I’ve had people tell me not to try, you’ll just lose your shit. They’d say they had losing attitudes. I never gave it a thought. And you’ll find that typical of people who get things done. They may proceed with great caution and care and go to great lengths to avoid making any unnecessary mistakes, but they fully intend to win. And when they do. With an attitude of failure, we’re equipped before we start. Successful people come in all ages, shapes, sizes, and colors, but they all have one thing in common, a winning attitude. Expand your Earl Nightingale Library  – visit https://livesensical.com/go/cyl-books/ and get your copies now. The post A Winning Attitude – Earl Nightingale – Change Your Life appeared first on Living Sensical.

How s the World Treating You? (An excerpt from the besting series How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) We live in a world of words. We have a word for everything, and some of these names and labels mean a great deal to us. Words such as love, happiness, success, achievement, joy, and ability describe conditions all of us want. But there is one word which controls them all. That is, there is one word which describes a condition which will bring us all of these things, or keep us from getting anyone of them. If your youngster asked what this word is, could you tell him? If, from all of the many thousands of words in the language, you were asked to select the one which would in uence your life more than any other, could you pick the right word? I call it the magic word, and it is ATTITUDE! Once we are grown and on our own, this word actually controls our environment, our entire world. If you are curious about what kind of an attitude you have, a simple test will tell you what it has been up to this point in your life. Just answer this question with a yes or no : Do you feel the world is treating you well? If your attitude toward the world is good, you will obtain good results. If your attitude is excellent, excellent will be your results. If your attitude is negative, little that is positive awaits you. And if your attitude is just so-so, you will live in a world that is not particularly bad, nor particularly good, just so-so. Our environment, which is another way of saying how the world treats us, is nothing more than a re ection, a mirror actually, of our own attitudes. One of the most pitiful aspects of society is the really large percentage of people who lead dismal, narrow, darkened lives, crying out against what appears to be a cruel world which they believe has singled them out for a lifetime of trouble, misery, and bad luck. Anyone who nds himself in such a prison of discontent should face the fact that he has very probably built his prison with his own hands. And unless such a person changes, his cell will continue to grow smaller and darker. The world doesn t care whether we change or not. Adopting a good, healthy attitude toward life doesn t affect life and the people with whom we come in contact nearly as much as it affects us. As it says in the Bible: As ye sow, so shall ye reap. It would be impossible even to estimate the number of jobs which have been lost, the number of promotions missed, the number of sales not made, the number of marriages ruined by poor attitudes. But you can number in the millions the jobs which are held but hated, the marriages which are tolerated but unhappy; all because of people who are waiting for others, or the world, to change toward them, instead of being big enough and wise enough to realize that we only get back what we put out. In thirty days you can change your world and your environment by making this simple test. For thirty days treat every person you meet, without a single exception, as the most important per- son on earth. You will nd that they will begin treating you the same way. You see, every person, as far as he is concerned, is the most important person on earth. How does the world look at you? Exactly as you look at the world. Expand your Earl Nightingale Library  – visit https://livesensical.com/go/cyl-books/ and get your copies now. The post How the World Is Treating You – Nightingale – Change Your Life appeared first on Living Sensical.

We Get What We Expect (An excerpt from the besting series How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) I ran across a quotation by Norman Cousins I thought you’d find interesting. He said, “The prime fallacy of pessimism is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist.” I’m sure a pessimist would counter with the remark that if that’s true, no one knows enough to be an optimist, but this would not change the truth of the former thought. The prime fallacy of pessimism is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist and regardless of whether this is also true of the optimist, we do know that over the long haul we tend to get what we expect from life. Because we tend to get what we really expect from life. It makes a lot of sense to choose to be optimistic rather than pessimistic. How many times have you heard someone say, or perhaps have said yourself with my kind of luck, such and such is bound to happen – indicating that your like is generally bad and that you expect the worst. Even when people find themselves enjoying a sudden stroke of good fortune, they’ll often say, well, it’s too good to last again indicating that they expect their fortunes in life. To be generally bad. Now this must be a hangover from times going back to the dark ages, and perhaps before, when life was a thousand times more precarious than it is today. As recently as a hundred years ago, if you cut your toe and blood poisoning as it was called set in, you could be a goner. The mortality rate for children was astronomical and almost as high for adults. If a person reached his 30th birthday, it called for a real celebration. In fact, birthday celebrations for any age took on importance simply because getting from one to another was no little achievement. Now couple this with the almost total ignorance of the times, widespread illiteracy and lives governed by superstition, and you can understand why people tended to be slightly on the pessimistic side, but that’s in the past. And even then it was the optimists who were responsible for what little forward movement occurred. Pessimists aren’t builders. They’re more often stumbling blocks. Instead of looking for the reason something can be done or tried, they tend to look for reasons why it won’t work. A pessimist is a real reactionary. He tends to go backward. He resists anything new and untried. He’s the person who says the bottle is half empty instead of half full, or that the weather is partly cloudy instead of partly sunny. He dwells on his past failures and forgets his successes. He’ll come up with a hundred reasons for not doing something instead of a single good reason for doing it. He likes to say no to people and as a result says no to life. And getting back to that quote of Norman Cousins. Perhaps the biggest fault of the pessimist is that he thinks he knows more than he does. He doesn’t know about the power of enthusiasm and a good attitude. He won’t move forward until all the lights ahead turn green and thus never moves because all the lights are never green at any one time. A person has to learn to be a pessimist. Children are the most wonderful optimists and think anything at all is possible. It must be in the home that so much of this natural enthusiasm dies or is killed. As George Santayana said, “We must welcome the future remembering that soon. It will be the past – and we must respect the past. Remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.” Expand your Earl Nightingale Library  – visit https://livesensical.com/go/cyl-books/ and get your copies now. The post We Get What We Expect – Nightingale – Change Your Life appeared first on Living Sensical.

Advice for the Fearful (An excerpt from the besting series How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Dr. Joyce Brothers has some good advice for the fearful. She points out that everyone is familiar with fear. Normal fear protects us and provides a warning signal indicating the presence of danger. A totally fearless person is probably not too intelligent and can look forward to a very short life. But when fear is inappropriate, it can stand in the way of progress and success. It can destroy love, create failure on the job and interfere with our ability to relate well to others. Innovation and creativity involve risk, Dr. Brothers goes on to say. The person who s afraid to take chances, who s afraid of failure, is standing in the way of his progress. In fact, an emotionally healthy person needs challenge in life. Studies show that people who are cautious in the extreme, who are afraid to take risks even when the odds are in their favor, tend to be afraid of life itself which, of course, is also a gamble. Such persons are not likely to succeed in business or anything else. Dr. Brothers suggests that such people practice failure. How liberating it would be for the average person to be able to walk into a room, trip over a wastebasket, have all the people in the office laugh and then be able to laugh with them. Dr. Brothers suggests that fearful people deliberately do such things to discover that an occasional failure is no disgrace but, rather, a perfectly normal part of living. I remember when I was just starting out in radio, I managed to get the part of Sky King, the lead in the famous children s radio program of that name. And I would often be asked to make public appearances for schoolchildren. One day, I flew up to Michigan to greet and sign autographs for several hundred children allowed out of school for the event. I flew there in a small two-seater airplane. I was dressed in my cowboy costume from my hat to my cowboy boots, gun belt the works. As I was trying to climb out of the airplane cockpit in my unaccustomed costume, while the hundreds of children waited nearby, I caught my heel on the cockpit coaming and fell full-length on the wing. Then I did a slow roll off the trailing edge of the wing to the ground. My guns fell out, my hat rolled away and a deathlike silence fell on the children. There was their hero, sprawled on the grass! He couldn t even get out of an airplane! I picked up my guns, put my hat back on and, with a sheepish grin from ear to ear, walked to the waiting children. We all had a good laugh about it, and I signed the autographs, and all went surprisingly well. As I flew back to Chicago, I thought about how often children fall and that they could easily empathize with me. Don t lose your sense of humor, and remember that even though they may laugh, people are kinder and more forgiving than we generally give them credit for being. Risks and pratfalls are a part of life; so is an occasional failure in other ways. And so is success lots of it. Expand your Earl Nightingale Library  – visit https://livesensical.com/go/cyl-books/ and get your copies now. The post Advice For the Fearful – Earl Nightingale – Change Your Life appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) For any problem, no matter how big or complex it may be, there is a solution. Use these nine steps to find it! What are the similarities in problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? Actually, they’re alike in many ways. A decision that must be made is little more than a problem awaiting a solution. We might even call it a simple problem. When we’re faced with a decision, we rarely have to choose between more than two or three alternatives, whereas, in solving a problem, we sometimes face what seems to be an endless list of possibilities. And, what about goal achievement? Isn’t a goal a point we wish to reach? The problem is to move from where we are now, to where we want to be. So, problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement are all closely related functions of creative thinking. It’s important that we keep this in mind. The first step in solving any problem is to define it. You should always be sure you understand a problem before you go to work on its solution. Next, you should write down everything you know about the problem. This information might come from your own experience, from books that contain background and statistical data, the Internet, or from friends and business associates who know something about the area in which the problem lies. Third, decide whom to see. List the names of people and organizations that are recognized authorities on the problem. This is your opportunity to go “all out” for the facts. After determining who can help you, contact them, talk with them, and pick their brains for all the information they possess that can help you solve the problem. After doing this, be sure to make a note of each thing that’s germane to the problem. Don’t risk forgetting anything that could help you find the solution. The fifth step in solving a problem creatively is called “Individual Ideation.” This is personal “brainstorming,” or thinking with the brakes of judgment off! Don’t try to decide whether an idea is good or bad – just write it down the moment it comes to you. You can pick and choose – what you’re after is a lot of ideas. Remember the four rules for brainstorming: (1) No negative thinking; (2) The wilder the ideas, the better; (3) A large number of ideas is essential; and (4) Combination and improvement of ideas is what you’re after. One idea often leads to another, better idea. Don’t worry if some of your ideas seem far-fetched or impractical. You’re looking for all the ideas you can possibly find. Don’t reject any – write them all down! Then Group Brainstorm. This is your opportunity to put the minds of others to work on the problem. Handle this session the same way you did your “Individual Ideation.” No negative thinking, no criticism at this stage; the wilder the ideas the better; get as many ideas as possible; and, try for idea combination and improvement. Write down all the ideas the group comes up with. When you have all your ideas written down, rate them for effectiveness and facility. The effectiveness scale ranges from “very effective” to “probably effective” to “doubtful.” And the facility scale ranges from “easy” to “not so easy” to “difficult.” The rating of ideas will clearly indicate the likely success of any possible solution. Of course, it’s best to consider first the idea or ideas that are rated both “very effective” and “easy.” Suppose you’re a manufacturer. And suppose your sales and marketing team brainstorming comes up with some ideas to increase sales. Let’s say one of the ideas is to revamp completely one of the products that your company is offering to the public. Let’s rate this idea in terms of effectiveness. You know the present product meets a need and is acceptable to the buying public. What about an entirely changed product? Without a lot of marketing tests and then a period of actual manufacturing for sale, it would be hard to say just how effective this idea would be in increasing sales. Better rate it “doubtful.” And how does this idea of completely revamping one of the products check out in the facility area – “easy,” “not so easy,” or “difficult”? It would be “difficult,” wouldn’t it? It would require new engineering, new tools, new manufacturing plans, new packaging, and new marketing methods. Suppose, however, that one of the salesperson’s ideas is to run TV advertisements for the company’s product on one of the major television networks. This would be “probably effective” and would be “not so easy,” but it could be done. Let’s say another idea is to set up a new sales incentive program, a program directed to those people who are at the front of the problem, the salespeople. If it were a well-designed and – implemented incentive program with predictable compensation for increased performance, it would stand a good chance of being “very effective.” It would be relatively “easy” to do. It should increase the company’s sales. There are many other evaluation yardsticks you might use. Two more are time and money. Try rating your ideas against these measurements. For example, in the case of a manufacturer who wants to increase its sales, certainly to change the product would take a great deal of time and money. And to advertise it on a popular network television program would cost a great deal. On the other hand, to introduce a new sales incentive program might be neither too costly nor too time consuming. Remember, when you evaluate your ideas, measure them against these four yardsticks: effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. Every idea you have may not be worth creative action, and that’s why you must skillfully evaluate each of them. But once you’ve carefully judged your ideas, take action. Enter your ideas into an “Action Plan”: decide who should do it, when it should be done, when to start, and how to do it. These are all important considerations because the execution of the solution is just as important as the solution itself. Be certain to give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. We work hardest and most efficiently when we know there is a definite time element involved. So, make a note of the date when you must put your solution to work. It’s good to remember that timing is often critical when a new idea is introduced. Carefully calculate the deadline in the light of the general situation. You might write down a second date – the one by which you intend to have the action completed and the problem solved. Remember what was said earlier about problem solving, decision making, and goal achievement? They have a great deal in common. They can all be attacked in much the same way. “For any problem … no matter how big or complex it may be … there is a solution.” For any problem … no matter how big or complex it may be … there is a solution. All you have to do is find it! History is filled with people who believed a problem did not have a solution and they did not find it, and people who believed there was a solution and they did find it – same problem, different perspective, one successful and one not. Which type of person will you be? Remember these steps for brainstorming your ideas: 1. Define the problem. 2. Write down everything you know about the problem. 3. Decide what people and resources to bring into the solution. 4. Make a note of everything that is germane to the problem. 5. Conduct a personal brainstorming Individual Ideation. 6. Utilize Group Brainstorming and rate your ideas for effectiveness, facility, time, and cost. 7. Evaluate your ideas for the best options. 8. Create an “Action Plan.” 9. Give yourself a deadline for putting your plan into action. Please download this transcript with our compliments: 9 Steps for Solving Any Problem from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post 9 Steps for Any Problem Solving appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Don’t Follow the Follower 95 percent of people never succeed because they’re following the wrong group. Processionary caterpillars travel in long, undulating lines, one creature behind the other. Jean Hanri Fabre, the French entomologist, once lead a group of these caterpillars onto the rim of a large flowerpot so that the leader of the procession found himself nose to tail with the last caterpillar in the procession, forming a circle without end or beginning. Through sheer force of habit and, of course, instinct, the ring of caterpillars circled the flowerpot for seven days and seven nights, until they died from exhaustion and starvation. An ample supply of food was close at hand and plainly visible, but it was outside the range of the circle, so the caterpillars continued along the beaten path. People often behave in a similar way. Habit patterns and ways of thinking become deeply established, and it seems easier and more comforting to follow them than to cope with change, even when that change may represent freedom, achievement, and success. If someone shouts, Fire! it is automatic to blindly follow the crowd, and many thousands have needlessly died because of it. How many stop to ask themselves: Is this really the best way out of here? So many people miss the boat because it’s easier and more comforting to follow – to follow without questioning the qualifications of the people just ahead – than to do some independent thinking and checking. A hard thing for most people to fully understand is that people in such numbers can be so wrong, like the caterpillars going around and around the edge of the flowerpot, with life and food just a short distance away. If most people are living that way, it must be right, they think. But a little checking will reveal that throughout all recorded history the majority of mankind has an unbroken record of being wrong about most things, especially important things. For a time we thought the earth was flat and later we thought the sun, stars, and planets traveled around the Earth. Both ideas are now considered ridiculous, but at the time they were believed and defended by the vast majority of followers. In the hindsight of history we must have looked like those caterpillars blindly following the follower out of habit rather than stepping out of line to look for the truth. It’s difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything – a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood. But for some reason most people wait passively for success to come to them – like the caterpillars going around in circles, waiting for sustenance, following nose to tail – living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. It’s a good idea to step out of the line every once in a while and look around to see if the line is going where we want it to go. If it is not, it might be time for a new leader and a new direction. Please download this transcript with our compliments: Don’t Follow the Follower from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post Don’t Follow the Follower appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Acres of Diamonds Every kind of work has enormous opportunity lurking within it. The opportunities are there now, clamoring to be noticed. But they cannot speak or print signs for us to read. Our part of the bargain is to look at our work with intelligent objectivity . If we have the wisdom and patience to intelligently, effectively explore the work in which we’re now engaged, to explore ourselves, we would most likely find the riches we seek. The story – a true one – is told of an African farmer who heard tales about other farmers who had made millions by discovering diamond mines. These tales so excited the farmer that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and go prospecting for diamonds himself. He sold the farm and spent the rest of his life wandering the African continent searching unsuccessfully for the gleaming gems that brought such high prices on the markets of the world. Finally, worn out and in a fit of despondency, he threw himself into a river and drowned. Meanwhile, the man who had bought his farm happened to be crossing the small stream on the property one day, when suddenly there was a bright flash of blue and red light from the stream bottom. He bent down and picked up a stone. It was a good-sized stone, and admiring it, he brought it home and put it on his fireplace mantel as an interesting curiosity. Several weeks later a visitor picked up the stone, looked closely at it, hefted it in his hand, and nearly fainted. He asked the farmer if he knew what he’d found. When the farmer said, no, that he thought it was a piece of crystal, the visitor told him he had found one of the largest diamonds ever discovered. The farmer had trouble believing that. He told the man that his creek was full of such stones, not all as large as the one on the mantel, but sprinkled generously throughout the creek bottom. The farm the first farmer had sold, so that he might find a diamond mine, turned out to be one of the most productive diamond mines on the entire African continent. The first farmer had owned, free and clear acres of diamonds. But he had sold them for practically nothing, in order to look for them elsewhere. The moral is clear: If the first farmer had only taken the time to study and prepare himself to learn what diamonds looked like in their rough state, and to thoroughly explore the property he had before looking elsewhere, all of his wildest dreams would have come true. The thing about this story that has so profoundly affected millions of people is the idea that each of us is, at this very moment, standing in the middle of our own acres of diamonds. If we had only had the wisdom and patience to intelligently and effectively explore the work in which we’re now engaged, to explore ourselves, we would most likely find the riches we seek, whether they be financial or intangible or both. Before you go running off to what you think are greener pastures, make sure that your own is not just as green or perhaps even greener. It has been said that if the other guy’s pasture appears to be greener than ours, it’s quite possible that it’s getting better care. Besides, while you’re looking at other pastures, other people are looking at yours. A man I knew in Arizona began with a small gas station. One day, while one of his young attendants filled a man’s gas tank, he watched the customer while he stood about waiting for the job to be finished. It dawned upon him that the man had money in his pockets and there were things he needed or wanted that he would pay for if they were conveniently displayed where he could see them. So he began adding things. Fishing tackle, then fishing licenses, hunting and camping equipment, rifles, shot guns, ammunition, hunting licenses. He found an excellent line of aluminum fishing boats and trailers. He began buying up the contiguous property around him. Then he added an auto parts department. He always sold cold soft drinks and candy, but now he added an excellent line of chocolates in a refrigerated case. Before long, he sold more chocolates than anyone else in the state. He carried thousands of things his customers could buy while waiting for their cars to be serviced. All the products he sold also guaranteed that most of the gas customers in town would come to his station. He sold more gas. He began cashing checks on Friday, and his sales grew. It all started with a man with a human brain watching a customer standing around with money in his pockets and nothing to spend it on. Others would have lived and died with the small service station, and they do. My friend saw the diamonds. Many service station operators, upon seeing a wealthy customer drive in, might say to themselves, I ought to be in his business. Not so. There’s just as much opportunity in one business as another, if we’ll only stop playing copycat and begin to think creatively, in new directions. It’s there, believe me. And it’s your job to find it. Take the time to stand off and look at your work as a stranger might and ask, Why does he do it that way? Has he noticed how what he’s doing might be capitalized upon or multiplied? If you’re happy with things as they are, then by all means, keep them that way. But there’s great fun in finding diamonds hiding in ourselves and in our work. We never get bored or blasé or find ourselves in a rut. A rut, remember, is really nothing more than a grave with the ends kicked out. Some of the most interesting businesses in the world grew out of what was originally a very small idea in a very small area. If something is needed in one town, then the chances are it’s also needed in all towns and cities all over the country. You might also ask yourself, How good am I at what I’m presently doing? Do you know all there is to know about your work? Would you call yourself a first-class professional at your work? How would your work stand up against the work of others in your line? The first thing we need to do to become a diamond miner is to break away from the crowd and quit assuming that because people in the millions are living that way, it must be the best way. It is not the best way. It’s the average way. The people going the best way are way out in front. They’re so far ahead of the crowd you can’t even see their dust anymore. These are the people who live and work on the leading edge, the cutting edge, and they mark the way for all the rest. It takes imagination, curious imagination, to know that diamonds don’t look like cut and polished gemstones in their rough state, nor does a pile of iron ore look like stainless steel. To prospect your own acres of diamonds, develop a faculty we might call intelligent objectivity. The faculty to stand off and look at your work as a person from Mars might look at it. Within the framework of what industry or profession does your job fall? Isn’t it time for a refreshing change of some kind? How can the customer be given more value? Each morning ask yourself, How can I increase my service today? There are rare and very marketable diamonds lurking all around me. Have I been looking for them? Have I examined every facet of my work and of the industry or profession in which it has its life? There are better ways to do what you are presently doing. What are they? How will your work be performed 20 years from now? Everything in the world is in a state of evolution and improvement. How could you do today what would eventually be done anyway? Sure there’s risk involved; there’s no growth of any kind without risk. We start running risks when we get out of bed in the morning. Risks are good for us. They bring out the best that’s in us. They brighten the eye and get the mind cooking. They quicken the step and put a new shining look on our days. Human beings should never be settled. It’s okay for chickens and cows and cats, but it’s wrong for human beings. People start to die when they become settled. We need to keep things stirred up. Back in 1931, Lloyd C. Douglas, the world-famous novelist who wrote The Robe, Magnificent Obsession, and other best-selling books, wrote a magazine article titled Escape. In that article Douglas asked, Who of us has not at some time toyed briefly with the temptation to run away? If all the people who have given that idea the temporary hospitality of their imagination were to have acted upon it, few would be living at their present addresses. And of the small minority who did carry the impulse into effect, it’s doubtful if many ever disengaged themselves as completely as they had hoped from the problems that hurled them forth. More often than otherwise, it may be surmised, they packed up their troubles in their old kit bags and took them along. The point of the article was simply, don’t try to run away from your troubles. Overcome them. Prevail right where you are. What we’re really after is not escape from our complexities and frustrations, but a triumph over them. And one of the best ways to accomplish that is to get on course and stay there. Restate and reaffirm your goal, the thing you want most to do, the place in life you want most to reach. See it clearly in your mind’s eye just as you can envision the airport in Los Angeles when you board your plane in New York. Like a great ship in a storm, just keep your heading and your engines running. The storm will pass, although sometimes it seems that it never will. One bright morning you’ll find yourself passing the harbor light. Then you can give a big sigh of relief and rest a while, and almost before you know it, you’ll find your eyes turning seaward again. You’ll think of a new harbor you’d like to visit, a new voyage upon which to embark. And once again, you’ll set out. That’s just the way this funny-looking, two-legged, curious, imaginative, tinkering, fiddling dreamer called a human being operates. He escapes from problems not by running away from them, but by overcoming them. And no sooner does he overcome one set of problems, but he starts looking around for new and more difficult pickles to get into and out of. If you feel like running away from it all once in a while, you’re perfectly normal. If you stay and get rid of your problems by working your way through them, you’re a success. Start taking an hour a day with a legal pad and dissect your work. Take it apart and look at its constituent parts. There’s opportunity there. That’s your acre of diamonds. DIAMOND MINING To prospect your own acres of diamonds and unearth the opportunities that exist in your life right now, regularly challenge yourself with some key questions: How good am I at what I’m presently doing? Can I call myself a first-class professional at my work? How would my work stand up against the work of others in my field? Do I know all I can about my industry or profession? How can the customer be given a better break? How can I increase my service? There are rare and very marketable diamonds lurking all around me. Have I been looking for them? Have I examined every facet of my work and of the industry or profession in which it has its life? There are better ways to do what I’m presently doing. What are they? How will my work be performed 20 years from now? Everything in the world is in a state of evolution and improvement. How can I do now what will eventually be done anyway? Please download this transcript with our compliments: Acres of Diamonds from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post Acres of Diamonds appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) It’s Not the Destination In the great Greek poem by Constantine Cavafy titled Ithaka, we are reminded that it is the voyage and the adventures on the way that count, not the arrival itself. This seems to be a most difficult truth to understand. This is not to say that a person’s goal in life is unimportant. On the contrary, it’s vital. For without a goal, a distant destination, we would not be on the trip at all. Instead we’d run around in circles, endlessly following the shoreline around our tiny island. Every person needs a great and distant goal toward which to strive. But in traveling toward it, he should try to keep in mind that the fabled land he seeks has shores much like the one he left behind and that its purpose is not so much a resting place but, rather, the reason for the trip. Where a person goes is not nearly as important as how he gets there. That a house is built is not all that important. It is the manner in which it is built that makes it great, average, or poor. That we live is not nearly as important as the manner in which we live. Misunderstanding this often keeps people in a state of unhappiness and anxiety. They forget to enjoy the trip. They forget what they’re really looking for, or what they should be looking for: the discovery of themselves. This is the island toward which everyone should journey. It’s a difficult journey, beset, like the travels of Ulysses, with many dangers and hardships. But it gives real meaning to life, and there are many rich rewards to be found along the way – all kinds of serendipitous benefits. It means asking the questions that are hard to answer: Where am I going? Why am I going there? What do I really want, and why do I want it? Am I gradually realizing my potential? Am I discovering my best talents and abilities and using them to their fullest? Am I living fully extended in my one chance at life on earth? Am I really living? Who am I? These are the questions everyone must ask himself and answer. As Emerson said, Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. Whatever you’re looking for must first be found within you, whether it be peace, happiness, riches, or great accomplishments. Everything we do outwardly is only an expression of what we are inwardly. To ask for anything else is as absurd as looking for apples on an oak tree. So the person who knows what he wants, knows what he must become, and he then fixes his attention on the preparation and development of himself. As he grows toward the ideal he holds in his mind, he finds interest, zest, and joy on the journey. He looks forward to tomorrow, but he also enjoys today, for it is the tomorrow he looked forward to yesterday. He knows that if he cannot find meaning and value in his present, he will very likely be missing it in his future. Today is the future of five years ago. Are you enjoying it as much as you thought you would? Have you progressed to the point you wanted then to reach? Please download this transcript with our compliments: It’s Not The Destination from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/     The post It’s Not the Destination appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Fake It Till You Make It When I was an announcer/writer at radio station KTAR in Phoenix, Arizona, my goal was to become a network announcer in Chicago or New York, the national headquarters of radio at that time. I listened to the network announcers and practiced reading commercials as they did so that the copy sounded spontaneous and ad-libbed. I studied the delivery of every first-class network announcer in the country, and soon I could sound very much like them. Every commercial I read on the air at KTAR, whether for the local mortuary or sporting goods store, I read as though it were a national commercial for the most world-renowned company. I gave so much pizazz to the local commercials my announcer friends soon dubbed me Network and kidded me – found my efforts ludicrous. They were helping me on my way. Why do you knock yourself out on those ridiculous commercials? they’d ask. And I would smile and go about my business. I would listen every day to those men and women who were at the very top of my field, and no matter how mundane the copy or humble a place of business, when I stepped up to the microphone, I had a picture of the entire country listening to every word I spoke. I gave it my very best – always. And after 2 ½ years of KTAR in Phoenix, I felt I was ready for the big time. I told my friends I’d soon quit and head for Chicago. My announcement was met with unbelieving stares and the most vociferous arguments. There are 450 union card-carrying announcers walking the streets of Chicago trying to get work in the big stations there, I was told. But my mind was made up, and I bought a one-way ticket to Chicago. In Chicago I took a room at the old Chicagoan Hotel in the Loop, bought a copy of the Chicago Tribune, and turned on my portable radio. There were two target radio stations. They were the two biggest and the best at the time, WBBM CBS in the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue, and WMAQ NBC in the Merchandise Mart. I tackled WBBM first. I’ll never forget that first day in those beautiful, posh surroundings. The marble floors, the uniformed elevator starters, those fabulous brass and glistening hardwood elevators. Al Morey was program director at the time. He was most cordial and immediately led me to a large nearby studio for an audition. He gave me a fist full of copy that included some tricky commercials and part of a newscast. The studio was as impressive as the rest of the place, very large for one thing, with a concert grand piano and sound effects paraphernalia. I walked to the standing microphone and looked into the darkened engineer’s room beyond the slanting glass. There was an old-time engineer, and Al Morey nodded his head and threw me a hand cue, and I began. After my interview he told me he’d let me know, and the next day I repeated the process at WMAQ. Then I waited. Finally, Al Morey called. I not only had the job, I was under contract for more money than I had dreamed of earning. My 2 ½ years of doing network commercials for a local radio station had paid off, and I was now a CBS network announcer on a station whose coverage blanketed most of the Midwestern United States, to say nothing of the country’s second largest metropolitan market. Indeed, I had arrived. I was giddy with a sudden inflation of my self-esteem. I was a passable writer, and I could hold my own with any announcer in the country. I was off and running. My preparation had paid off. Where were all those 450 unemployed union card-carrying announcers? Please download this transcript with our compliments: Fake It Till You Make It from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/ The post Fake It Till You Make It appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) Success: A Worthy Destination It’s been said that Americans can have anything they want. The trouble is, most don’t know what they want, and so they drift through life taking circumstances as they come and settle for good enough. Yet, 5 percent of the population does achieve an unusual level of success. And here is their secret. The stories of people achieving unusual success despite all manner of handicaps never fail to capture our attention. They’re inspirational to be sure. But they’re much more than that if we study them closely. The boy whose legs were terribly burned and who was told he’d be lucky to ever walk again becomes a champion track star. The woman blind and deaf from infancy becomes one of the most inspirational figures of the century. And the poor children who rise to fame and fortune have nearly become commonplace. In this age of unprecedented immigration, we see examples of people who start off in this world with virtually nothing and within a surprisingly short time have become wonderfully successful. What sets these people apart, people with vast handicaps such as not knowing the language, not knowing the right people, not having any money? What drives the boy with the burned legs who becomes the champion runner or a Helen Keller, blind and deaf who becomes one of the most inspirational figures of our time? The answer, if fully understood, will bring you and me anything and everything we truly want, and it’s deceptively simple. Perhaps it’s too simple. The people we’ve talked about here and the thousands currently doing the same thing all over the world are in possession of something the average person doesn’t have. They have goals. They have a burning desire to succeed despite all obstacles and handicaps. They know exactly what they want; they think about it every day of their lives. It gets them up in the morning, and it keeps them giving their very best all day long. It’s the last thing they think about before dropping off to sleep at night. They have a vision of exactly what they want to do, and that vision carries them over every obstacle. This vision, this dream, this goal, invisible to all the world except the person holding it, is responsible for perhaps every great advance and achievement of humankind. It’s the underlying motive for just about everything we see about us. Everything worthwhile achieved by men and women is a dream come true, a goal reached. It’s been said that what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. It’s the fine building where before there was an empty lot or an old eyesore. It’s the bridge spanning the bay. It’s landing on the moon. And it’s that little convenience store in Midtown Manhattan. It’s the lovely home on a tree-shaded street and the young person accepting the diploma. It’s a low golf handicap and a position reached in the world of business. It’s a certain income attained or amount of money invested. What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. We become what we think about. And when we’re possessed by an exciting goal, we reach it. That’s why it’s been said, Be choosy, therefore, of what you set your heart upon. For if you want it strongly enough, you’ll get it. Americans can have anything they want. The trouble is they don’t know what they want. Oh, they want little things. They want a new car; they get it. They want a new refrigerator; they get it. They want a new home and they get it. The system never fails for them, but they don’t seem to understand that it is a system. Nor that if it’ll work for a refrigerator or a new car, it will work for anything else they want very much, just as well. Goals are the very basis of any success. It is in fact the definition of success. The best definition of success I’ve ever found goes like this, Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Or in some cases the pursuit of a worthy ideal. It’s a beautiful definition of success. It means that anyone who’s on course toward the fulfillment of a goal is successful. Now, success doesn’t lie in the achievement of a goal, although that’s what the world considers success; it lies in the journey toward the goal. We’re successful as long as we’re working toward something we want to bring about in our lives. That’s when the human being is at his or her best. That’s what Cervantes meant when he wrote, The road is better than the inn. We’re at our best when we’re climbing, thinking, planning, working. When we’re on the road toward something we want to bring about. With our definition, success being the progressive realization of a worthy goal, we cover all the bases. The young person working to finish school is as successful as any person on earth. The person working toward a particular position with his or her company is just as successful. If you have a goal that you find worthy of you as a person, a goal that fills you with joy at the thought of it, believe me, you’ll reach it. But as you draw near and see that the goal will soon be achieved, begin to think ahead to the next goal you’re going to set. It often happens that a writer halfway through a book will hit upon the idea for his next one and begin making notes or ideas for a title even while he’s finishing work on the one in progress. That’s the way it should be. It’s estimated that about 5% of the population achieves unusual success. For the rest, average seems to be good enough. Most seem to just drift along, taking circumstances as they come, and perhaps hoping from time to time that things will get better. I like to compare human beings with ships, as Carlyle used to do. It’s estimated that about 95 percent can be compared to ships without rudders, subject to every shift of wind and tide. They’re helplessly adrift, and while they fondly hope that they will one day drift into some rich and bustling port, for every narrow harbor entrance, there are 1,000 miles of rocky coastline. The chances of their drifting into port are 1,000 to 1 against them. Our state lottery is a tax on such people. So are the slot machines in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Someone wins from time to time to be sure, but the odds are still there stacked steeply against them. But the 5 percent who have taken the time and exercised the discipline to climb into the driver’s seat of their lives, who’ve decided upon a challenging goal to reach and have fully committed themselves to reaching it, sail straight and far across the deep oceans of life, reaching one port after another and accomplishing more in just a few years than the rest accomplish in a lifetime. If you should visit a ship in port and ask the captain for his next port of call, he’ll tell you in a single sentence. Even though the captain cannot see his port, his destination for fully 99% of the voyage, he knows it’s there. And then, barring an unforeseen and highly unlikely catastrophe, he’ll reach it. If someone asks you for your next port of call, your goal, could you tell him? Is your goal clean and concise in your mind? Do you have it written down? It’s a good idea. We need reminding, reinforcement. If you can get a picture of your goal and stick it to your bathroom mirror, it’s an excellent idea to do so. Thousands of successful people carry their goals written on a card in their wallets or purses. When you ask people what they’re working for, chances are they’ll answer in vague generalities. They might say, Oh, good health or happiness or lots of money. That’s not good enough. Good health should be a universal goal. We all want that, and do our best to achieve and maintain it. Happiness is a byproduct of something else. And lots of money is much too vague. It might work, but I think it’s better to choose a particular sum of money. The better, the clearer our goal is defined, the more real it becomes to us, and before long, the more attainable. Happiness comes from the direction in which we’re moving. Children are happier on Christmas morning before opening their presents than they are Christmas afternoon. No matter how wonderful their presents may be, it’s after Christmas. They’ll enjoy their gifts, to be sure, but we often find them querulous and irritable Christmas afternoon. We’re happier on our way out to dinner than we are on the way home. We’re happier going on vacation than we are coming home from it. And we’re happier moving toward our goals than even after they’ve been accomplished, believe it or not. Life plays no favorites. Yet of one thing you may be sure, you will become what you think about. If your thinking is circular and chaotic, your life will reflect that chaos. But if your thinking is orderly and clear, if you have a goal that’s important for you to reach, then reach it you will. One goal at a time. That’s important. That’s where most people unwittingly make their mistake. They don’t concentrate on a single goal long enough to reach it before they’re off on another track, then another, with the result that they achieve nothing. Nothing but confusion and excuses. By thinking every morning, every night, and as many times during the day as you can about this exciting single goal you’ve established for yourself, you actually begin moving toward it and bringing it toward you. When you concentrate your thinking, it’s like taking a river that’s twisting and turning and meandering all over the countryside and putting it into a straight, smooth channel. Now it has power, direction, economy, speed. So decide upon your goal. Insist upon it. Demand it! Look at your goal card every morning and night and as many times during the day as you conveniently can. By so doing, you will insinuate your goal into your subconscious mind. You’ll see yourself as having already attained your goal, and do that every day without fail, and it will become a habit before you realize it. A habit that will take you from one success to another all the years of your life. For that is the secret of success, the door to everything you will ever have or be. You are now and you most certainly will become what you think about. Uncover Your Primary Goal If you are like so many millions who don’t know what it is you want sufficiently to name as your primary goal, I recommend you make out a want list. Take a note pad, go off by yourself, and write down the things you’d really like to have or do very much. One might be a beautiful new home or a trip around the world, a visit to some special country or place. It might be a yearning for a sailboat or motor yacht, or if you’re an avid fisherman, you might want to go salmon fishing in Alaska or trout fishing in New Zealand. It might be a business of your own or a particular position with your company. It might be a certain income that will permit you to live the way you’d like to live. Or, a certain amount of money in good investments or in a savings account. How about a special make of car? Or an addition to your present home? Just write down everything you can think of that you would really like to see come about in your life. Then when you’ve exhausted your wants, go over the list again and number the items in the order of their importance, and make number one your present goal. Please download this transcript with our compliments: Success: A Worthy Destination from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post Success: A Worthy Destination appeared first on Living Sensical.

(An excerpt from the bestseller How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, based on talks by Earl Nightingale) The Boss You have only one boss and every person from the president of the largest corporation to the shoeshine boy has the same – he is simply the customer. I want to tell you a little story that could make a wonderful difference in your life. You may already know about everything I’m going to tell you. If you do, you’re a remarkable person, and according to the latest statistics you belong to the top 5% of all the working people in the world. You’re to be congratulated. If you don’t know about the things I’m going to say, you’ve been holding yourself back, not only on the job but you’re also missing a big percentage of the greatest joy in life. I want to talk about your boss and your relationship with him. How you handle this relationship will determine your success or failure. It will determine how much money you make or do not make, and it will determine whether you’re a happy person or an unhappy person. So let’s talk about you and your boss. Who is your boss? You have only one and every working person, from the president of the largest corporation to the shoeshine boy, has the same boss. He is simply the customer. There never has been, there is not now, and there never will be any boss but the customer. He is the one boss you must please. Everything you own he has paid for. He buys your home, your cars, your clothes. He pays for your vacations and puts your children through school. He pays your doctor bills and writes every paycheck you will ever receive. He will give you every promotion you will ever obtain during your lifetime, and he will discharge you if you displease him. Sometimes, particularly these days of seemingly complex economics and big business, we lose sight of just what business is. It all started back during the most primitive times. A man, in order to fend for himself and his family, had to provide his own food and his own shelter. He had to do his own fighting and fashion his own rough clothes and crude weapons for hunting and materials for fishing. Later he had to manufacture his own farming implements. In short, each person had to personally take care of every department of his or her life. Naturally it came about that men and women with certain talents appeared. One person was particularly adept at fashioning spears, another at fishing, another at hunting, another at making garments, and so on. It was only natural that soon these individuals found that they could best spend most of their time in the pursuit of that at which they were most talented and trade their production for the production of others. As a result, the person who made spears found that others would give him a share of their food, clothing, and so on, if he’d provide them with spears. Thus, trade and commerce began. It’s far more complex today but still based on the same principle. A person’s money is the result of his production, and he trades it for things he needs and wants. And it’s here that logical discrimination comes into the picture. Since his money is the result of his work, it’s left to his discretion as to where he spends it. It is here that he assumes the role of boss. He will spend his money only with those whom he feels have earned it. And this is as it should be. You and I are exactly the same way. If someone treats you badly in any way, you instinctively feel that he has not earned your business and you will withhold it from him. Over a period of time this amounts to a really substantial penalty. Let’s say a family spends $100 a week for food, and because they’ve been mistreated or even get the feeling they’re not appreciated or liked, they stop doing business at one store and take their business to another one. That’s a penalty to one store of $5,200 a year and an increase of that amount at another store. In 10 years it amounts to $52,000. This amount of money can be lost by not realizing who the boss really is. The same thing applies to our clothes, drug items, hardware, cleaning, gasoline, automobiles, everything we purchase. The average family earns more than $42,000 a year. This money pays your salary and mine if we earn it. And our prosperity as individuals hinges directly on our attitude toward what we do for a living. The man who works on an automotive assembly line might not think much about the car at the point of sale, nor about the family who will eventually buy and travel in that car. But that family pays his salary, and they will withhold the purchase of the car on which he works if it does not earn their respect and admiration. If you doubt this even for a moment, think of the cars that once were popular and that can no longer be seen on the road. This applies to all products. Having earned a successful place in the economy should not be confused with keeping it. It must be earned every day, year in, year out. There’s not a single company that could not go out of business. Everything depends on how the boss is treated, the boss being the customer. And yet the customer is eminently fair, just as you are. He can be won back, and if he’s treated with the importance that he deserves, he can in a few years bring a lot of other people into your place of business. Let me tell you something you may not have thought about. If you get in your car and start driving across the country, you will pass many thousands of businesses, from small restaurants, drug stores, grocery stores, gas stations, to great sprawling corporate complexes covering hundreds of acres and employing thousands of people. By simply looking at each one you can tell how they’re treating the boss. Did you know that your rewards are in exact proportion to your service? That’s right. We’re paid exactly what we earn, but no more. And you can tell by looking at any business exactly what it has earned by seeing what it has. It’s the same with people. We get back exactly what we earn, but not a penny more. And this, again, is just the way it should be. A person might be underpaid for a while, but the scales of life must balance eventually and he will, in the end, receive just what he’s earned. There are of course two ways in which we’re paid for what we do. One is tangible in the form of money, and the other is intangible, but just as important. To many it’s more important. This latter form of payment comes in the form of inner satisfaction, in the form of joy as a result of accomplishment. It also comes in the form of satisfaction in position and the standing it gives us. So each of us is paid in these two ways: money and satisfaction. And there’s a very simple way to increase both of these forms of income. You may wonder how I can say that I can tell you of a simple way to increase your income from the standpoint of money as well as inner satisfaction. Yet I can, and you’ll be able to see and spend the results. First, I want you to understand and believe completely the great law that lies as the foundation of all life, business and personal. It is that our rewards in life will be in exact proportion to our service. The more you think about this and observe people and businesses in their true light, the more you’ll see the undeniable truth of it. Try as best you can to estimate the proportion of your total ability you have been giving to your work. I don’t think anyone gives 100%. I don’t think it’s possible to give 100% day in and day out. But estimate what you consider to be the percentage of 100% you have been giving to your work. Would you say it’s been 30%? 50%? Since your rewards will be in exact proportion to your service, you can increase your income both financially and from an inner satisfaction standpoint simply by narrowing the distance between what you have been giving to your work and the 100% of which it may be said you could give under ideal conditions. You don’t have to ask for a raise; the income will appear of its own accord and in the right time. You may want to question this, but try to take my word for it. The second point I want to make is this: If you will begin to do your work better, better than you’ve ever done before, you will immediately begin to receive incalculably more inner satisfaction. You’ll also find that what may have been a boring or uninteresting job will take on new meaning and interest. No matter what it is that you do during the entire working day, try in every case to do a little more than you have to, more than you’re being paid for. Because unless you do more than you’re being paid for now, you can’t hope for or justify an increase in pay. The third point is, each of us is interdependent. As I pointed out earlier, other people pay our salaries, buy our homes, clothe, feed, and educate our children. Therefore we depend on others for our very lives, just as they must depend on us. If we expect others to give us excellent service and fine products for the money we spend, doesn’t it make good sense that we should treat them the same way? Every hour spent at our work should be spent in the attempt to give the best of which we are capable, a baker’s dozen for the money our company’s customers spend for our products and services and with which our salaries are paid. A person who tries to get the maximum return for the minimum of effort is only kidding himself. Sooner or later the scales will balance. They must, for that is the law whether we like it or not. This kind of individual actually shrinks as a person, as a human being. He has no real place in a dynamic and swiftly changing world. The fourth point is to try each day to find some way in which the work you’re doing can be improved. Here again you’re guaranteeing an increase in your income in both categories. We all know the cynical type of individual who will laugh at this. I know them; you know them. But I don’t know one who could be said to be doing well, do you? I know lots of men and women at the top of their fields who live their lives every day in the way I have suggested. Rather than go along with someone who’s never proved in his own life that he knows what he’s talking about, I’d prefer to believe the one who said, As ye sow, so shall ye reap. I feel, as I’m sure you do, that he was more qualified to speak than the know-it-all who is behind in his installment payments. Anyway, it’s worth a test. If you’ll follow my suggestions for the next year, you’ll be a different person, living a rich, rewarding, and meaningful life. Four things, all of them simple. One, remember that our rewards in life will be in exact proportion to our service. Two, by giving your work a larger percentage of your capabilities and talents, you will, you must, increase your income substantially. Three, since our lives depend on others, treat others in every facet of your life exactly as you want others to treat you. If you expect others to give you excellent products and services for the money you and your family spend, then you should make certain that your job is handled as excellently as it is possible for you, since it is the money of others that pays your salary. Four, try to find some way every day in which your work can be improved. And above all, know your boss. He’s the customer. Treat him with the respect, care, courtesy, and good humor he deserves. Remember, he pays all your bills every month. He will buy everything you will ever own. He may be coarse, crude, ignorant, selfish, conniving, and a thoroughgoing savage. He often will be. Here it is more important than ever that you treat him with all the care and attention you can muster. If you don’t and if you permit his attitude to affect yours, you’re admitting that he’s the stronger person. If you respond the same way he conducts himself, you’re admitting you’re no better than he is. Most people, however, are nice people. They’re people like you and me who want to be liked and want to get along, who want to be friends. They have problems and sorrows of their own about which we’re not aware. They have bad days and disappointments. Make sure that the time they’re with you is a high spot in their day and that they’ll want to come back, not just because of your company, but because of you. If you’ll do these things for a year, you’ll be surprised and delighted, and you’ll find you wouldn’t live any other way for the world. If you’re already living this way, you know what I mean. Follow these steps for one year and you will be a different person, living a rich, rewarding, and meaningful life: Remember that your rewards in life are in exact proportion to your service. Increase your service to others and your rewards will increase in proportion. Give your work a larger percent of your capabilities and talents to serve the boss. Treat others in every facet of your life as you want others to treat you. If you expect others to give you excellent products and services for the money you and your family earn, make certain that your job is handled as excellently as it is possible for you. Find some way every day in which your work can be improved to benefit the boss. Please download this transcript with our compliments: The Boss from Robert C. Worstell BONUS Get Related Materials from Our Free Library Instant Access Join Here Click or type into your browser: https://livesensical.com/go/freelibrary/   The post The Boss appeared first on Living Sensical.