Expanding Your Perspective

One of the problems with paying close attention to TV news is that it tends to narrow your perspective of almost everything. Usually with news reports, we only hear one side of the story. It is almost impossible to report news stories with enough details for us to understand completely what is going on.

Now turn to TV talk shows. They are narrowly presented by choice. Depending on which side you prefer, you can watch all slanted programming.

In order to understand your world, you need to expand your perspective. For one thing, try to think in terms of long-term effects rather than short-term fixes. For example, I know that this recession has a very negative effect on most of us. But, can we think beyond the recovery and learn how to cope with a recovery? Can we look back into history and learn from how previous downturns have affected individuals?

Another example is thinking outside of your own culture. Of course, foriegn cultures have much different perspectives on matters than we do. They look at work differently, they may look at famiily differently. We even have cultural differences within our own country, our own state, our own neighborhood. Can we empathize with others in order to expand our own perspective.

Think of money. How much income makes you rich? Does it matter more how much that you earn or how much of it that you can keep?

Expand your perspective.

Reality

Don't let the media be your only perception of reality. Getting news, information, and entertainment from the media are all fine. However, you must be careful not to let what you see on TV or read in your newspaper be your only window to what this world is really like.

There are many ways to form your perception of reality and media should only play a part of that. You should experience things for yourself, discuss ideas with others, and just think about and rationalize what the reality is in every important matter.

Don't let TV do your thinking for you. Don't let media set your every agenda. Take charge of what you want to think about and experience. Reading is an excellent form of getting information and developing perceptions of reality. I recommend a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Take an active role in understanding your world. You might just enjoy it more.

Factors That Favor and Factors That Overcome

In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell carefully discusses many factors that lead to success and some that lead to failure. I suggest that you read the book to get more insight.

However, while I agree with Gladwell that some factors in individuals lives often work as advantages that favor those individuals, persistence, desire, and confidence are factors that can overcome those disadvantages for those people who are unfortunate not to have been born at the right time or may not have had the right breaks or best leadership.

On the other hand, even with the advantages that Gladwell describes, true success is usually only possible when ushered in by persistence, desire, confidence, and hard work. Just having the best timing or being in the right place at the right time is not enough for sustained success. Having those hard work factors in your favor will insure you some kind of success.

Often, success can be measured by balance in your life. You really don't need a lot of advantages to work toward balance. You need persistence, desire, hard work, confidence and other attributes usually associated with success.

Keys to Unlocking Success for You

There are many keys to success. One of them is knowing what your skills are and developing them. Another is having the discipline to stay with it and keep on developing those skills.

It is not enough just to be intelligent or very talented at any one thing. In fact, everyone is talented at something. If you don't agree with that, I suggest that you listen to or read "Now Discover Your Strengths" buy Marcus Buckingham. Everyone is born with talents but they need to be developed and put to use.

I have also discussed the virtues of mentoring. Having a mentor is another key that works directly with having discipline. In addition to having the drive to succeed, you need input from another person or people you can trust. They look at your progress and career from a different perspective.

All of this adds up to staying on track with your goals, dreams, desires, and your career. Take the talent that you have, continue to develop it, and have someone to keep an eye on your progress.

These are just some of the keys to success.

Success

Success does go to those who work hard, play fair, and persist. There is no counter formula to hard work.

If you give your best effort at what you do every day, you will succeed. You will not be stopped by the economy, your competitors, the lack of effort by any other employees of your team or company, or any other source.

All you can affect is your own work. If you give your best effort daily, if you strive to do what you intuitively know to be the right things, you will win.

Let's define for ourself what winning should look like. It is not being the richest, it is not being the most powerful, it is not even always being in first place. It is accomplishing what you set out to do. It is establishing and maintaining stability and peace in your life.

You can do it and it is a daily commitment. Keep in mind to that balance and stability includes recreation and relaxation. Remember to include the right amount of both in your game plan for success.

Let's keep going.

What Can I Do?

We all know that the economy is struggling. That is true and it will probably remain that way for a while. We all have competition and it will probably only get tougher. They are calling on our customers and trying to get our business.

There are expectations on us all the time and we work hard to live up to them. Sometimes we struggle to meet them and take our eye off the ball.

The message is this. Don't take your eye off the ball. All you can really do is to work hard and do your job every day. If you are a sales rep, make your sales calls and provide the best service possible to your customers.

If your job involves processing work of any kind, process the amount that you are supposed to and get the job done. Do more if you can.

At the end of the day, you can only affect your own work. You can't fix the econonmy, you can't stop your competition, so why focus on them. Just do what you do and if you continue to work hard and repeat it every day, you will succeed. If every member of your team concentrates on their own job and produces the very best that they can, your team will realize success.

Keep at it,

The Aging Process

Keeping in line with the theme of continuous self improvement, I have made some observations on aging. I am learning that people of all ages actually age at different rates.

This is true physically but I am only speaking of the mental/psychological part here. It almost seems that as we age, we face curves of our wisdom and our ability to understand things at an almost inverse rate.

As we gain more wisdom, we also have to work harder to put that wisdom to use because part of aging is some loss of awareness. To illustrate this, consider how much easier it is for a kid, grade school to high school, to learn more quicklly how to use electronic products.

How do we overcome this? We work harder at it. We limit our TV time, we increase our reading time, we try harder.

If you are over 50, take heart, you still have a great capacity to learn. If you are just aware that you need to be more aware that is half the battle. If you know that you need to pay attention, then just do so and you will be fine. Just remember, that older alone does not always mean smarter.

Selling Power

If you are involved in sales in any capacity, pick up a copy of the magazine, Selling Power. I have read serveral issues of this magazine and I am currently working on their April issue.

It is full of good information for sales people. Every issue that I have read, has both common sense good ideas and motivational presentation of those ideas. Keep in mind that selling is a profession that requires constant work and continuous improvement. Brian Tracy reminds us in most of his books and audio programs that we need to continuously improve our skills.

Give it a try, you will like it.

Green Shoots

From what I am hearing, there are some green shoots that just might be the Springtime of a recovery. If that is the case, now is the time to distinguish yourself from the competition.

Now is the time to move forward and be in position to take advantage of any recovery. Keep on improving yourself and your profession. Work at it daily and you will reap the most benefits.

There are green shoots. Nurture your own personal green shoots.