|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Home | Business | Home Based Business Well, I’m sure many of us have been in this situation and some of us may still be in this situation. You feel like you’re sitting on top of a volcano or at least on top of something big and it’s about to blow but something is preventing that from happening. So, how do you change your current situation? How do you move to the next level? Let’s take a look at some principles written by Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge. These principles will help propel you to the next level in all areas of your life. I would encourage you to invest in this wonderful book. We can learn a valuable lesson from Jeff Olson’s story of the two frogs. Imagine this. Two adventurous frogs decide to leave the comforts and safety of their home to visit a farm close by. As they are exploring, they hopped right into a dairy. They continued hopping and jumping around into they landed into a milk pail half full of cream. They were thrilled and delighted at what they had stumbled upon. What an awesome treat! Drinking until they got full, they begin to get sleepy. We’d better get out of here one frog said. As they tried to get out of the pail, they realized there was a problem. They couldn’t get out of the pail no matter how much they tried. The pail was too slippery to climb. Frantically splashing around, they realized they were trapped. The second frog cried out, “Oh, we’ll never get out of here. This is pointless. Let’s just save what dignity we have left and die like frogs with our eyes facing our homeland.” Nonsense! Keep swimming, we will never give up. We have been in tough spots before and we always managed to succeed. We must continue to swim, said the first frog. The second frog let out a deep sigh, and said it’s hopeless. Looking sadly at the first frog, he said farewell and slowly sank out of sight. Now you would think that this would be the end of the story, but as it turned out that first little frog refused to give up. He was determined to find his way out. So he continued to swim until he just couldn’t swim anymore. He began to wonder if it was all for nothing. Was his brother right? Quite fatigued, he stopped paddling – ready to accept the inevitable. Expecting to sink, he looked up towards his homeland. To his surprise, nothing happen. Stretching out his foot, he felt something solid. The cream had been churned into a big lump of butter which allowed him to scramble on top and hop out of the pail –alone but alive. Two frogs – two powerful choices. Whether you realize it or not you are making those same choices every day, every hour, and every minute of your life. You may not see the results today, tomorrow or maybe not even a few months from now. In fact in a lot of cases, you may not actually see the results until you’ll very far along in the process. The question is will you paddle until your cream becomes butter or will you give up and sink? A lot of times we are placed in the same situations as those around us. As in the case of the two frogs, they both had the same abilities and the same challenges, yet one was successful and one was not. I’m sure that we have been in similar situations or know of someone who has. Same abilities, same opportunities, same challenges but one ends up on the road to success while the other seems to have taken a detour. So what makes one person successful over another? Well what would you say, if I told you, it has a lot to do with your philosophy. My philosophy! What do you mean? I’m glad you asked! Your philosophy is your view of the world around you. It dictates or creates your attitudes which in turn drive your actions. These actions turn into the results which creates your lifestyle. Let’s look at an example of this. Every year people make New Year’s resolutions. If you make them as well, you know that when you first start the year off, you’re very excited because it’s as a fresh start. It’s a chance for you to be better than you were the year before. You say to yourself, this year I’m going to… and you think of some wonderful New Year’s resolution that you’re going to achieve and that’s great! But let’s look at this a little bit more. Let me give you a perfect example from my life. Please try not to fall asleep here. I work out at the gym 3 or 4 times a week and every year around January, the gym is packed. Wow, this is great I’m thinking. February creeps up and I start to notice that attendance is dropping off. By March, attendance drops even more and by the end of March beginning of April – all I see now are just the regulars. What happened? Somewhere along the line the people that we lost gave up. Their attitude changed and as a result so did their actions. As you can see, your philosophy or what you think is either going to put you on the road to success or the road to failure. So you’re probably saying ok, I hear what you’re saying. I’ve heard this before. My current lifestyle is a direct result of my beliefs – how I see life. But I do believe. So why am I not getting the results that I want? Well, you must do what successful people do. You must understand what they understand. Successful people all have one thing in common and that is the Slight Edge philosophy. The Slight Edge philosophy says, “Do the thing and you’ll have the power.” It is having faith in the process of simple, positive actions repeated over time, believing in your miracle and trusting in the process that’s going to get you there. Just like the frogs, these little steps may not look like it’s having a significant impact at all – but little steps compounded over time do make a difference. You just need to stay in the process long enough to give yourself a chance to be successful. The Slight Edge is either working for you or against you. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t want anything working against me. So how can you recognize the Slight Edge and how can you get it to work for you? The Slight Edge comes to light through several areas of our life. Olson refers to them as the faces of the Slight Edge. They are the faces of momentum, completion, habit, reflection and celebration. Each one can either work for you or against you. The first face is the face of momentum. Whateveryour goal is whether it’s for your personal or professional life you need to build momentum. This is important because it is harder to restart your engine so to speak once you’ve stopped it for a period of time. Starting your engine requires more energy than if you just would have kept it going in the first place. Use the Slight Edge to work for you by building up your momentum and keeping it up using daily consistent actions. Another face to recognize is the face of Completion. How many of you have things that need to be completed? We need to make sure that we complete our tasks because when you don’t it’s like it’s looming over you. It’s always in the back of your mind. When we don’t complete our tasks, it becomes a draining energy taking away from our positive energy which hinders your growth and ability to move forward. If you do have a lot of incomplete projects, use the Slight Edge to work for you. Take on one project at a time. Next, harness the power of habit. As you all know we can have good habits as well as bad. Your habits are either going to put you on the road to success or the road to failure. How can you tell if the habit is working for you or against you? Ask yourself this question, does the habit empower me and result in positive energy or does it result in negative energy? If it results in negative energy, replace it with a good habit. Yet another face is the power of reflection. Whatever you are trying to achieve you need to take a look at it. Did you do the things you set out to do? You may say, yes I was really busy today – but did you do the right kind of things to achieve your goals. You need to do the right things that are going to move you forward. One tool that you can use to help with reflection is a journal. At the end of the day, write down what you did do. Keep a journal of this and at the end of the week, reflect back on it. Write down what you absolutely needed to do that was easy to do and easy not to do. Ask yourself - Did you do them? Did you take a step forward or did you take a step back? Did you maintain your momentum? The last face I’m going to talk about is Celebration. Learn how to harness the power of celebration. The power of reflection goes hand in hand with the power of celebration. When you reflect on your activities, you can determine what needs to be adjusted or what are opportunities for improvement. You can also see where you’ve had successes. Celebrate those moments. When you achieve your goals for the week, maybe celebrate by going for a walk or treating yourself to desert. Celebrating your successes motivates you even more to push forward. You feel good about yourself and you are encouraged to produce even better results. In addition to being aware of the Slight Edge and how to use it to work for you, understand that the greatest gift you could ever give yourself is your own personal development. If you want your business to move forward you need to continue to grow yourself. Since you are reading this article and expanding your knowledge, I know that you understand this and I applaud you for it! Here’s a quote from the Slight Edge that Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first 4 hours sharpening the axe. So in other words, spend twice as much time working on yourself as on the task at hand. Most people just grab the axe and start swinging away – without sharpening. And if they aren’t making a dent, they quit. Don’t expect to see results instantly. Results come last. It takes time. When you plant a seed for a beautiful rose, the rose does not appear instantly. Again, it takes time. Realize that everything in life must go through a process. Take your eyes off of the end result and enjoy the journey. Now we’ve talked about what it’s going to take to propel you to the next level, but there are still a few more important nuggets I want to leave you with in order to turn your dreams into reality. These steps are simple to do and yes simple not to do. Use them to work for you by doing them. First, you need to vividly see yourself living your dream. Imagine what it feels like. Hold on to that feeling. Write your dreams down and be as specific as you can. Think about what kind of actions you need to take to move you towards that point and write them down with a deadline for each one. Second, make sure to look at your dreams every day. Looking at your dreams often helps to keep you focused on your destination. It gives your subconscious mind a chance to work on them. When this happens you will come up with the right actions and keep repeating those actions. Third, know the price and be prepared to pay it. This is not as bad as it sounds but does require a bit of a sacrifice from you. Nothing earth shattering, it simply requires baby steps. For instance, if you’re trying to go on that dream vacation, it may require you to put some extra money away so maybe you need to cut back on the amount of times you eat out and save that money instead. This is something that is easily done as well as easily not done. Make it work for you. Lastly, you must have a plan to start with. It doesn’t matter at this point about how you get there. You just need to start. You don’t need a perfect plan so don’t spend all of your time and energy trying to make one. You will adjust your plan along the way. Whatever your dreams are whether it's achieving financial freedom or creating unlimited wealth and no matter how big your dreams and aspirations are – you can always reach your dreams using the Slight Edge which is simple small steps. Remember, these are steps that are easy to do and easy not to do. So, I encourage you to take a look at your dreams. Think about what one simple, single easy-to-do activity you can do every day that will have the greatest impact and then do it! If you apply these principles to work for you, you’ll find that your volcano will blow sky high! Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
Juanita Dailey, Life Style Mentor and Successful Entrepreneur, is helping many become the next success story. Whether you're looking to create an extra few thousand dollars per month, be an ex-corporate executive, or the next millionaire Mom, Juanita can assist you to create a second stream of income and greater peace of mind. visit : Success
|
 RSS Feeds by Category |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
