A Special Kind of Courage
By: Brian Tracy

There are several different aspects of courage. Perhaps the most important is the courage to endure, to persist, to "hang in there" in the face of doubt, uncertainty and criticism from others.

Practice Patience in Adversity
This is called "courageous patience," the willingness and the ability to "stay the course" in the face of uncertainty, doubt and often criticism from many quarters.

Stay the Course
In my experience, there is a critical time period between the launching of a new venture and the results that come from that venture. During this hiatus, this waiting period, many people lose their nerve. They cannot stand the suspense of not knowing, of possible failure. They break and run in battle, they quake and quit in business.

The True Leader
But the true leader is the person who can stand firm, who refuses to consider the possibility of failure. The turning points of many key moments in human history have been the resolution, or lack thereof, of one person. Courageous patience is the acid test of leadership.

To encourage others, to instill confidence in them, to help them to perform at their best requires first of all that you lead by example.

Accelerated Learning Techniques
"Learn Faster. Read Faster.
Remember More."
Do you forget things you read last week...even things you read last night? How would you like to learn faster and remember more? Learn to harness the amazing mental powers within you, now YOU can accomplish any goal, overcome any obstacles and solve any problem you face. Includes 3 incredible bonuses!
Click for more >>

Allow Honest Mistakes
The second thing you can do to help alleviate the fears of failure and rejection in others is to encourage them to take calculated risks and allow honest mistakes.

Build People Up
Give the people who look up to you regular praise and approval. Celebrate good tries as well as success, large and small. Create a psychological climate where people feel safe from censure, blame or criticism of any kind. Then do things that make people feel terrific about themselves.

Become Unstoppable
Courage comes from acting courageously on a day-to-day basis. Your personal development goal should be to practice the behaviors of a totally fearless person until you become, in your own mind, unstoppable.

Action Exercises
Here are two ways for you to develop courageous patience.

First, prepare yourself in advance for the inevitable disappointments and setbacks you will experience on the way to your goal. Don't be surprised when they occur.

Second, resolve in advance that you will bounce rather than break and continually encourage others to think and act the same way.

The law of planning

Every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution. The purpose of strategic planning in a corporation is to reorganize and restructure the activities and resources of the company so as to increase the “return on equity,” or return on the money invested and working in the company. The purpose of “personal strategic planning” is for you to increase your “return on energy,” the return on the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual capital you have invested in your life and career.

Every Minute
Every minute that you spend planning your goals, your activities, and your time in advance saves ten minutes of work in the execution of those plans. Therefore, careful advance planning gives you a return of ten times, or 1,000 percent, on your investment of mental, emotional, and physical energy.

10-12 Minutes
It takes only about 10-12 minutes for you to make up a plan for your day. This investment of 10-12 minutes will save you time of approximately two hours per day, or a 25 percent increase in productivity and performance, in ROE, from the first day that you begin planning your day in advance.

Time Planner
The key to personal efficiency is for you to use a good time planner. Virtually any planner will work if you will discipline yourself to use it as the core of your time management system. Today, Palm Pilots and personal digital assistants (PDA), in combination with personal computers, can enable you to plan your time with greater efficiency than has ever been possible.

The Life Planning Process
"A Goal Without a Plan is Only
a Dream…"
If you dream of achieving great things in life, planning for making them a reality on paper is vital to your success.
Master List
Begin with a master list as the foundation of your time planning system. Write down everything that you can think of that you will need to do for the indefinite future. As new ideas, goals, tasks, and responsibilities arise; write them down on your master list. Don't trust them to memory. Plan each month in advance by transferring the appropriate items from your master list to your monthly list. This is best done the last week of each month. Plan each week in advance by transferring items from your monthly list to your weekly list. This is best done the weekend before.

Plan Everything in Detail
Plan every project, meeting, and goal in detail, before you begin. The very act of planning forces you to think better and more accurately about everything you do. The more you think about and plan something on paper, the faster and more efficiently you will accomplish it when you start work.

Regular Planning
Regular planning assures that you spend more time on activities of higher value. This increases effectiveness and your efficiency in everything you do. Perhaps, the most important rule of all if for you to “think on paper!”

Action Exercise
Discipline yourself to work only on those activities that have the most significant impact and influence on your life. Get them done quickly and well. Once you develop this habit of planning and prioritizing, your stress level will decline, your productivity will increase, and your career will take off.

About IWB CEO/FOUNDER

FrFrank Olugbemi Omotayo Alajiki is a young dynamic speaker, Who drew his inspiration from people like Bishop David Oyedepo, David McNally and Pastor E.A Adeboye among others. Frank delivers keynote speeches, breakout sessions and runs half-day and full-day seminars. He received a mandate to help people develop and release their God-given innate potentials thereby providing a network of highly inspired professionals towards building the nations of Africa. Frank’s foresight and unique style of communication and insights; prompted him to launch a programme tagged “Discovery show” in 2006 when he saw a need for integrated and creative brand approach for motivating people towards all round success. He is a member of united nation for African development and also a member of African youth development. Frank will be publishing a book entitled ‘Change’ in early 2012. Frank honours invitations to speak at any corporate organisations, schools and Christian religious cycle. To book Frank as your guest speaker, please call +234-7042078905, +234-8036531203 or E-mail us at insightworldbuilders@yahoo.com

WORK TIPS FOR TOP HIGH-FLYING EXECUTIVES FROM THE CEO DESK

Understanding corporate Culture.

Are you an executive in a corporate organisation? Here is one of the crucial tips you need to be in a frontier role.
Every corporation, company, industry or even small office has a culture. Knowing what that culture is gives you the edge. The culture is how their people do things. This culture is sometimes company led, but mostly people generated – it grows organically and without plan or strategy. If you don’t know this culture – or fail to make use of it – you can end up looking foolish and are then easy to take advantage of, or be belittled.
Bear in mind that around 70 percent of all dismissals are not because someone couldn’t do their job properly, but because they didn’t know the corporate culture – they didn’t fit in.
Consider this advert for a pretty big prestigious design studio – the BMD. When Bruce Mau, the owner of this company, wanted to recruit new staff, he put out a quiz with some 40 questions, including, ‘who made a film consisting of nothing but the colour blue?’
Bruce headed the advert, ‘Avoid fields. Jump fences’. As a result of this, he lured some of the best, most talented top designers to come and work for him – or with him, as he describes his working relationship with his staff.
Now what sort of corporate culture do you think Bruce expects, wants, gets? How would you fit in? What do you think Bruce would expect of you?
You don’t have to buy into the corporate culture – you don’t have to believe in it – all you have to do is fit in. If they all play golf, then you play golf. I know you hate golf, but you will play golf – if that’s what it takes to fit in. You may question whether playing golf is where you want to be. But if you are a Rules player and you want to get on and be successful and you also want to be part of a particular company where playing golf is the corporate culture – then play it you must.
Culled from The rules of work by Richard Templar

TIME MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

Manage Your Time Well


To achieve all your goals and become everything you are capable of becoming you must get your time under control. Psychologists generally agree that a "sense of control" is the key to feelings of happiness, confidence, power, and personal well-being. And a sense of control is only possible when you practice excellent time management skills.

Choices and Decisions
If the front side of the coin of success is the ability to set clear goals for yourself, then the flip side of the same coin is the ability to get yourself organized and work on your most valuable tasks, every minute of every day. Your choices and decisions have combined to create your entire life to this moment. To change or improve your life in any way, you have to make new choices and new decisions that are more in alignment with who you really are and what you really want.

The Right Thing to Do
The only way that you can determine that is right or wrong, more or less important, high or low priority is by first determining your aim or goal at that particular moment. From that point forward, you can divide all your activities in to "A" activities or "B" activities. An "A" activity is something that moves you toward your goal, the faster and more directly the better. A "B" activity is an activity that does not move you toward a goal that is important to you.

Eat That Frog Training Kit
"Could your time management skills get you laid-off this year?"
In today's economy, business is harder than it used to be--people in every industry have to work smarter and harder to show that they deserve to be there. If you don't have the skills to perform for your company and prove that you are the best asset for them, you may be left behind. Click for more >>

Begin with a List
The basic tool of time management is a list, organized by priority, and used as a constant tool for personal management. The fact is that you can't manage time; you can only manage yourself. That is why time management requires self-discipline, self-control, and self-mastery. Time management requires that you make the best choices and decisions necessary to enhance the quality of your life and work. Then you follow through on your decisions.

Use Advance Planning
Begin today to plan every week in advance, preferably the Sunday before the workweek begins. Plan every day in advance, preferably the night before. When you make a list of everything you have to do the following day, your subconscious mind works on that list all night long. When you wake up in the morning, you will often have ideas and insights to help you accomplish the items on your list.

Separate the Urgent from the Important
In the process of managing your time, you must separate the urgent tasks from the important ones. Urgent tasks are determined by external pressures and requirements. You must do them immediately.

Action Exercise
Make a list of everything you would like to be, do, or have in the months and years ahead. Analyze your list and select those items that can have the greatest possible consequences in your life.

Tapping the promises of personal growth

The nice thing about working on your personal growth is that when you make a concerted, dedicated effort to improve some part of your life, there’s an excellent chance that you will succeed in the long run. You may have a lot of gunk to clear out in terms of limiting beliefs, and you may be starting from a disadvantaged position, but given enough time, it’s entirely possible to completely rework some part of your life for the better.

For example, you have the potential to go from rags to riches, from shy to socially confident, or from unhealthy to vibrant and fit. It may not be easy to make such transitions, but there are numerous successes to model. These are transitions that many, many people have already succeeded at, and they’re often more than happy to help out people who are interested in taking similar journeys. You certainly don’t have to stumble forward blindly.

This, of course, is the grand promise of personal development — that you can consciously remake some part of your life, re-sculpting it from what it is now to what you desire it to be.

But there are two very common problems that prevent many people from receiving the full delivery of this promise.
Getting Clear About What You Want

First, most people never get clear about what they want.

Since they don’t decide, there’s nothing for them to move towards. Moving away from where you are now is not a specific heading. An “away from” mindset is like a bunch of crazy, chaotic arrows pointing off in all different directions, but in most cases that isn’t enough to get moving with any consistency. “Not here” isn’t a goal.

When I ask people what they want out of life, most of the time I get a very vague answer. They can’t tell me. So of course their lives aren’t going to change much. They have no direction. If someone asks you what you want out of life, offer up a clear and specific answer.

Don’t look to life to tell you what you want. That’s your burden — and your privilege — to decide.

Not deciding is still a choice. If you can’t decide, then you’re deciding to continue the status quo, and you’re broadcasting the intention that more than anything else in the universe, you want to continue experiencing what you’re experiencing right now. And so essentially that is what you’ll get. So when you keep getting what you’re already getting, be grateful that the desires you voiced are being fulfilled. You are simply receiving what you’ve been asking for.

Don’t pretend that your life will change until you first make a clear decision about where you want to go next. You can bitch and moan about the burden of having to make that choice, but there’s no point in that. It’s better to celebrate the honor and privilege of having the freedom to make that choice. Be grateful that you can choose. Appreciate the fact that you get to decide where your life goes next. Consider yourself lucky that you have a choice.

Making a choice is really, really simple. Most people overcomplicate the process tremendously. Ask a child what they want for their birthday, and they’ll probably rattle off a number of specific items. How do they decide? They just decide. They don’t worry so much about making wrong choices. They voice intentions based on what experiences they feel drawn towards. It’s that simple. If you feel drawn to a certain experience, then that’s an excellent candidate for a new decision.
Real Decisions vs. Fantasy Decisions

Secondly, when people do finally decide, they usually don’t make a real choice. They make a fantasy choice instead.

There’s a major difference between a fake decision and a real decision. Let me ‘splain that.

A fake decision is when you get clear that you desire a certain experience, but you don’t accept the far-ranging consequences of that experience. This is like deciding to pick up one end of a stick while denying or ignoring the existence of the other end of the stick. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the other end of the stick is coming along for the ride. If you resist the true nature of the stick as a whole, you cannot pick up the front end of it. If you resist the consequences of your desires, you block your desires from becoming real.

For example, you may set a goal to have a million dollars, but if you do not invite, welcome, and accept the consequences of becoming a millionaire, then your goal is a mere fantasy. It isn’t a real goal. It’s just a delusional waste of time.

A real decision is when you get clear that you desire a certain experience, and then you do your best to predict and understand the likely consequences of that experience, and you decide to invite and welcome those consequences too.

Think of it this way: Either you desire the entire stick, or you desire none of it. To desire one end of the stick but not the other end is to create a block that translates to desiring nothing but the perpetuation of the status quo.

In order to set a real goal or hold a real intention, realize that you must intend and accept its consequences as well.

So in our example of desiring a million dollars, a real decision includes accepting how you’ll manage that money, how it will alter your relationships with others, how it will impact your lifestyle, and so on. This includes accepting any likely effects you may perceive as negative — and welcoming them into your life.

Understand this: If you cannot accept the likely consequences of a decision, then you have not yet made the decision.

I.e. if you cannot accept the likely consequences of a new relationship, then you have not yet made the decision to attract a new relationship. If you cannot accept the likely consequences of doubling your income, then you have not yet made the decision to double your income. If you cannot accept the likely consequences of being at your ideal weight, then you have not yet made the decision to reach your ideal weight.

Quite often people claim to know what they want, but the truth is that they’re stuck in fantasy land. For example, they’ve decided to reach their ideal weight, but they fail to accept and invite the possibility of getting more attention from the opposite sex, buying different clothes, maintaining more disciplined diet and exercise habits to maintain that weight, etc. Mentally they understand that these are the natural, logical consequences of reaching that goal, but they aren’t yet there emotionally. They don’t really “get it” yet.

In order to achieve a goal, it’s important to listen to your logical predictions about what the consequences may be and to accept those predictions. Even more important than that is to integrate those predictions into the goal itself, so your goal represents the total package of what you’re going to create, not merely some isolated element of it.
Goals as Growth Experiences

How can you invite and welcome the consequences of a desire? Perhaps the best way to do that is to view your goals as growth experiences. Every goal, desire, or intention is a growth experience, and every growth experience is a package deal. Along with every desire you get a pack of free bonuses. Those bonuses are called life lessons.

Along with money, you get bonus lessons in money management, scarcity, abundance, and generosity. Along with new relationships, you get bonus lessons in communication, negotiation, and compassion. Along with a better body, you get bonus lessons in self-discipline, self-awareness, and self-esteem. Along with a successful business or career, you get bonus lessons in responsibility, productivity, and life balance.

These bonuses are awesome! You just need to recognize them as such. In many cases the bonuses are worth more than the initial desire. When you can regard the consequences of every potential goal or desire as a valuable pack of personal growth bonuses, it gets much easier to desire the whole package instead of obsessing over the front-end offer.

So in summary, we have two key hurdles to overcome in order to begin realizing the promise of personal growth: 1) Decide what you want, and 2) Identify, accept and invite the likely consequences of what you want.

Now… have you completed both steps yet? Of course you have. Either you’ve done this for a new desire, or you’ve done it for the status quo by default. Either you’re actively creating something new, or you’re actively perpetuating what you already have. Regardless of your choice, you are succeeding, so celebrate that! :)

Tapping the promises of personal growth