Don't lose sight of the value of what is free.

Air – breathe.  Water – drink.  Beauty – see.  Sounds – hear.  Smiles – give.  Hugs – enjoy.  Love – Experience.

Expanded Association

There are people we should get to know, or people that we know that we should get to know better.  People that inspire us, fill us up, and are sources of knowledge and positive new experiences.

Who should you expand your association with?

Limited Association

It’s great to have a diversity of friends.  Of course, some friends are better than others.  There are people that we are best to leave as “one hour friends”.  

Right?

Disassociation

Who are you better off staying away from?

Association

Who is you around?

What are they doing to you?

Is that ok?

Grow intentionally

Making ourselves better than we were yesterday doesn’t happen by accident or just because we want it to. We have to do something to make it so.

What do you have to do to grow?  Study?  Read?  Run?  Call an expert?  Have a friend help you work the problem out on paper?  Research?  Prepare?  Set goals and post them?

Be intentional about being better.

Bet on YOU!

Get yourself good books and audiobooks.  

If you don’t bet on you, why should anyone else?

Happy Birthday Think Daily!

This month marks the seventh anniversary of Think Daily!  One subscriber asked “How did Think Daily come about?”

I have been a student of personal development (and many other things) since I graduated high school and started my own business.  I had high aspirations, but my skills, knowledge and understanding of myself and how I interfaced with the world were not as high.  I have learned much from others and by applying it to the real world to see what was “true to me”, what worked, and what didn’t.  

I learned that some ideas work sometime, and some work all the time.  I kept seeing the same ideas and themes come up over and over – these few nearly universal ideas that cut across daily life for me and the masses that could be applied to problems small and large.

Of course, I’m not the only one who made observations and tested them, and it’s easy when there are so many who have come before me and documented what they’ve learned in their lifetimes. But I had a growing community of people who I thought may be interested in my version of what I had been learning.  

Back in April of 2009 I started Think Daily.  The idea was to send out a message of the day to stimulate productive thinking in others, especially those who want to do more and be more.

A few months later I began a second message of the day – “Think Daily for Businesspeople”.

It took a while to find my voice in it.  I recall that after about 30 days I said to someone, “What else can I talk about, I’m nearly out of material!”  But knowing I have to write two messages every weekday makes me listen better and notice more.  I’ve become a better learner.

The photos are another element of the daily messages.  At first I used the above header for every message. Then I thought it would be more interesting to try to match a photo to the message. I have taken most of the photos myself and have quite a library.  If you have a photo you think I can use, send it to me. 

It’s not easy writing what I call, “things that are mostly true to most people”; especially since I am not a full time writer – I run many businesses, have a family and all kinds of things going on besides.  But now that I have written about 3500 messages, it’s getting easier.  Thank you all for making me better.

Can I ask you a favor?  If you like it and it has benefited your thinking and thus the direction of your life in some small or large way, please become someone who continually shares with others, and recommends others to sign up – your family, your friends, and your associates of all kinds.  It’s free of course, and I will NEVER share or use your email for any other purpose.  You can sign people up yourself at thinkdaily.com.

We have 4511 Think Daily subscribers and 3106 Think Daily for Businesspeople subscribers, and they are from all over the world.  If everyone got a few more people a month into our community, we could have 100,000 in short order.

Thanks for being here!

Positive Expectations!

Despite my warning the past couple of days about expectations for OTHERS, and unrealistic expectations because we don’t have enough information and think it through, expectations may be the number one factor in our success.  What kind of expectations?

Positive expectations of the only thing we can control – our own performance.  We must have high expectations for ourselves, because we will never outperform our own expectations.  If we say things like – “I can’t”, or “I’ll get by”, or “I’m a middle of the pack kind of guy, and I’ll never be a high performer”, then that is all we will be.  

If we say to ourselves, “I will find way to win (accomplish X, be X, etc.)”, or “I’ll do what is necessary to win”, or “Despite what they say and my apparent limitations, I will stay with this and make adjustments until I win”, then it will happen.

Self expectation is what you believe about yourself, and what you believe is what will come true.

What do you expect from yourself?

False Expectations

Expecting something that is overly optimistic or unrealistic is also a recipe for disappointment and sorrow.

How do we avoid having unrealistic expectations?  Learn as much as we can about the factors, people, history, possibilities and probabilities. Then think it through objectively. An expectation is a guess about what we think will happen in the future coupled with hope for what we want to happen.  If we have too much hope and not enough information for an informed guess, we can pin our future on an unrealistic expectation.

Do you know enough to make a reasonable expectation?

My final thoughts on expectations tomorrow.