Why work on you?

The whole idea of personal development is this – You can not change the world.  You can not change others.  But you can change yourself.  And when you do, your whole world will change.

Work on you and your whole world will change.

What is failure?

Is it “I tried and didn’t succeed the first time”?

Are you kidding?  Nobody succeeds the first time; and the greater and more worthy of a thing they are attempting, the greater the chance they will not succeed on the second or third or fourth attempt either.

But nobody ever succeeds without trying.  This “failure” is simply learning, and you can’t win unless you learn how.

Little Big Dreams

Some people want to climb Mt. Everest.  Some want to be billionaires.  Some want to win the Superbowl.  But all you want to do is go on a nice vacation, buy your first new car, or move to a better apartment.

The process for accomplishing things large or small is the same. Know what you want. Make a plan. Take action. Notice the results you’re getting. Modify your actions until you get the results you want. Never give up.

You can do it.  And if you can do that, what else can you do?

Sometimes you have to live in denial

Thinking about how it is, attracts more of how it is.  When things are bad, don’t get sucked in.  Live in a fictional place where things are good – and they are more likely to get good faster.

It's always sunny above the clouds

Your job is to operate above the clouds each day.

– Get around positive people.

– Listen to and read positive things.

– Talk to yourself – with positive words.

– Keep your goals positively in your mind.

Stay above the clouds!

Turn

We are all moving in a direction in various parts of our lives; career, personal, financial, health, social…

We can’t go in two directions at once.  If we don’t like where we are headed and want to change direction, we have to make a turn. We have to turn AWAY from something, to turn TOWARDS something else. 

Do you need to make a turn?

Our National Debt

Last month, the national debt surpassed $18 trillion. That’s $124,000 for each American household or $56,378 per individual. It took the country 205 years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of debt in 1981, but has only taken us 403 days to accumulate our most recent trillion. It’s hard to even think about numbers that big; if you were to count to a million it would take one week; if you wanted to count to a trillion it would take 31 thousand years.

Like with our personal debt, there may actually be some advantages to taking on debt. The flatscreen TV and Christmas presents we purchase with debt likely increase our standard of living and wellbeing. But this short term gain is often paid for with long term pain. And the currency of this pain is interest.

Interest is the price of debt. So, when we buy a TV on a payment plan, we are actually buying two things: the TV and the debt that goes with it. While a few extra dollars spent on interest each month may be worth it to see our favorite football players in HD, too much of our income spent on interest can seriously reduce our quality of life because we must forgo other purchases to pay for it.

This is the point that the country has reached with its interest on the national debt.

Last year, the U.S. spent $430 billion on interest payments alone. This means that every year, tax payers are spending $3,500 just on interest payments. This is money that isn’t going to pay for roads, bridges, education, medical research or defense.

It gets scarier. National debt interest rates are historically low at the moment – around 2.5 percent.  When they rise, interest payments will rise exponentially thanks to the wonders of compounding rates. Say interest rates rise to 5 percent – still low by historical standards. That means we will owe nearly $1 trillion a year in interest alone. That’s about two-thirds of what the federal government brings in each year in total income tax revenue!

Fewer services and higher taxes – Uncle Sam’s spendthrift ways could end up hurting us all.

When a little tension is good

There’s where you are, and where you see that you can be.  If they are in harmony, you will not grow and move forward.  But if you maintain a healthy tension between these two, you will keep moving forward.  

Do you see a difference between where you are and where you can be?

Who expects you to grow?

If there are others around you who expect you to grow, expect the best from you, and push you, you are lucky.  Because if you had nobody around you who expected you to grow, you wouldn’t expect it yourself, and you wouldn’t grow.

I expect you to grow.

"If you would, you could".

Many people say “If I could, I would”.  But it’s more like “I don’t, so I can’t”.

Self-discipline is the difference between intentions and accomplishment, between thoughts and achievement, and low and high performance.

“If you would, you could”.

Will you?