Connect with me on Facebook: bit.ly In this video you will listen to Tony Robbins talking about why we do certain things and how we can do them better. This video fan video re-post and inspires me to keep my thoughts focused on providing for my family. It also reminds me that I have the power to control what happens in my life (to a point). I think so much of this video, I am posting it to my Youtube channel. I use videos like this to motivate me to build my home based business. Looking to make some extra money from home? Take a look: numis1.com Have any questions? Give me a call! Chris Smith (513) 266-8005 twitter.com Related Content: Chris Smith, Chris Smith Blog, chrissmithblog, Tony Robbins, Self Talk, Positive Self Talk, Personal Development, Self Help, Getting Better, Trying Hard, Attitude, Emotion, Work From Home, Motion, Working From Home, Motivation, Focus, Daily Focus, Inspiration, MLM, Multi Level Marketing, Network Marketing, Online Marketing

Between the subjects of goal setting and decision making is an enormous crevasse, into which teams fall, then fester and stink up the joint. This is the area of boundary management – or in the case of team failure, mismanagement.
Empowerment is a form of decision making that involves individual, not team decisions. Yet it is probably the most important kind of deciding that occurs on teams.
Here’s the deal: Organizations create teams to achieve certain goals. They may tell the teams, usually quite vaguely, that they are “empowered” to some degree to do whatever is necessary to achieve the goal.
Or they may not.
Either way the team has been set up to fail. Either the team feels it has no authority or leverage to carry out its mission, or it is confused about what its authority or leverage really amounts to.
It is deeply depressing to a team to go to all the trouble of learning how to solve a problem, only to be paralyzed, unable to implement that solution, because it doesn’t know if it’s allowed to. Or worse, to implement the wrong (but defensible) solution because it doesn’t think management will go for the right (but ambiguous) one.
On the other hand, it is terrifying for management to empower people to make decisions in advance without any assurance those decisions will be sensible or defensible. Many an empowered team, thinking its decision-making authority to be vast and absolute, learns to its chagrin that its empowerment was really more of an expression, a figure of speech, than a blank check.
It’s a drag on both sides when managers believe they have empowered a team to make decisions, only to find out later that the team didn’t believe a word of it. The team gets into trouble, which was what it was trying to avoid, and now the manager has less reason to trust the team than before.
So, what can be done?
First, write the word “empowerment” on a clean sheet of paper, fold the sheet carefully into sixteenths, and then chuck it in the wastebasket.
From now on, instead of empowerment, think in terms of the phrase “boundary management”. For there can be no empowering without defining what the power is, who has it, where it starts, and where it ends.
Boundary management is a method for negotiating and agreeing to a set of constraints or boundaries within which team members are free to make decisions on their own. These boundaries will vary depending on the degree of experience or expertise of each team member.

A few months ago, the anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001 took place. That day marked the beginning of a sea change for the world. And change is hard. We’ve had a chance to reflect over the past six years, to become introspective on a number of fronts.
It is easy to hate those who transgressed against us, and generalize our hatred to those whom we all too easily put in the same basket as our transgressors.
We generalize because of a human trait called closure. When we don’t know something, we automatically fill in the blanks with negatives of our own making, not positives. It’s a protection mechanism that keeps us from getting hurt. We automatically tend to think worst case scenarios. As a result, it becomes easy for us to focus our hate on any group different from us (or similar to our attackers).
We don’t know what’s in the Koran or the Torah or the Bible so we automatically assume that their God is different from our God, that their God is telling them to do nasty things to those of us who don’t believe as they do. It’s amazing. Although the stories are overlapping but different and customized, the message in all of these texts is basically the same: love thy neighbor; respect your elders; care for the sick; fear a just and righteous God; etc. – the very same message.
Extremists in all religions use both their ignorance of others’ principles and the inability of their followers to read their own texts to hold their God up as the one true God; superior to others’ Gods; more legitimate. Call me naive (I’ve been called that before), but the way I look at it, we are all on this island earth together whether you believe God created man or vice versa. There’s no other place to go. We can only get so far away from people different from us. Sooner or later we will come face to face with others – their stories, their beliefs, their variety. I’m certain that at that time, we will discover that the differences are microscopic compared to our similarities. For while variances exist, we are all human with a common set of predictable behaviors.
The languages may be different. The cultures may be different. The beliefs may be different, but people are all the same. They have the same needs (security/safety, food, shelter, prosperity, and the hope for a better life – however that’s defined in the minds of the individuals).
Immediately after September 11, 2001, we became a country of re evaluators. We reevaluated our lives, our relationships. It became a wake up call of self-evaluation, both as a nation and as individuals. We decided for the moment to move closer to one another both at home and at work: more collaboration; more teamwork. In Minnesota, for example, instead of cocooning for the winter, we visited our neighbors and friends more frequently, checked on one another for well-being. As human nature unfortunately predicts, we’ve moved away from that closeness as time has passed. We felt vulnerable after September 11, but have reacted (some would say overreacted) to where we are feeling somewhat less vulnerable again. At work, interest in teamwork and collaboration briefly increased . . . and now, just a few years later, it has generally decreased.
We’re chasing the bad guys. Not all of them, just the ones we want to get even with currently. Once this threat is vanquished, another will take its place. It’s human nature for some group feeling disenfranchised to take some bites out of those they can easily target for their own misfortunes.
Currently, we’re the most visible, so we’re it. We will continue in this vicious cycle until the point where the people of the world, with all their variety realize that we have more to gain together than apart – by helping one another out.
Much of the world scoffs at our (the USA’s) efforts as “too little or too late”; it’s group think. While others want us to give more, they forget we already give more to others in need than any other country. We are collectively the most generous people on the planet. Some give out of the guilt of having, some out of the genuine desire to help others. We should be proud of what we as a nation stand for, what we have accomplished and the role we’ve assumed globally.
Sure, the events of 9/11 made us all more introspective. It’ll pass (that, too, is human nature). But as we look inside, do not fall into the trap of self-blaming. Rather than say that we are at fault for all the world’s ills, look at the hope that we bring to those who live in repression. Again, I’m not naive enough to believe that we don’t all have some repression going on in our lives, self or other initiated. On balance, though, the world looks to the example set by our people in how we treat each other (capital punishment aside) and what, as a nation, we stand for.
Make no mistake about it, we are a beacon of hope for others in need of such hope. Be proud of the fact that the relative freedom and relative democracy we enjoy is a draw for much of the world. Some don’t like us because of this and look for ways to hurt us or bring us down. They, too, shall pass. Please, have hope for a brighter future on this island earth for all human beings. I do.
As for business and our work, it’s time to get back on the collaborative track. The more information that flows, the more effectively we listen, the fewer turf wars we fight internally – the better off we’ll be over the long haul, ourselves, our companies, our nations, our world.

The very best way to repair a broken bond of trust is to not let it break in the first place. If that is no longer an option, you have a long road ahead of you, winning people back to your confidence. The only way I know is to keep slogging. Tell the truth. Keep your promises. Be reliable. Rebuild your account using regular small deposits. It may take years of faithful, timely payments.
When you can’t be perfect on any of these scores (and who can?), acknowledge it. Explain it. Ask for forgiveness. And promise to work to keep it from every happening again.
As a prerequisite for building trust, team leaders and team members must:
1) Have clear, consistent goals. I’ve said this before – that a clear, acknowledged sense of where the team is going is essential not only in giving a clear sense of direction, but as a foundation for trust. If you don’t know where you’re going, that’s probably exactly where you’ll end up.
2) Be open, fair, and willing to listen. The more open, fair, and willing to listen individuals are, the more they are likely to receive the trust of others (both on and off the team). Fairness must be built into the conversation. People need to hear the word “fair” come out of your mouth.
3) Be decisive. Nothing sucks the air out of a team faster than having outcomes that need to be achieved when no one is making any decisions to draw nearer to those outcomes. Particularly the person or persons “supposed” to be making those decisions. Are you a fan of frightening truisms? Try this on for size: when it comes to building trust, even a bad decision is better than no decision.
4) Support all other team members. Loyalty is the linchpin of building team trust. You back each other up, especially in a fight. Internal fighting sometimes happens. When it does, you don’t broadcast your dirty laundry to others. You protect team members from becoming victims of nonteam-member abuse. You stick together.
5) Take responsibility for team actions. This is a hard one for some team members to get. If something goes wrong, you don’t point fingers; you take personal responsibility for the actions of the team as a whole. Blamestorming (finger pointing) destroys the very fiber of the team.
6) Give credit to other team members. Albert Einstein offered this choice piece of wisdom: “Nothing is yours until you give it away.” This means that if it’s acknowledgment you want, be generous with what you have done.
7) Be sensitive to the needs of other team members. Work is hard. It can be tiring, frustrating, often painful. So we appreciate it when teammates indicate that they understand the pressures, and sympathize. This also means eliminating the cute little barbs that we like to throw at one another in jest. It isn’t all that funny when you’re under pressure. Respect the opinions of others. Not everyone sees the world the same way; in fact, no one does. Other team members may come up with ideas that you think are the craziest things you’ve ever heard uttered by another human being. That doesn’t make them crazy or deserving of disrespect because their opinion differs from yours. The best teams are made up of people with the biggest diversity of perceptions, who first learn to understand and value the opinions and views of others.
9) Empower team members to act. Team members cannot be empowered to act; they must empower themselves. As a team member, however, you can help create an atmosphere in which other team members feel free to take risks, and to take action toward the completion of tasks. Have more to add to the list? Go ahead – good idea, add your own strategies. We need to keep thinking about this building of trust.

Embarking on a personal development or self improvement program can be exciting and rewarding. However, many people try many different personal growth methods in an attempt to improve their life and although they gain much from their efforts they fail to reach their life goals. Self improvement and personal development can create disillusioned seekers or self improvement junkies (seeking that one program that will do it all) because they fail to deliver fully on their promises.

Have you recieved the results that you were promised from the personal development tool syou used.? Did you get the full benefit of the self improvement programs you diligently followed? If not take heart for I am going to share with you the reasons why and the solutions!

The great majority of personal development programs, CDs, techniques, books and seminars teach very valuable and life changing information. The methods they promote do work. It is unfortunate though that they are missing a very vital and essential truth. It is this missing information that is the key to achieving unparalleled success with these programs. This key is not only the launching pad for success and a guaranteed method which will allow you to gain anything you desire if it is put into practise but it is also the reason behind your failure because you have not known nor applied it before now!

Have you ever noticed that there are certain things in your life that seem to be on auto-repeat? You keep getting jobs that are unsatisfactory; have bad bosses; irritating co-workers; financial problems; painful relationships, etc?

Have you tried hard to change certain situations in your life just to have the same outcome every time no matter what actions you take?

The reason behind this phenomenon lies in your mind.

Anyone who has studied self improvement or personal development and even those of you who have merely touched on the subject will know that everything begins in the mind. Without the right mental attitude you can achieve nothing worthwhile in life. Nothing of major importance has ever been achieved without the achiever having had a clear mental image of the outcome already in mind before success ever came. This is where many people go wrong. They think that if they create a positive mental picture of what they want and then take actions to get it, everything will fall into place easily – they are missing the key!

The only reason people fail to achieve their goals is because of negative mental beliefs. Most times these beliefs are hidden deep in the subconscious mind. In order to achieve the success you desire it is necessary to evaluate your belief system; resurface these beliefs and then eliminate them!

By holding a strong image in your mind of what you want and backing that image with clear and purposeful action you begin to set in motion some very powerful universal forces that work to aid you in making that mental image solid in the real world. However, many times these mental images are hindered by the negative beliefs that you hold which are contrary to what you actually want. These beliefs are always active and running like computer programs in your subconscious mind ‘ sending out the opposite mental images to that of your desire.

It is imperative to your success to find and eliminate these negative programs. This is the whole point of personal development.

There are many great methods for eliminating negative programming. However, I have found that the hardest thing to do is not removing these negative beliefs but finding them in the first place. So this should be your first goal ‘ to seek out your negative programming. Before beginning this bare in mind that it doesn’t matter how you got these beliefs, or who gave them to you. All you want to do is find them and remove them. Leave blame out of it!

Begin by creating a goal. Write it down as though it has already happened. Read this statement aloud and then close your eyes. Create as much positive emotion around this mental picture as you can. Now just enjoy this imaginary scene until you begin to have doubts that it is real. Take a blank piece of paper and on it begin to scribble down all the negative thoughts that enter your head. Don’t judge them, suppress them or get annoyed at them, just let them flow.

Now once you have a list of all the negative thoughts connected to your goal you can begin to remove them.

Look over your list and analyse all the statements you produced. Really think about them. Are they true? Is there any basis for them? Evaluate each one in turn and think of ways to overcome each belief. There are hundreds of great self improvement tools designed to help you do this but here is a simple one to get you started.

Take one negative statement and think about what that means to you. Identify the underlying belief behind that thought. Is it a lack of self-worth, low self-confidence, insecurity, feeling not-good-enough or just a lame belief you picked-up from someone else that you have never given any real thought to?

Challenge the belief. Ask yourself questions every time you recall that belief. Question the authenticity of the belief. Identify the emotion that you feel when you think about that belief. Allow that feeling to fully surface. When you allow this to happen you will find that the negative emotions you are feeling get very strong just before they leave. When you allow the negative emotion, which is driving the negative belief, to fully express itself and dissipate you will find yourself much more positive and without the negative thoughts you had previously.

So everyday speak aloud your goal statement in the morning and visualize it as being reality. Evoke strong positive emotion around this image. Then, at night, repeat this procedure but use a blank piece of paper and write down all the negative thoughts that surface. Then take each one in turn and give it some real thought. Feel the negative emotions related to it and allow them to surface fully ‘ do not try to suppress them. Then allow them to fully express themselves in your mind and body and they will dissipate. This can be hard to do as we have been taught to suppress our emotions and have probably been doing it for many years. When you begin to feel the emotions getting stronger you will have a strong urge to suppress them but don’t! When the negative emotions behind your beliefs are allowed to fully surface and express themselves they naturally dissipate. As they dissipate so do the thoughts and beliefs behind them.

You will find that you become much more positive in a very short time and find it much easier to achieve your goals.

“The miracle power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave determined spirit.” – Mark Twain
Many motivational experts like to say that leaders are made, not born. I would argue the exact opposite. I believe we are all natural born leaders, but have been deprogrammed along the way. As children, we were natural leaders – curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted, were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted, and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?
As children, over time, we got used to hearing, No, Don’t, and Can’t. No! Don’t do this. Don’t do that. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. No! Many of our parents told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn’t do and what was possible. Then many of us got hit with the big one institutionalized formal education known as college or university. Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesn’t teach students how to become leaders; it teaches students how to become polite order takers for the corporate world. Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant, and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.
Developing the Leader in you to live your highest life, then, requires a process of unlearning by self-remembering and self-honoring. Being an effective leader again will require you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart. Based on my over ten years research in the area of human development and leadership, here are ten easy steps you can take to awaken the Leader in you and rekindle your passion for greatness.
1. Humility. Leadership starts with humility. To be a highly successful leader, you must first humble yourself like a little child and be willing to serve others. Nobody wants to follow someone who is arrogant. Be humble as a child, always curious, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge. For what is excellence but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge – always wanting to better yourself, always improving, always growing. When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people because you want to learn from them. And because you want to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener, which is the #1 leadership communication tool. When people sense you are genuinely interested in them, and listening to them, they will naturally be interested in you and listen to what you have to say.
2. SWOT Yourself. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Although it’s a strategic management tool taught at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools and used by large multinationals, it can just as effectively be used in your own professional development as a leader. This is a useful key to gain access to self-knowledge, self-remembering, and self-honoring. Start by listing all your Strengths including your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses and what needs to be improved. Make sure to include any doubts, anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic. By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see available to you for using your strengths. Finally, write down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking you or that you think you will encounter along the way to achieving your dreams.
3. Follow Your Bliss. Regardless of how busy you are, always take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital person vitalizes others. When you are pursuing your passions, people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your presence. This will make you a charismatic leader. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing, be it writing, acting, painting, drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking, or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities. Believe me, you’ll find the time. If you were to video tape yourself for a day, you would be shocked to see how much time goes to waste!
4. Dream Big. If you want to be larger than life, you need a dream that’s larger than life. Small dreams won’t serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and be Bold! Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites you the most. Remember, don’t be small and realistic; be bold and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Oscar, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field. After you ve written down your dream, list every single reason why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why you can’t.
5. Vision. Without a vision, we perish. If you can’t see yourself winning that award and feel the tears of triumph streaming down your face, it’s unlikely you will be able to lead yourself or others to victory. Visualize what it would be like accomplishing your dream. See it, smell it, taste it, hear it, feel it in your gut.
6. Perseverance. Victory belongs to those who want it the most and stay in it the longest. Now that you have a dream, make sure you take consistent action every day. I recommend doing at least 5 things every day that will move you closer to your dream.
7. Honor Your Word. Every time you break your word, you lose power. Successful leaders keep their word and their promises. You can accumulate all the toys and riches in the world, but you only have one reputation in life. Your word is gold. Honor it.
8. Get a Mentor. Find yourself a mentor. Preferably someone who has already achieved a high degree of success in your field. Don’t be afraid to ask. You’ve got nothing to lose. Mentors.ca is an excellent mentoring website and a great resource for finding local mentoring programs. They even have a free personal profile you can fill out in order to potentially find you a suitable mentor. In addition to mentors, take time to study autobiographies of great leaders that you admire. Learn everything you can from their lives and model some of their successful behaviors.
9. Be Yourself. Use your relationships with mentors and your research on great leaders as models or reference points to work from, but never copy or imitate them like a parrot. Everyone has vastly different leadership styles. History books are filled with leaders who are soft-spoken, introverted, and quiet, all the way to the other extreme of being out- spoken, extroverted, and loud, and everything in between. A quiet and simple Gandhi or a soft-spoken peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who became president of the United States and won a Nobel Peace Prize, have been just as effective world leaders as a loud and flamboyant Churchill, or the tough leadership style employed by The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. I admire Hemingway as a writer. But if I copy Hemingway, I’d be a second or third rate Hemingway, at best, instead of a first rate Sharif. Be yourself, your best self, always competing against yourself and bettering yourself, and you will become a first rate YOU instead of a second rate somebody else.
10. Give. Finally, be a giver. Leaders are givers. By giving, you activate a universal law as sound as gravity life gives to the giver, and takes from the taker. The more you give, the more you get. If you want more love, respect, support, and compassion, give love, give respect, give support, and give compassion. Be a mentor to others. Give back to your community. As a leader, the only way to get what you want, is by helping enough people get what they want first. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

Take a look at all the leaders who have left a positive legacy of organizational effectiveness, and what do you find. Breadth, depth, and talent. But what do they actually do? They develop themselves, they develop others, they develop big ideas, and they develop high performance cultures. They leave a legacy by leveraging their natural personality gifts to guide choices about acquiring skills and developing their organization’s culture. One in which people have clearly defined goals, continuous feedback, and career alignment all within a culture driven by the excitement of achievement and the vision of destiny.
After a combined 45 years of experience in the field of leadership development, my wife, Nancy, and I have concluded that much of what is currently written about leadership is both confusing and misleading. It’s mostly descriptive, not prescriptive. First of all, leaders are being encouraged to think “outside the box;” attempting feats of magic and leaps of faith that go well beyond what most normal people can do (baring some major life-changing experience like a near death experience or getting married). They are told to think like Queen Elizabeth, Buddha, Attila, Zen, Tao, Jack, Al Jesus. As a result, people start popping their heads out of their comfort zones, start looking around, grasping at straws, and ignoring what’s under their noses. This is unreasonable, unnecessary, and contrary to human nature. Besides, thinking and acting are two different things.
Second, there are just too many leadership dimensions discussed (over 50) for any reasonable leader to master. Yet try they do. I’ve coached senior leaders responding to their organization’s leadership competency model trying to perfect all dimensions in the model. It’s hogwash! To invest across the board in development can result at best in mediocrity on many fronts. Average, no matter in how many arenas does not produce above average results.
Successful leaders don’t waste their time acquiring skills they don’t need. And since your brain is only so big and can only hold so much stuff, it becomes critical to optimize your capabilities. You don’t need to master the 50 dimensions required to be the perfect leader, just those that you need to be successful right now.
Finally, not only are there too many leadership dimensions, but the words and adjectives used to define leadership overlap to the point of creating confusion, both in literature and practice. A recent factor analysis performed on a 360 degree feedback instrument (a questionnaire with self, boss, peer and subordinate ratings) found only two major factors underlying the 50 leadership dimensions: “smart” and “nice.” The “smart” factor is action and thinking skills and the “nice” factor is people skills and character.
Becoming a legendary leader and creating a high performance culture is not that difficult if you are willing to follow a few rules.
1. Be outcome oriented
2. Be feedback rich
3. Create a balanced approach that gives people the motivation to move forward and a vision (and a pathway) to achieve success.
4. Know yourself
5. Coach others
6. Push for those ideas that will change the way you operate.

Making a Habit of Personal Development

By Justin Popovic 

It can be a rather amusing task to sit back and analyze some of the daily rituals we perform, often without giving any conscious thought. I believe this is a good thing because we would accomplish very little if we had to stop and think about every task we perform.

Just today, I was making the short drive from my home to the library where I do most of my writing, when I noticed I had been completely engrossed in thoughts about the book I am writing. I had to look in the back seat to check if I even brought my laptop and writing materials. I then became aware of all of the other things that had to take place just to make this short trip. Among other things, I had to put on my shoes, put on my jacket, walk from the house to the car, unlock the car with the keyless entry, place my bag in the back seat, sit in the driver’s seat, fasten my seatbelt, start the car, and so on.  The entire time this was happening, my thoughts were directed towards my task for the day.

This got me thinking about some of the other habit patterns in our life that we consciously decide to do without really asking ourselves if the task is really the most important thing on our list. For example, many people choose to watch a number of hours of television each day. I personally know people who spend an unusual amount of time daily cleaning their home or randomly browsing the internet. The point I am trying to make is that most of us can probably uncover at least one hour of time each day that we give to meaningless tasks.

The interesting thing is, if you ask most people if they are happy with all of the results in their life, the truthful answer is often no.

My goal is to encourage people to dedicate some time every single day to personal reflection and self development. If you are unhappy with a certain situation, you have the ability to change your thinking, and ultimately your behaviour, so that you can improve that particular circumstance. Instead of watching a daytime drama or indulging in excessive dusting and mopping, you might want to consider picking up a book or audio program that forces you to examine your results.  

From my personal experience, this simple action produces an internal reaction. Because you are examining your own personal results, you quickly realize that you are the only one who can change them. Unfortunately, in our society today, people are fixated on producing immediate results and having tangible evidence in their hands the minute they ask for something. With personal development, the true benefits can only be realized when we incorporate the ideas into a habit.

Think about it this way. If you were to make a firm commitment to read or listen to personal development educational programs for even 30 minutes a day for the next two weeks, what kind of positive impact could this have on your life? What if you did it for two months? Similar to unconscious activities such as getting dressed or brushing your teeth, you would start to create a new habit and become the kind of person who automatically takes action on ideas that move you in the direction of improved results.

From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that this kind of self study works. It really is a never ending process because it is part of our nature to grow, expand and develop and ultimately, it provides an excellent opportunity to make positive life changes. As you become more involved in personal development, you will start to notice areas of your life that are working well and other areas that require improvement. This kind of education will help you harness ideas that will improve your results while at the same time, overcome all of the inhibitors standing in the way of you achieving your aim!

A common question I hear is, “Where do I start?” There are so many good authors, philosophies and ideas on this topic that you can never really say which style will work. The best advice I have ever received from this perspective is to study and learn from those who are producing results that you would like in your life. It’s a pretty basic lesson but a very important one. Seek out the people who have already achieved what you would like to achieve and learn from them. Success often leaves clues and it is up to you to find those clues and act on them. With a daily commitment to personal improvement, you will quickly become a master detective you will transform each clue into a tangible action that will lead to a more fulfilled life.

Justin Popovic

justin@igniteyouressence.com

www.igniteyouressence.com

Justin Popovic is the founder and key speaker for the personal development education company, Ignite Your Essence.

Some people appear as such natural leaders one wonders if they were born with the quality of leadership. It’s possible that this may be true. However, even for these “so-called” born leaders, the right environment is crucial to help them develop to their fullest potential.
Observing and learning
Leadership requires learning. Anyone can learn to become a leader. There are enough leadership training courses and seminars on offer. Leadership books are a great place to start your learning. The best way to learn, however, is to observe leaders in your home, work and social environments and try to learn from them. The best time to observe a leader in action is when there is a crisis. Crisis-handling is where most leadership skills come into play and the person is required to respond quickly and decisively and set things right.
Try to observe both kinds of leaders – formal leaders like elected representatives of local and world bodies as well as informal leaders like your own parents, grandparents or community elders. All these people can offer great insights on leadership and help you garner knowledge on the skills that go into leadership.
You must keep in mind that leadership is not something you can learn in a day. You must find ways and means to learn from your daily experiences, and put your learned skills and knowledge to use in day-to-day situations whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Remember, though, that leadership styles are not learnt in a day. It needs daily use to learn from daily experiences and to put your learnt knowledge and skills to the test.
Practicing Leadership
It is so true that ‘practice makes perfect’. It is not enough to have read books on leadership and acquire theoretical knowledge. In order to develop your own leadership style, you must find a way to apply what you have learnt whenever an opportunity comes your way. With practice, you will find yourself getting better at it. And people around you will also start recognizing your ability to take charge and naturally turn to you for direction. This is the way a leader emerges.
Leadership is not just about how to handle situations. It is a quality that you carry around with you when you deal with colleagues, friends, family or even the grocer. It shows in every bit of your demeanor. The way you carry yourself or interact with people shows a lot about your leadership quality. If you manage your organizational and personal responsibilities well, your leadership will be seen.
The trick is to keep using what you have learned till leadership becomes a habit for you.
Building Trust between you and your Team
A leader is only as good as his team. The leader alone cannot achieve the objectives and must share the responsibility with his team members.
The formally appointed leader is not necessarily someone who can get the team inspired to work together and complete the required tasks. In fact, each member of the team will have his or her own expertise making them the ‘informal’ leaders in their area of expertise.
The job of the formal leader is to make the team work together and build trust so that it becomes a cohesive group. Mere lip service will not achieve this. To build confidence and trust, your actions must match your words.
To sum up, leadership is something that comes out of an ongoing learning process through observation, training and study. But the best way to learn is to keep practicing what you have read or observed at every given opportunity.

Can Personal Development really help? Can Self Improvement show you how to build a better life? How can being successful at your personal development goals lead to having more success in achieving my goals in life in areas such as career, relationships, health and finances? Well, a personal development goal and a life goal are really one and the same thing. The whole idea of personal development is to better yourself and your improve your own personal world. Therefore, setting and achieving personal development goals will ensure that you begin to lead a successful happy life.

You may not now know how to proceed. So what type of personal development goals should you set? How do you start to develop self improvement goals that will lead you to freedom, a deeper feeling of happiness, help you achieve a better lifestyle and ultimately create more success in your life? This question is not simple to answer because success means different things to different people. Therefore, if you want to become successful you must first have a clear understanding of what success means to you!

A fantastic way to get a clear on what success means for you is to ask yourself the question, “what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?” Let your mind roam freely and immerse yourself in your inner vision. This vision will give you the clue that you need to unravel the mystery of success.

From the moment a person is born he/she has a natural ability to know what it is they want and a belief that they can have it. We develop dreams and ambitions at a very early age. However as we grow older we are conditioned to believe that these dreams are not possible or are mere fantasies of our imagination. You are directed to get a good education so that you can find a good job that will allow you to get a mortgage, get married, have kids and live a ‘normal’ life. By the time most people reach their mid twenties they have all but given up on their dreams or even forgotten what those dreams are. They have become conditioned into believing that they are incapable of achieving what they want in life. This fundamental belief forms the foundation of their self image and the rest of their mental attitudes are build upon it!

It is the role of personal development and self improvement to remove these conditioned mental attitudes from your inner mind and free you to pursue the life course that you chose for yourself. BY using self improvement methods and personal development tools it is possible to begin removing today the negative mental programming you recieved from well-meaning peers, family, friends and teachers. In addition you will also be directed to remove all those negative mental attitudes that have been given to you by not so well-meaning people and those you have developed yourself through negative life experiences. Although this is not always an easy or pleasurable journey to take the rewards that you will experience from taking it are immeasurable and make it truly worthwhile.

The freedom that you can experience from removing just one negative mental and negative emotional pattern is akin to the feeling of rest and tranquillity you feel after extreme physical exercise. Removing numerous negative mental attitudes and emotional stress from your mind and body is a feeling and experience that is truly hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it themselves.

Jesus Christ said, “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”: Matthew 6:33. By removing the negative mental and emotional attitudes from your mind you free yourself to reach your goals. Let me explain.

Let us say you decide to set a goal to be financially free. There are thousands of different ways to achieve this goal. There are thousands of methods you could follow and plans you could set in motion that would bring you closer to this goal. Millions of people have gone from rags to riches. So, why does following a plan work for one person and the same plan will not work for another?

It is due entirely to the difference in attitude and mental conditioning!

There are at your disposal numerous personal development and self improvement methods that are designed to help you achieve this goal. Now these tools and methods are not designed to show you the way to become financially free but instead are designed to free you from your own inner resistance to being financially free. Many people think this is a waste of time and would prefer to be given step by step instructions to build financial wealth and I was once one of them. However, it didn’t matter how much effort I used or how many ‘guaranteed’ formulas I followed my financial situations did not improve and many times actually grew worse.

Why was this? Were the plans I was following just not good enough to create wealth? Were the people peddling these rags to riches methods merely conning me out of my money? Was gaining wealth just pure luck like winning the lottery?

The answer to all of the above questions is no!

The plans I followed had worked for thousands and made them rich! The people selling me the products and methods had all made their fortunes using the very same techniques they were trying to teach me! It was only after a great deal of hradship and many learning lessons that I discovered the truth – gaining wealth has nothing to do with being lucky!

It wasn’t that these things were not good enough to produce the wealth I craved it was that I THOUGHT I wasn’t good enough. When you hold a negative self image and have a negative view of yourself and your abilities it is very difficuly to achieve success no matter how much effort you put into it! This is why it is of paramount importance to first remove the negative conditioning that is holding you back in life.

Your attitude, which is only composed of thoughts and feelings, is responsible for your actions. Thought is the creator of action! Every action you perform, no matter how small or big, first begins in your mind as a thought. Each thought begins as a feeling. Think of when you met your last partner. You first felt the attraction. This developed into a thought or series of thoughts about meeting the person. Then you performed some action to make that happen. Think of the last time you went out socializing. You had the feeling that you would like to have some fun, or be with your friends, were feeling lonely etc. Then you had the thought. Then you performed the action.

If your actions are motivated by your thoughts and feelings and your attitude is composed of thoughts and feelings do you think you could succeed at a given task if you hold a negative mental attitude about it or your ability to succeed at it?

Once you embrace personal development and begin to use any of the myriad of self improvement tools to remove your negative mental attitudes you will naturally find yourself becoming more successful in life. You actions will be more positive and you will unconsciously perform the correct actions that will lead you to success. I am sure you can know see how important it is to set some personal development goals. Not only will you see improvement in your self, you will also see many symptoms of success added unto you!