Mastery Of Happiness

I Cannot Think Of Anything Better To Do With A Banana Except Eat It

De-Lard (as in "trim the fat from") Your Day

Happy people are effective people.  I have never met anyone that was truly happy that was not effective.  I once spent two weeks with Monks on the Island of Brac off of the Dalmatia Coast of Croatia.  It was such a great experience that my one week planned adventure turned into two.  The Monks were extremely happy and while they did not have great cards, speedboats or vast amounts of money they were extremely effective each and every day.  They wasted little if any time on things that did not matter.  There is a great lesson in living like that.

As soon as I got rid of all of the lard in my day my life began to change for the better.  I stopped responding to calls from people that had an "emergency situation" and voila... they stopped calling me with emergencies.  I put a 24 hour auto-responder on my email and stopped being wired 24/7 so that I could focus on the things that mattered most.  Getting rid of the lard in my day allows me to be more effective all day long in whatever I am doing.  As I write this blog I am in a productivity window of "Creation".  This is just what I call it but the point is that I am creating content that might help someone else create a better life.  You can call your productivity windows whatever you choose.  Just make sure you get rid of the lard my friend.  Focus on yourself and making "you" the most effective person on the planet at whatever you do.

Think of 7 things today that you can get rid of today to become more effective.  This process of ridding yourself of lard might mean that you delegate some things, that you completely erase others and that you change how you communicate with others.  Just do it and your relationships and effectiveness will improve.

To your success,
-PC

Learn From Masters Not Wanna Be Flunkies

I was on a plane flying into Orlando a few months back and sat with Lou Holtz. Coach Holtz is quite famous so he constantly had young men and women coming up to the first class cabin asking if he was "Lou Holtz". The first kid that came up with his camera and girlfriend in tow asked "Are you Lou Holtz"?  Coach Holtz said "Unfortunately Yes I am".  The kid, oblivious to the comment, said "Can I take a picture with you"? The Coach said "Sure".  So, the girlfriend snapped a photo.  This went on a few times before takeoff.  The Coach and I had some small talk and when we landed I asked - "Coach, why did you say "Unfortunately, yes I am" to the first young man that came up and asked for a photo?  Seems to me that it would be kinda good being Lou Holtz".  Coach Holtz told me that he said it because he knows that when there is one kid that gets a picture there are always more to follow and he said that maybe it teaches the kid a little humility.  I found the comment interesting.  Coach Holtz, always teaching.  Even when he does not mean to be.  That's a "Master".

Who are you learning from?  Make sure that you learn from successful people not miserable losers.  When I am coaching executives or training those in one of my organizations I feel like the only thing that I can teach them with credibility is either what I have done or what I am doing at the time.  I'm not comfortable coaching theory because I'm not comfortable something will work unless I know that it will.  So, learn from those that own the knowledge that they are passing along to you.  You'll be glad you did.

To your success,
-PC

The Importance Of Desire

I’m writing about this today because as I went through my journals for 2008 one thing became apparent.  People misunderstand “Desire” when it comes to developing an achievement mindset and building wealth.  Quite a few things that I blog about over the next few days will be based on my 2008 journal review.

There seem to be two polarizing sides to this discussion.  On the one hand you have the “Law of Attraction” crowd.  When taken in proper context this is powerful stuff so long as one does not forget that a certain amount of effort always precedes a result.  You will be sadly disappointed if you think that you can sit on your couch eating chips all day long using your power of thought to create some law of attraction vortex.  The Ferrari will not be pulling into the driveway by itself. 

The other side is made up of the pragmatic fundamentalist crowd.  These people are keen on the fact that effort precedes any result, which is terrific because it’s true.  The polarizing comes from the contingent of this crowd that believes that success is only all about “Self” and that “Greed” is good.  They will claim to be the happiest people on the planet.  Since they are the happiest people they know it must be true that being truly happy requires a complete focus on “Self”.  These are usually high achievers and they usually make great contributions to the world so it’s really not about “Self” for them after all.   Click Here To Read More

A Wealthy Tragedy

I was reading today where German Billionaire Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, committed suicide after weeks of talks with creditors designed to save his businesses from being consumed by disastrous investments and the global financial crisis.

My initial thought was "What a tragedy".  After I thought about it a bit more I realized that while this is certainly a tragedy for Mr. Merckle's family and those that cared about him most, there is possibly a bit of a lesson in the tragedy.  While nobody will ever know exactly what caused this highly successful 74 year old man to take his own life, one thing is for sure.  It seems that he considered himself "less" because he was going to end up having less.  I think the tragedy in this story and other similar stories is that people get so enthralled with their "stuff" that when it gets lost or stolen they consider themselves "less" of a person. The reality could not be further from the truth.  If you are struggling right now try this.  Turn your attention to gratitude and list the top 10 things that you have to be grateful for.  Focus on those things for a while.  You might be surprised at how it makes you feel. 

The Relevance Of Social Media On Direct Sales, Real Estate, Insurance, Network & Internet Marketing (Part 1)

Social Media has been around for some time now and is just coming into its own from the perspective of driving business value.  What I have learned from my work on this subject over the past 8 months is that most people in industries that ought to benefit most from Social Media simply do not understand how to use the medium effectively.  The value drivers from Social Media are a bit counter intuitive when compared to many traditional business methods but not so counter intuitive when one really thinks about business from the perspective of what it really takes to develop a long term sustainable business. READ MORE HERE

The Relevance Of Social Media On Direct Sales, Real Estate, Insurance, Network & Internet Marketing

This is going to be a five part series dedicated to driving dialogue about a subject that I believe is becoming more and more relevant to all industries and individual industry sectors.  The subject is defined in the title of this post.  The information posted here will also find its way into the "Social Media" Chapter of a book that I am updating and re-releasing in February.

I have studied this subject intensely for the past 8 months.  I hope that my findings, conclusions and recommendations might serve to help people understand the value, the implications and some appropriate uses of Social Media to identify, add and create new business value. 

In no way am I a definitive authority on Social Media or Social Networking.  I have intentionally stayed disengaged from the all forms of Social Networking for any commercial purpose so that I could conduct research from alias accounts whilst maintaining the integrity of my research.  What I found amazed me.

There are several key points that I want to get across in this piece. Part 2 tomorrow.

1) The Key Success Factors might not be what you think.

2) The "Party Atmosphere" requires attention.

3) Involvement is not Engagement.

4) Posturing and Positioning help determine value.

5) Value Mapping helps make you effective and efficient.

6) A new form of "Consultative Selling" has emerged.

7) Why over 80% of the people focused on commercial gain fail to achieve it.

To your Success

~PC

Whining Hurts And It's Not Worth It - This Is Amazing And Inspiring

The Face Of Distraction (Part #2)

Distraction has a cousin named Procrastination.  These two run around together reeking havoc on the dreams of those that allow them in when they knock on the door.  There is little room for having a "casual" relationship with either one of these guys.  If you try to befriend them they tend to seem friendly at first and might even give you a sense of belonging.  After a while though you will realize that hanging out with them has helped you become unfocused and lazy.  You will become unfocused and might even find yourself trying to engage in too many things therefore never being really great at anything.  You may become lazy because it is hard keeping many balls in the air.  It takes a ton of energy.  This is when Procrastination sets in.  It becomes easy to just put things off.  Try and identify what it is that you want to accomplish and then get about the business of engaging.  Sitting on the sidelines and becoming the smartest person on the bench still means that you never get into the game and you can only win if you are in the game.  

The Face Of Distraction

This is a favorite subject of mine.  Distraction. You can find its face everywhere you look if you just pay attention.  Millions of people all over the planet live a totally distracted existence.  It's an amazing truth.  I think about what a difference it would make in the world if people would invest as much time on learning how to focus as they do on the things that distract.  With so many millions living with distraction as the normal way of things, imagine how easy it is to actually focus on something and create whatever life you want. Hint... It's simple...

Go to a restaurant and watch people for just a few moments.  You are likely to see a nice looking couple somewhere in the restaurant.  At least one of them will be on their phone doing text messaging or answering calls during what was probably planned as a "nice dinner out together". 

The process of living sound bite existences is so very limiting because no really deep relationships can be developed when we allow ourselves to be distracted from focusing on the things that matter most.  Multitasking is a lie that someone came up with to rationalize distraction.  Anytime someone tells me they are a great "Multi-Tasker" I immediately translate that to mean that they are probably rationalizing distraction and are probably not great at anything but rather are probably good at many things.