Your relationships may grow together or apart because of the priority you do or don’t place on your personal time. Your kids are growing up. You are getting older. Time you could have spent with your family or on your own personal dreams and goals is irreplaceable.

How many families have you observed in which there seem to be no shared interests or little interaction or quality time spent together? They’re not a family; they are just roommates. If you want roommates, find tenants who will pay rent but will not get involved in your business or personal life. Family members should not be treated as nonpaying tenants who just happen to occupy the same house.

Make dinner each evening with your family a commitment. Set an automatic business cutoff time. If you like to work late at the office, then schedule dinner at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Be there every time, no matter what you leave undone at the office. Don’t worry, it will still be there tomorrow. Ensure that your family spends at least thirty minutes together at the table each evening with meaningful discussions, a lot of humor, a lot of fun. Make it a family tradition. (more…)

In order to reach great heights of success and happiness, whatever that means for you, you must start by taking inventory of your life and writing down what unfinished business that you need to complete.

Work: What tasks at work have been left without being finished? Is your work schedule manageable? Is your office a mess? Do certain jobs seem to wait stacked up on your desk forever? When was the last time you cleaned out your files? How orderly is your desk? What changes can you make at work, to create an ideal place where you can live your dream? Have you been intending to ask for a raise?

Are your travel and expense reimbursement forms up-to-date? What about other records you are responsible for keeping? What meetings need to be scheduled? What equipment needs repair? What improvements would you recommend? What have you been wanting to communicate to your employer, your employees or your coworkers? Any letters that could be written? Make a plan to do these things now.
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Proper preparation begins with proper planning. Before going out, do you wait to bathe, dress, and get ready until the last possible moment? That’s an invitation to disaster. If getting ready is the last thing you do before leaving the house, rest assured you will leave late as often as not. If it normally takes you about forty minutes to get ready from start to finish, the logical tendency is to leave a time slot of - you guessed it - about forty minutes. During that forty minutes one or more interruptions or surprises are bound to occur that will add a minimum of five to ten minutes to the total time required. Count on it. Don’t fight it, plan on it!

Your strategy is to plan a non-priority event or activity in between getting ready and the time you intend to leave the house. Plan time to do some paperwork or make a phone call. Then, if you get into a time squeeze, the time lost can be made up by skipping that non-priority activity, and you still leave on time. Those who are habitually late are generally still getting ready when it’s time to leave. (more…)

Just as other people’s words affect you, the words that you say to yourself also affect your attitude. Whether you feel negative or positive depends on the input that you get, including the input you get from yourself. You can’t change from a negative mindset to a positive mindset without changing from negative talking to positive talking. To do that, you must change the input from negative to positive.

Using positive affirmations is a proven technique that works miracles in many lives. Ideally, you should look yourself in the eye as you make these positive affirmations. Don’t be shy; go ahead and get started! Repeat the following statements to yourself every morning to get your day and week off to a great start: (more…)

Possibly the trickiest part of getting what you want in life is just figuring out what you really want! And yet it is certainly the most important part of all. Remember that setting goals does not mean that you are stuck with those goals. You can change them as often as you want to and feel that it’s necessary.

Remember also that setting goals does not mean that you have to pursue them through effort, striving, or struggling. It does not mean that you have to become emotionally addicted to achieving them. On the contrary, setting goals can help you flow through life more easily, effortlessly, and pleasurably. The nature of life is movement and creativity, and goals give you a clear focus and direction in which to channel your natural creative energy, thereby helping you to outflow and contribute to the world, which enhances your feeling of well-being and satisfaction in life. Goals are there to help you and support you in your true purpose.

Goals can be made in the spirit that life is an enjoyable game to be played, and one that can be deeply rewarding. They are not to be taken too heavily or seriously. At the same time, you must give them enough weight and importance so they are of real value to you. (more…)

Children are exposed to many different values. They receive conflicting and confusing messages about values because many adults in their lives do not share the same value system. Parents who want to see their children grow up happy and successful will want to help their children sort out the right messages from the wrong ones. Here are 8 steps to take as you share your value system with your children.

1. Identify your own values. Before you can teach your children, you need to be clear about what you want them to learn. Don’t take a casual approach to this important parental responsibility. Take the time to develop a complete list of those qualities you plan to teach your children.

2. Tell your children what your values are. Learn to state clearly and concisely what you believe and how these values influence decisions in your life. When telling your children about your values, paint word pictures, use analogies, and tell stories. Have your children tell you what you said to ensure that you have communicated clearly. (more…)

Setting a target date is essential to the effective completion of each of the goals you have listed for your life. A target date is the realistic date by which you think your goal can be completed or reached. A target date is based in part on desire and in part on what is both possible and practical.

As you write each of your goals, set an initial target date for its completion. Since, in general, a goal is something you intend to have accomplished within one year, your target date will normally fall within the next twelve months. There is, of course, a fine line between desire and possibility. Though you might desire to accomplish your goal by tomorrow at the latest, the reality is that the accomplishment of any goal takes time. The amount of time required is usually a function of the resources, money, and knowledge needed, as well as the number of other steps you must take to accomplish the goal. Your aim is to pick a target date that combines the best of desire with the best of what’s possible. (more…)

There is one critical set of strategies required to speed you on your way to the achievement of your objectives and goals and hence the acquisition of your dreams: your Daily Activities Lists. The activities list is your prioritized itinerary. Line by line it illustrates what you intend to achieve during the current day and up to the end of the month.

Consider that there is no limit to the laundry list of activities which you can choose to delegate your time. Therefore, there will rarely be a day during your life when you feel “tied up.” Think back. Can you ever recall a day when you felt that you had accomplished all the things you needed to do and would like to have done? I definitely cannot remember one. However, what’s key is not that everything gets done during a chosen day, but that the activities that are most vital to the achievement of your dreams have been concluded on a schedule set by you. To feel good about how you utilize time does not require being hectic every moment, or regularly playing “catch-up.” Positive feelings and the mental rewards coupled with real accomplishments are fashioned through effectiveness, since only effectiveness creates results. (more…)

I loved that movie Evan Almighty- especially when God (Morgan Freeman) says

“When you ask God for courage, do you think I zap you with courage? No I put you in a situation that calls for courage. When you ask God for great relationships, do you think I zap you with warm fuzzy feelings? No. I throw you in a situation that lets you exercise camaraderie.”

Beautiful isn’t it! He encapsulated in a single paragraph the secret behind The Secret. The secret behind manifestation.

You see, I’ve long understood that all those self-help programs, those manifestation methods, those attraction techniques do not ‘magically’ materialize your desire out of thin air. Rather, when you set your mind to something, you unconsciously set in motion a series of situations that inspire action.

Taking actions spells the difference between getting what you want. Or being frustrated.

Now here’s the real key to really adding magic to all your efforts. Take action today. Yep. Right Now.

Being in a perpetual ‘SomeDay’ mode will create just that… a life of wistful thinking.

The Joe in question isn’t me. It’s a good friend of mine.

Born in squalor, he fought tooth and nail to survive the slums, enter a good university- and now, runs a multitude of companies.

We had a long talk over Coke Last last night (yep, beer’s no good for powerhouses) and I discovered we both lived by similar principles. These tenets helped us survive the tumult of life:

- You can’t be everything to everybody

- Don’t waste time befriending mad dogs.

- Admit there is no perfection, but strive for it nonetheless.

- Never underestimate the delight of real simplicity in lifestyle.

- Avoid unecessary complications.

- Consider first what is worth fighting for.

- Focus your mind on the pleasant aspects of life. (more…)