A Coach - Bill Gates

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

McDonald's - By Shelly Miller

     

Most of my friends are what society would call "punks."  We are the teenagers who hang out at the coffee
shops or the movies for lack of anything better to do.  But being punks doesn't mean much.
     One evening, after a day of not doing much, we were sitting in McDonald's when a guy in our group whom I had just met that day walked in.  Brian was the typical punk teenager, dressed in black with the dyed hair.  Right before he stepped inside, he yelled something outside to a man walking down the street.  I just hoped he wasn't trying to start trouble.  He sat down and a minute later, a burly homeless man stuck his head in and looked at Brian.
     "Did you say something to me?" the man demanded, and I thought I saw a mean glint in his eyes.  I shrank back,
thinking that if Brian had tried to pick a fight, this was
the wrong guy to do it with.  I had seen too many people
and places kick teenagers like us out for pulling stuff.
     While the rest of us were looking for a place to back
into, Brian got up and walked up to him.  "Yeah...would you
like something to eat?"
     The relief was almost audible, and the man smiled and
walked in.     After a large meal of hamburgers, fries and dessert, the man left, and even the staff waved good-bye to him.  

When we asked Brian about it, he explained how he had money that he didn't need and the man had none, so it was only right.

Personal Development - Self Improvement Strategies

The Strangest Secret - Earl Nightingale

Daily Disciplines - Jack Canfield

Think And Grow Rich - Bob Proctor

Your Destination - Jim Rohn

Fight In The Dog - Dwight D Eisenhower

What Is success? - Bob Proctor

How To Get What You Want

To assist you in getting started towards your journey of self-improvement I have compiled ten qualities which when developed and while being developed project you on your path to whatever it is you want to attain. Under each quality to attain I have listed several principles aligned to them.

        

1.     Build Confidence

        

(a) Realise that your principal goal in life is to be happy and confidence is a state of happiness. Practise being happy and begin with smiling.

(b) Use your imagination to enthusiastically visualise that you are a positive person.

(c) Each time you initiate action always remember your past successful experiences. When you evoke these feelings, you will feel successful and act with confidence. Each time say: 'I am confident' and this in turn will evoke feelings of confidence instantly.

(d) Accept all your negative feelings as a challenge. Confidence is merely the ability to rise

above negative feelings, failure and mistakes.

(e) Believe in yourself actively not passively. Confidence comes from belief.

        

2.     Overcome Frustration

        

(a)  Begin everything with enthusiasm. Always stop when you are enjoying what you are doing just before it becomes frustration. Return to it with renewed enthusiasm as you will look forward to it beca you left it as a positive point.

(b)  Become involved in a new ~oal. By thinking of a n worthwhile goal you can reach, your frustration disappear.

(c)  Concentrate on one thought at a time, one ach.o~ a time, one goal at a time: the more you concentra the less time you will have for frustration. Eddiso perhaps the greatest inventor who has ever lived, an who patented over 1000 commercial items includin  the light bulb and phonograph, would concentr solely on what he was doing at that particular ti and not do lots of other things at the same time.

        

3. Develop Compassion, Forgiveness and Understanding

        

(a)  Forgive yourself and others. Don't be judgemental.

(b)  Be agreeable with others. Don't argue, try to under stand.

(c)  Compliment others. Be interested in them. Expres don't impress. Express builds a bridge, impress buil a gulf.

(d)  Make others feel important. Don't engage in constructive criticism.

(e)  Love your neighbour as yourself.

        

Always remember that the majority of what you accomplish will be as a direct result of how you get 0 with other people.

4. Develop Communication and Rapport Skills

        

(a)  Seek first to understand before you make yourself understood. Your experiences may not be appropriate for their problem. Try to understand their situation before you advise. Remember the propensity to give advice is as great as the propensity to ignore it is.

(b)  Your listeners won't care what you say until they know that you care.

(c)  Practise internal enthusiastic self-praise continually. Understand that how you think and feel determines how you communicate with others.

(d)  Always remember that the way you perceive and see your world is not through the same

lens that other people will view their world.

        

5. Develop a Major Absorbing Obsession

        

(a)  Anything in life worth having is worth working for. It's not the amount that counts its the philosophy of your plan. If you are totally absorbed with what you really want to achieve the

world will make a path for you.

(b)  Always seek to learn from your adversity as this is often the doorway to where you want to go. How else can Nature direct you to the path for you? It is one way that she can make you pay attention.

        

6.  Develop Persistence

        

(a)  The more you can persist in the face of all your obstacles the more the belief and confidence in you grows.

(b)  Only through persistence will you become what you want. Affirm to yourself: 'there is always a way - my persistence will find it'.

(c)  Take Winston Churchill's success motto for your own: 'Never give up, never, never give up'. The difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is that little bit extra. Always keep going.

        

7.  Develop an Expectant Winning Attitude

        

(a) I know someone who always says: 'Expect the worst and hope for the best'. What an absolutely ridiculous statement to affirm. Our expectations almost always become our reality. Always affirm: I expect the best and I always get it.

(b) Always look to create a win:win situation with others. Don't accept that if one wins another one has to lose. With an attitude of positive expectancy you will find that you and all around you enjoy winning results. Project yourself as a winner who creates other winners too.

(c) Project a positive self-image of you being an enthusiastic person. Enthusiasm is incredibly contagious and will affect almost anyone it touches.

        

8.  Accept 100 per cent Responsibility for You

        

(a) Always remember that you are the person responsible for how you feel. It's not the circumstances or conditions that is the problem, it's how you react to the circumstances or conditions of the problem that's the real problem.

(b) Don't look to blame someone or something for whatever has happened or happening, look to find the solution. There are some individuals who spend more time ensuring there is someone to blame in case what they undertake goes wrong than spending time doing what they actually undertake. Blame looks backward and responsibility looks forward.

(c) Your self-responsibility will become stronger in direct relation to eliminating your negative feelings and emotions. Each time one of your negative emotions rises up discard it by saying: 'I am responsible for the way I feel'.

(d) Immediately you stop making excuses you will be on the way to the top as you have taken complete responsibility for yourself.

        

9.  Develop the Courage to Do What It Takes

    

(a) Responsibility and courage go hand in hand. Whatever you fear address the situation that causes it.

Aristotle said:

        

Fear is pain arising from anticipation.

        

So seldom do we do the thing we fear that we never discover if our anticipation was accurate. Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious circle summed up so well in the acronym: False Evidence Appearing Real. I remember walking along the Copacobana in Rio de Janeiro when out of the corner of my eye I saw a snake moving furiously towards me. I jumped the highest jump I had ever jumped and kept jumping until I realised it was a rubber snake on a piece of wire. Now my inbuilt alarm system had gone off appropriately causing the adrenalin to fuel my jump. That false evidence however spawned the beginning of a real fear of snakes. Having experienced this FEAR on various occasions I decided to address it. I read a book on snakes and even went to a place where I could handle them. My fear of them vanished. I understand them, I understand to take care where snakes could be, but I am no longer scared of them. Each time in business when I needed the courage to do something, I found the best way was to do it anyway. Only by doing what it takes will you develop the courage required. It is not the other way around. Courage comes from experiencing the thing that worries you. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the wisdom to act in spite of fear. The best way to build up courage is to encourage yourself with: 'you can do it!' 'En' is a prefix meaning 'to be at one with'. So don't listen to people who discourage you. Always remember that courage is doing what you are afraid to do and there can be no courage unless you are scared.

(b) The willingness to do creates the courage to do. Just by simply starting to do what you have planned, will create an ability to do which will increase your confidence and courage. So, whatever it is, begin it, make a start. Be willing especially to follow your dream. My favourite training shoes I bought because when I was contemplating which ones to buy and if I would use them, the advertisement above them was: 'just do it'. There is no better advice to develop the courage to do something or make a decision.

        

10.  Develop a Happiness State of Mind

        

(a) Many people believe that happiness is dependent on things and people external to themselves, yet when we look for happiness outside ourselves we make an unhappy mistake. We feel powerless to attain happiness and devote our lives to the pursuit of things that we know won't necessarily bring happiness. Happiness involves having the courage to live the life you choose for yourself. Becoming what you really want to become and doing what you really want to do is available through your freedom of choice. So choose what you want, begin it and your state of mind will be a happy state of mind.

(b) Your capacity for happiness can be increased simply by sharing it with others. Giving to others can be the most rewarding experience of your life, even if you start with giving your smile freely. Practise smiling in front of the mirror every day for at least 30 seconds. After the initial embarrassed feeling you'll feel great about yourself.

(c)  Don't save up for happiness like so many do. They live under the misconception that you have to earn it. How and when? You are happiness. Happiness is like opportunity, it's always there if you look for it. Seize it in the same way. Being happy means now, making yourself laugh more often, not a chuckle or a grin but a really big belly laugh.

(d)  Remember that unhappiness is the result of old patterns of thinking and feeling. With your new programming and affirmation: 'I feel happy' you will find a new impetus to make you the better you that you can be. The message that all the above give you is plain and simple. Work harder on yourself than you do on anything else and your everything else will follow. Get your internal world how you want it and your external world will be as you want. In other words your outer world is a mirror which reflects what is going on in your inner world. This is the basis of perhaps one of the greatest universal laws. The Great Psychologist in the Bible said: 'As within, so without'. Remember, work on yourself and everything else will fall in place.

         

Develop Your Imagination - Bob Proctor

I Am So Happy ...... - Bob Proctor

One reason........ - Tony Robbins

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

Perfection... - Vince Lombardi

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."

Vince Lombardi

Kindness -- Brian Tracy

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."

Brian Tracy

Successful People ... Napoleon Hill

Great motivational speech of Tony Robbins at NAC London!!

The Golden Buddha

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In the fall of 1988 my wife Georgia and I were invited to give a presentation on self-esteem and peak performance at a conference in Hong Kong. Since we hahearts and minds, impression, d never been to the Far East before, we decided to extend our trip and visit Thailand.
When we arrived in Bangkok, we decided to take a tour of the city's most famous Buddhist temples. Along with our interpreter and driver, Georgia and I visited numerous Buddhist temples that day, but after a while they all began to blur in our memories.
However, there was one temple that left an indelible impression in our hearts and minds. It is called the Temple of the Golden Buddha. The temple itself is very small, probably no larger than thirty feet by thirty feet. But as we entered, we were stunned by the presence of a ten-and-a-half-foot tall, solid-gold Buddha. It weighs over
two-and-a-half tons and is valued at approximately one hundred and ninety-six million dollars! It was quite an awesome sight—the kindly gentle, yet imposing solid-gold Buddha smiling down at us.
As we immersed ourselves in the normal sightseeing tasks (taking pictures while oohing and ahhing over the statue), I walked over to a glass case that contained a large piece of clay about eight inches thick and twelve inches wide. Next to the glass case was a typewritten page describing the history of this magnificent piece of art.
Back in 1957 a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through
Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. What's more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp-to protect it from the rain.
Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and thought it strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light, he wondered if there might be something underneath the clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labor went by before the monk stood face to face with the extraordinary solid-gold Buddha.
Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monk's discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, it appears that the Burmese slaughtered all the Siamese monks, and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957.
As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself, "We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha' a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self. Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we begin to cover up our 'golden essence,' our natural self. Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again."

Jack Canfield

We know.... - William Shakespeare

Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do