• That won’t work
• You can’t do that
• Dumb idea
• Who would use that

Those are the naysayers.  Unfortunately, those types of comments often come from family or friends you have shared your ideas with.  It’s reasonable to assume that most great entrepreneurs also heard the words of naysayers: Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Aaron Patzer, Sara Blakely and others.

The difference between those people and the entrepreneurs that are still “thinking” about starting a business is they believed in themselves and they turned their belief into action.

The “I Can’t” List

If you are frustrated with lack of progress on a particular item and feel as though you are the only one that believes in it, develop an “I Can’t” list.  Write down all the things you think or someone has told you, you can’t accomplish:

• I can’t start a business
• I can’t become successful
• I can’t be an eloquent, motivating speaker
• I can’t develop passive income streams
• Etc.

Once your “I Can’t” list is complete, burn it, tear it, crumble it or simply rip it up and throw it out.  You can do those things.  As Napoleon Hill put it: “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

Eliminate “I Can’t” From Your Vocabulary

The next time someone tells you, you can’t accomplish something, ignore them.

The next time you think you can’t do it, do it anyways.

If you believe in yourself, you can achieve it.  Eliminate “I can’t” from your vocabulary.

photo credit: Davide Rusconi

Related posts

• Success Principle 4: Believing It’s Possible (0)
• 7 Categories to Help Clarify Your Vision (0)

First of all, I know the personal goals of these seven categories are addressed later.  I’ve spent time in the past defining details of goals that I hope to accomplish in my life and will update and share those later, but not at this point… just know that they are there and will require more focus than what is asked here.  Defining ideal relationships in this setting is pretty awkward and boring for the reader, so let’s skip it.  And you can probably imagine what to include in contributions to the larger community… in fact, some of such contributions were in my 30 things.

To get you thinking about your vision for each of these items, some stimulating questions follow:

Relationships

• Describe the ideal relationship with your family and friends
• What is your relationship like?
• Who are your friends?
• What is the quality of relationships with your friends?
• What do those friendships feel like?
• Are they loving, supportive, empowering?
• What kinds of things do you do together?

Personal

• Describe the personal arena of your life.
• Are you going back to school, getting training, attending workshops, seeking therapy for a past hurt or growing spiritually?
• Do you meditate or go on spiritual retreats with your church?
• Do you want to learn to play an instrument or write your autobiography?
• Do you want to run a marathon or take an art class?
• Do you want to travel to other countries?

Community

• Focus on the community you live in, the community you’ve chosen.
• What does it look like when it is operating perfectly?
• What kinds of community activities take place there?
• What about your charitable work?
• What do you do to help others make a difference?
• How often do you participate in these activities?
• Who are you helping?

Capturing Your Vision

Once you know your vision, how are you capturing it?  Where are you documenting your ideal life?  What you write down is big, important stuff… at least in your life.  Value and treasure it.  Don’t simply jot it down on a notebook.  Buy a journal and take the time to document it there.  Once you clarify your vision, you should review it often.  Keep it fresh in  your mind and use a tool that is durable for the frequent use it should receive.

I’ve found time to write about my vision on this site, but also capture it in a nice journal I picked up.  Not only to I review the items in the journal (almost) daily, I take the journal with me as I go to work or travel.  If inspiration hits and I find something to add to my 30 things, my vision or my goals, I don’t have to wait to do it.  Value the information you are capturing.  It is important.  Don’t take it for granted.

book credit: The Success Principles

Related posts

• 7 Categories to Help Clarify Your Vision (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Work and Career (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Free Time and Health (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)

Free Time:

• What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself?  We spend a lot of our time traveling to new and interesting locations.  Our family takes two annual trips: one to a tropical location and the second to country or location we have never been before.  When we are not traveling we spend time together reading or doing outdoor activities such as hiking or various sports.
• What hobbies are you pursuing? I participate in Ironmans, marathons and perhaps even ultra-marathons.  I have a team of friends that complete an adventure race every year or two.
• What kinds of vacations do you take? Exciting and adventurous vacations.
• What do you do for fun? Finding challenging things to accomplish.

Health:

• What is your ideal vision for your body and physical health? Great shape.  Superior condition. My physical body is able to complete long, challenging endurance races and my mental mindset does not interfere with these accomplishments.
• How long do you live? I’m alive and active into my 90’s.
• Are you open, relaxed, and in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? You bet.
• Flexible and strong? Yes – I need to work on this.
• Do you exercise, eat good food, drink lots of water? Yes.  I’m a conscious eater and exercise frequently. 
  

Clarifying your vision is a tedious task.  It’s difficult to fully capture everything succinctly.  It’s probably best to consider this a constant work in progress.  As your ideals and visions change, you should update the different sections of your vision to reflect those changes.

Are you clarifying your vision?  Share it by posting a link in the comments.

Related posts

• Finalize Your Vision and Find a Way to Capture It (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Work and Career (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)
• 7 Categories to Help Clarify Your Vision (0)

The Financials:

• What is your annual income?  Passive income that supports all monthly expenses and active income that is not needed, but allows for additional discretionary spending.
• What does your cash flow look like?  Continuous passive income and as much active income as I’m interested in
• How much money do you have in savings?  Enough to pay off all liabilities if needed and cover expenses for a rainy day.
• What is your total net worth?  The amount of money needed for “job free” lifestyle (and a stress free retirement)

The Home:

• What does your home look like?  An old craftsman style home that has been fully restored and modernized.  Large porch on the exterior and painted in earth tones.  The interior will have very detailed moulding, hand scraped hardwood floors, an upgraded kitchen and contemporary furnishings.  Here’s a good example:
  

• Where is it located? In an old neighborhood with homes of similar architecture and restaurants and amenities within a short walking distance.
• Does it have a view?  A view of water (ocean, lake, etc.) or urban skyline.
• What kind of yard or landscaping does it have? Highly manicured lawn and professional landscaping architecture throughout the property (both front and back).
• Does it have a pool? Yes, one that accommodates friends and family, but also works for swimming laps.

Other Items:

• List what kind of car you drive and any other possessions your finances have provided for you.  I’m not a car guy, so anything that is fuel-efficient works for me.  Other possessions: an upgraded road bicycle and kick ass laptop.

After going through this process for the second time, the first time being my vision for work and career, it definitely helps to define what your ideal world looks like.  It’s difficult to conceptualize some of these things, but taking the time to think it through will help as life progresses.

Related posts

• Success Principle 1 – Taking 100% Responsibility (Rehashed) (3)
• Principle 1: Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life (0)
• Finalize Your Vision and Find a Way to Capture It (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Work and Career (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Free Time and Health (0)

• Visualize your ideal job or career
• Where are you working?
• What are you doing?
• With whom are you working?
• What kind of clients or customers do you have?
• What is your compensation like?
• Is it your own business?

My Vision: Work and Career

My work is location independent.  I have the freedom to work from anywhere in the world.  Despite the freedom to move around, my work is still challenging and provides a lot of opportunity for creative problem solving.  In fact, I am involved in several different ventures that require different skill sets.  One project is investing in real estate.  I will travel the globe reviewing financial proformas for real estate investments, both commercial and residential.  When I’m not reviewing real estate deals, I’m working on several web-based projects and applications I’ve founded or invested in.  I virtually connect with my team and partners to review strategies for these businesses and brainstorm other opportunities that we are considering.  My most passionate venture amongst the group is supporting social entrepreneurs.  I’ve founded a forum to promote entrepreneurship in underdeveloped and underserved countries.  As my career progresses, I spend more of my time focused on developing opportunities for those that most need them.

Do to the nature of my business, I continue to write about the successes and failures we experience online and have attracted a decent following of business professionals and other entrepreneurs willing to provide comments and insight on the items I write about.

I have an ownership interest in everything that I do and my compensation is based on the performance of the real estate investments and the other projects we have launched.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think?  What did I miss?  How is your work and career vision alike or different?  Define your vision, don’t worry about how you are going to get there.

Related posts

• Finalize Your Vision and Find a Way to Capture It (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Free Time and Health (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)
• 7 Categories to Help Clarify Your Vision (0)

The second part to Success Principle 3 is determining your vision. We determined what we wanted earlier with the “I want” lists; clarifying your vision expands on that with detailed descriptions of what the destination looks like.  There are seven categories to use to help clarify your vision:

• work and career
• finances
• recreation and free time
• health and fitness
• relationships
• personal goals and
• contributions to the larger community

What’s the best way to document these?  I set aside an hour several days in a row and visualized where I was going and what I wanted my life to end up looking like.  I took notes, capturing the details of my vision.  I’ve written a narrative that describes in detail my vision for the seven categories.  It would be a long a boring post for me to re-write those visions here, so I won’t do that – at least not all at once.  Canfield suggests sharing your vision however.  He writes:

You might be afraid that your friend will think your vision is too outlandsih, impossible to achieve, too idealistic, or materialistic. Almost all people have these thoughts when they think about sharing their vision. But the truth is, most people deep down in their hearts, want the very same things you want. Everyone wants financial abundance, a comfortable home, meaningful work they enjoy, good health, time to do things they love, nurturing relationships with their family and friends, and an opportunity to make a difference in the world. But too few of us readily admit it.

Over the weekend I will add my vision for the seven categories on this website.  They may come across as materialistic, idealistic, or something else.  It may not align with your life’s vision whatsoever.  As irrelevant as it may seem to you, it’s a vision, something to inspire you to write your vision for your life.

Once your vision is complete – review it everyday.  Keep it active in your conscious and subconscious mind.  Help it manifest.  How will you know when you have arrived if you don’t know where you are going?

Photo Credit: mind_scratch
EEU9BGW6VRNQ

Related posts

• Finalize Your Vision and Find a Way to Capture It (0)
• Success Principle 5: Believe in Yourself (1)
• Success Principle 4: Believing It’s Possible (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Work and Career (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Free Time and Health (0)

I want to do…

1. complete an Ironman
2. raise $12,000 to fund three libraries for Room To Read
3. help build the school or library we funded
4. hidden
5. learn how to speak Korean fluently
6. start and own a business
7. live internationally for a few years
8. write a book, get it published and sell 100,000 copies
9. build a successful web project that attracts 1MM visitors
10. give a motivational speech to a large crowd
11. motivate and inspire others to make change in the world
12. develop others into successful people
13. cycle across the continental United States
14. compete on a game show like the Amazing Race
15. vacation on a remote tropical island
16. play soccer and baseball with my children
17. a million dollar real estate deal
18. pay off all of our debt
19. a road trip to visit all 48 continental United States
20. watch at least one Major League Baseball game in all the stadiums in the US
21. donate a million dollars to entrepreneurs in developing countries
22. build a Habitat for Humanity home
23. go skydiving
24. teach a college course
25. perform 25 pull-ups and 200 sit-ups
26. create something useful, market and sell it
27. snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef
28. meaningful work that I enjoy
29.  
30.  

I want to have…

1. a happy, healthy, passionate and loving family
2. open-minded, well-educated and successful children
3. a great relationship with God
4. a financially comfortable life
5. no debt
6. an abundance of time to pursue my passions
7. a fun and adventurous marriage
8. great opportunities
9. great health
10. a stress free life
11. happy, healthy and fun pets
12. a business – to be my own boss
13. a real estate investment portfolio
14. passive income streams that support our family
15. ability to pursue all opportunities
16. a vacation home abroad – Italy or somewhere similar
17. a nice house with a fenced backyard and mature trees
18. great friends with similar interests and passions
19. an in-home gym
20. a comfortable home – mortgage free
21. all of the best tech gadgets
22.  
23.  
24.  
25.  
26.  
27.  
28.  
29.  

I want to be…

1. an entrepreneur
2. developing creative solutions: at work and at home
3. successful in life: personally and professionally
4. environmentally conscious
5. a great listener
6. inspirational to others
7. happy and healthy all of my life
8. satisfied with what I accomplish in life
9. motivated and motivational
10. a role model for my children
11. the best dad ever
12. confident
13. fun
14. testing my comfort zones
15. making a difference
16. an advocate for equality
17. helping others
18. a real estate investor
19. a world traveler
20. satisfied spiritually
21. location independent
22.  
23.  
24.  
25.  
26.  
27.  
28.  
29.  
30.  

This is a work in progress.  How’s your list?  Need help brainstorming?

Photo Credit: sgrace

Related posts

• Success Principle 1 – Taking 100% Responsibility (Rehashed) (3)
• Principle 1: Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)

1. Paying attention to what I’m doing, not doing and trying new behaviors, approaches and strategies with things
2. Requesting more feedback – specifically from five people.

How have I fared?  Well, ironically, requesting feedback is a future topic in the book so I think that will come up again, but that’s okay because I was most successful at action #2.  I vowed to reach out to five different people, I did, here’s what happened.

I asked five people whose opinion I value, the following questions:

1. Is what I’m doing working?
2. Could I be doing better?
3. Is there something more that I should be doing that I’m not?
4. Is there something that I am doing that I should stop doing?
5. How do you see me limiting myself?

Person 1: Was enthusiastic about my request and suggested we get coffee to discuss the five questions I asked.  Our meeting is first thing in the morning, so more feedback to come there
Person 2: Pretty straight forward answers to the questions I asked.  What I am doing is working, there’s nothing I could be doing better. Keep doing what I’m doing, don’t stop anything and I’m not limiting myself.  They included other candid comments about future growth opportunities which was affirming.
Person 3: Said they would think about it and requested I provide similar feedback to them.  I don’t think that will go anywhere.
Person 4: No response
Person 5: Yes I’m doing a great job.  We all have room for improvement, although no specifics were given.  Something I can do is to continue to share in learning opportunities and promote growth amongst peers and support team.  I shouldn’t stop doing anything.  Am I limiting myself?  This is the most interesting (and motivating answer) – chase your dreams, you only get one shot – you have the skills and abilities to make it anywhere.  That makes you feel good.

The nice thing about this process was I got a few attaboy’s.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I realize that true improvement will come from addressing areas that I’m limiting myself.  Finding the people who are willing to candidly discuss those things with you is extremely difficult, but if you do find them, hang on to them.

I need to focus more on paying attention to my behaviors and trying new strategies or approaches.  Any suggestions?  How can you approach things differently?  Do you have a limiting behavior?  Find out: Ask your friends, family, colleagues, boss, peers, clients the five questions above to see if there is something you are doing that’s limiting your growth.

Related posts

• Principle 1: Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life (0)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)
• 30 Things… to be, to do, to have (1)

Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities around it. – Brian Tracy

I’m convinced that knowing your purpose is an important part of succeeding in life.  If you are doing what you love and what you’re good at, the end result is far superior than when you’re doing things that are not “on purpose.”  Pay attention to the things you do at work, some you will feel invigorated about, you will dive into the details and produce great work, others not so much.  The things that are invigorating, may be on purpose.

Identifying what feels good to do is easy, but developing your personal purpose statement can be very difficult.  Not only is it hard to determine what your purpose is, it’s hard to articulate that in a clear, concise statement.  Jack Canfield offers two suggestions for determining your purpose:

1. Using your inner guidance system – joy – to tell you if you’re on purpose
2. The Life Purpose Exercise from Arnold Patent.

Your Inner Guidance System

The first approach, using joy, consists of paying attention to the amount of joy you are experiencing.  The things that bring you the most joy are in alignment with your purpose.  Identify the things the experiences that create joy have in common.  Once you know what brings you the greatest joy, you will be able to establish a purpose statement.

The Life Purpose Exercise

The Live Purpose Exercise is a more concrete approach to developing your purpose statement.  It’s broken down into four steps:

1. List two of your unique personal qualities: ambition and focus
2. List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others: to help
3. Assume the world is perfect right now.  What does the world look like How is everyone interacting with everyone else? What does it feel like? Write your answer as a statement, in the present tense, describing the ultimate condition, the perfect world as you see it and feel it.  Remember, a perfect world is a fun place to be: everyone is achieving their goals and becoming successful.
4. Combine the three prior subdivisions into a single statement:  My purpose is to use my ambition and focus to help others achieve their goals and become successful.

The above is my result using the Life Purpose Exercise.  My purpose statement is:

My purpose is to use my ambition and focus to help others achieve their goals and become successful.

After drafting this I thought, that can’t be my purpose.  It sounds like I’m supposed to be a teacher and I know I wouldn’t like that.  But if you take the statement less literally, it could be applied to my current job.  As a property manager I help others do their job by keeping to building open, operating and occupied.  Now, that’s not to say that I want to be a property manager forever, but it does convince me that I’m on purpose for the most part.

The key to having this is to review it, continue to modify it as I see fit and find additional opportunities to fulfill that purpose.  Take this exercise of writing about completing the 64 success principles.  If it works, it will motivate others to follow this path in order to achieve their goals.  Today, I’m on purpose.  Will I be tomorrow?

Source: The Success Principles

Related posts

• No related posts.

1. How did I create that?
2. What was I thinking?
3. What were my beliefs?
4. What did I say or not say?
5. What did I do or not do to create that result?
6. etc.

Event + Response = Outcome

Mr. Canfield writes “every outcome you experience in your life is a result of how you responded to an earlier event or events in your life.  If the outcome is not as expected, I can blame the “so-called limiting factors.”  You know, the factors that hold you down but allow everyone else to succeed.  Maybe it’s the weather, economy, lack of good jobs or opportunities.  Maybe it’s timing, lack of support, etc.  Whatever it is, the outcome is not my fault.  I have an excuse, right?

No.  I need to break my habits of blaming others or external factors.  I need to change my thinking, communication, behavior, etc.  As Dr. Wayne Dyer says “change your thoughts, change your life.”  Everything “that I think, say and do needs to become intentional and aligned with my purpose, values and goals.”

I need to listen to my gut, what Canfield calls the “Yellow Alerts.”  These yellow alerts are advanced warnings about something.  It should give me time to prevent the unwanted outcome.

Next Steps

How do I apply the first principle?  On page 17 Canfield states, “… do more of what is working, do less of what isn’t, and try on new behaviors to see if they produce better results.”  I need to start paying close attention to what I’m doing and what I’m not doing.  I need to try new behaviors, approaches and/or strategies for different things.

I need to request more feedback.  I can’t improve upon anything unless I know where I’m limiting myself or what I should be doing that I’m not doing.  I will request candid feedback from at least five people who, 1) are in a position to provide candid feedback, 2) have worked or interacted with me directly recently and 3) who’s opinion I value.

Related posts

• Success Principle 1 – Taking 100% Responsibility (Rehashed) (3)
• Clarifying Your Vision: Finances (0)
• 30 Things… to be, to do, to have (1)