Everyone wants to be successful, happy and have greater financial rewards. We all want to enjoy the better things in life. We want to get more out of every day that were here on this earth. While our intentions are good very few people actually know how to get the most from every day, which is where success and happiness begin. The starting point of getting the most from every day begins with being in the moment. This means that you have to be aware of whats going on around you. Dont miss anything. Notice everything, from the words others are saying to you, to the atmosphere around you. Be aware of what is going on. In essence you need to become a sponge. Most people just try to get through the day and notice very little about what actually goes on around them. Successful people learn from each day. They let each day teach them. Thats what you must do, join the University of Life. Dont just commit yourself to learning, commit to absorbing what you learn. Learning the art of visualization is very important to success because in order to absorb the day you have to be able to take mental pictures of what you learn, so that you can absorb things into your mind, heart, and soul. If youre serious about success, you cant be casual about capturing the day in mental pictures. You must also develop the ability to respond to what happens around you during the day. In other words you must allow life to touch you. Dont let life dictate to you or control you, rather let it touch you. Let sad things make you sad. Let happy things make you happy. Give in to emotions and let them strike you. Not just words and images, the important thing is to allow feelings and emotions to strike you. Your emotions need to be educated just like your intellect does. Its important to know how you feel. You cannot absorb and respond to everyday events if you dont know how you feel. Allowing life in and letting it touch is something you must be able to do if you are to develop fully as a human being. In addition to learning how to absorb and respond, you must take time to reflect on events that happen to you, because everything has meaning. By reflecting, I mean going back over an event. Study it again. Go back through any reports, letters, or correspondence that youve read during the day. Go back over your day and run the pictures over again so that the day locks in firmly. The best time to reflect is always at the end of the day. Take a few minutes at the end of day and go back over it. Who did you see, what did they say, what happened, and how did you feel? Reflect on what happened so that you capture the day. Each day is a piece of mosaic of your life. Every day is an important part of your life so never treat it casually. Make sure you lock in the experience, the knowledge, the insights, and the emotion of the day. Take a mental picture of it, so that it will serve you in the future. Take a few hours at the end of the week to reflect. Go back over your business planner or your appointment book. Where did you go, who did you see, how did it feel, and what went on? Capture that week, because a week is a pretty good chuck of your time. Take a half a day at the end of each month to reflect, and do the same thing again. Go back over what youve read. Go back over what youve heard. Go back over what you saw. Go back over your feelings and capture the events so that they serve you well in the future. How you reflect is up to you. Some people reflect better by themselves in solitude, whereas others can reflect better with others, such as with a spouse or a colleague. However you learn to reflect the most important element is learning how to reflect with yourself. You have to learn how to shut out the world for a little while. By learning to reflect and shut the world out for a little while you will learn how to gather up the past and invest it in the future. Gather up today and invest it in tomorrow. Gather up this week and invest it in next week. Lean to gather up this year and invest in the next year. Most people just hang on and react to what is going to happen next. By learning to reflect on what has happened today and investing in tomorrow enables you to control your future. To make the most out of what youve learned from your day, you must be able to act. You must take action and not procrastinate. The best time to act is when an idea is fresh and your emotion is strong. For example, suppose someone is talking to you about a great new book on better health and it stirs your emotions. Get the book before the idea passes and you emotions to it get cold. Emotions will quickly pass unless you translate them into a disciplined activity. Capturing the emotion and the wisdom will translate into action. Its important to understand that every new discipline affects the rest of your disciplines. This is why action is so important, because everything counts. No matter how small you must always act. Each time you accomplish something, the value returns from that one action, which will motivate and inspire you to take the next action. On the other hand lack of discipline will also affect you by diminishing your motivation to take new action. The ability to share and pass things you learn on to other people is perhaps the most important part to your self-development. For example, if you pick up a good idea today, dont keep it to yourself, pass it along to someone else. If youre reading a good book or are listening to good audio program, recommend it to other people. Share your ideas, your experiences, and you knowledge. Everyone wins when you share. There are many people you could share with and help throughout your local community, the country, and the world but most of those people would never achieve any success or happiness in life, because theyre not big enough. If youre small in comprehension, small in the ability to think and wonder, and small in appreciation, you wont get much, no matter how much is poured out to you. Prosperity could be poured out on the whole country and yet still, most people wouldnt become much wiser. Theyre too small in their thinking and too small in their ability to share. They are unwilling to expand their full capacity. This is not for you. If you want to achieve success and happiness the starting point is being able to absorb each day, reflect on it, and then share. When you learn to do these three things you will have laid the foundation for self-development and your success will be unlimited. Copyright2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. |
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