Of all sad words of tongue and pen the saddest are these “It might have been.” – Anonymous

Think about it. How many times have you said “if only”. If only I had taken that chance. If only I had done that yesterday. If only I had a little more time.

The truth is that all of these if only’s and it might have been’s stem from you.

You could have taken the chance you regret not taking now, if only you’d had a little more courage. You knew it was the right thing to do but you waited too long and lost the opportunity.

You could have gotten everything done on time but instead chose to use that time in a different manner and thus didn’t accomplish what you were aiming for.

And as for a little more time think about how much time you were given.

It is true that we all make mistakes and have regrets in life. There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t passed up an incredible opportunity in business, a relationship, or life in general. Most of us have passed up hundreds of these though you may not realize it. The one’s that hit the hardest are the ones you long for most. The lost relationship, the idea you should have done something about but didn’t, etc.

What you do today directly concerns what you can do tomorrow. Life is a series of steps that lead you to where you want to go. The steps you take today determine which steps you can take tomorrow.

For example…

If you want to date someone you first have to meet them. If all you ever do is look at them from across the room they may never know who you are or that you are even interested in them. They may never know the joy that could bloom from spending time with you. Every step following depends on this first step being accomplished.

The same is true in business.

Each step you take opens new options for you, allowing you to climb up to summits you never imagined you’d see.

But to get to those summits you have to start at the bottom and take the steps one at a time. Delaying your actions will only lead to a longer amount of time it takes to reach your goal or possibly losing that possibility all together.

What you do today affects what you can do tomorrow.

There isn’t a person in the world who doesn’t want to be successful. They dream of the different things they wish they had; a big house, a boat, trips around the world, the ability to buy anything they want…

Here’s the thing. They dream about it in that distant one day I’d like to have this way, and that is a way to make certain that you will never get it.

I could tell you that I want to fly to the moon or speak with Gandhi but that isn’t going to make it happen, and in Gandhi’s case I’d likely have to be dead.

So let’s go with the moon.

If I want to fly to the moon there are certain things that have to be done. One of them would be getting on a spaceship. But before I could ever get on that spaceship there are a thousand things I’d have to learn, from how to put on a space suit, to what I have to do so I don’t end up stuck in the middle of space with no way home. There are so many things that I don’t know (seeing as I’m not an astronaut and have never even talked with one) that I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

And that’s the problem…

People don’t have any clue where they are even supposed to begin.

Now my dream isn’t really about going to the moon. I like watching it in the sky and that’s likely the closest I’ll ever get to it but I do have dreams just as large and seemingly just as impossible…

Except they aren’t.

You’ve likely heard this before, I know I did, though it took many years for me to truly understand what was being said but IF you WANT something BAD ENOUGH for LONG ENOUGH you’ll find a way to get it.

My mentors didn’t tell me how.

They didn’t tell me step for step what to do.

They gave me a guideline and let me make my own way.

Now I assure you I didn’t take the quickest or easiest route. It was like when I was a kid. My parents used to take me and my siblings into the mountains and let us go. While they walked up the path I’d find my way over steep rocks, sharp cliffs, and rocky precipices. Normally they beat me to the top and I winded myself in the process, but I learned more from exploring those rocky climbs than I ever would have following behind them. I made my own path, and I learned that I was capable of reaching anywhere I wanted to go.

There is one surefire way to make it to the top and that’s to keep taking one step forward at a time. Like going to the moon you are not going to know everything, you may not even know where to begin, but if you read every day, listen to your mentors, and take a step forward you will find yourself climbing around the crags and pitfalls the impede your progress and joining those people you looked up to at the top.

Learn something new every day and make your dreams come true.

Empower yourself to change your life and make more money than ever before. http://www.empowernetwork.com/raquelhert/

“There’s a constant war between your heart and your mind; your feelings and your reason; your emotions and your intelligence.

But which one will win?

The one that you use more often. As with any muscle, it gets stronger with use. Use your heart, your emotions, your feelings more often, and they’ll be stronger. Use your mind, your reason, your intelligence more often, and they’ll prevail.”

I was searching through a forum when I found this. I instantly had to address it and once I finished I realized that there are so many people in this world who are literally at war with themselves. Their mind and emotions are in a constant battle that leaves them drained of energy and struggling to accomplish the most basic of steps to move forward with their life.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Imagine for a moment that your heart and your mind align and you move forward using both.

How powerful would you be then?

The struggle between your two sides would be gone, the energy used to battle between the two could be put to use moving forward with what your mind and your heart agrees on. You become unstoppable, and you reach where you’re going quickly and with confidence.
If there is a battle going on between your heart and your mind your life is not in balance. You have to get yourself, your emotions, and your mind to be in balance with each other before you can unleash the amazing power you have inside of you. It’s a process that takes time, but it can be done. When you’re not in balance there is something out of sync in your life. It could be that your morals are being compromised by something you feel you have to do, or it could mean that you are not focused on the things that mean the most in your life.

Here’s a quick exercise to see if you’re in balance.

Get a piece of paper and mark it 1 to 10. In those spots write down the things that are the most important in your life.

Now make a second list numbered 1 to 10. On this list write down the things you spend the most time on. Be honest with yourself.

Now compare the lists. If they don’t match up then your life isn’t in sync and there will be that war of emotion battling with your mind.

You have so much power hidden away inside of you, so much potential that is just waiting to make its way out, but it can’t until you allow it and to do that you have to find out what is causing the misalignment that makes your mind and your heart argue.

You’ve heard of Murphy’s law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong and it will go wrong at the worst possible time.

It’s a law that runs many lives without you realizing it. Sadly, once things start to go wrong they will continue to go wrong until you stop and take control again. It gives you no slack and it’s as if the universe is saying “Either you plan to get it right or you will learn the fallacy of your plan.”

Let me give you an example.

1. The light on your car comes on saying you’re low on gas, but you’re tired. It’s just as easy to leave a few minutes before normal and pick it up on the way to work. So you go home.
2. The next morning your child spills milk all over your clothes just as you’re about to leave. You have to get changed. Goodbye those extra minutes.
3. Once you make it to the car that light is still on and your frustration builds. There’s nothing for it. You have to stop for gas or you’ll never make it to work.
4. You make it to the gas station, but it seems as if every person in the world has decided to stop at that gas station and you don’t have enough gas to make it to the next station. You pound on the wheel, yelling at the idiots swerving into spots you were waiting for.
5. Finally you get gas and get back on the road but you’re now so late you speed to make up time and a policeman pulls you over. He gives you a ticket and warns you to drive the speed limit.
6. As you keep driving your phone rings. It’s work wondering where you are. Your boss tells you that he can’t have you late for another important meeting and if you aren’t there in the next five minutes you’re fired. You try to explain you’re still ten minutes out, but he won’t hear it and hangs up.
7. Once again you speed up, taking reckless turns in an effort to make it on time and crash into the side of another car as it shoots out of a side street. Now you’re ready to cry. There’s no way to make it in time and you’re about to receive your second ticket of the day.

I could continue on. But I’m sure you can imagine the rest of what this day is going to look like and all of it caused because you didn’t stop for gas.

The initial event was preventable, but once you made the decision not to stop for gas you opened yourself to Murphy’s Law. I’m sure you’ve seen this principle in action in your own life. Once you’re on this merry-go-round it’s no use asking Why me? The only solution is to take a deep breath, give up the anger and frustration, and get back to your plan. The angrier you get, the more frustrated you become and the longer you’re going to perpetuate the cycle.

There are ways to thwart this law.

1. Make adequate preparations and plans, then stick to them.
2. Respond quickly and decisively to whatever goes astray before it gets out of control.
3. Stay emotionally and mentally balanced, never allowing yourself to see yourself as a victim.

You will know you’re seeing yourself as the victim when you start asking Why me? Or saying It’s just one of those days. When you take the position of the victim you give this Law power to rule the rest of your day and control the direction of your life. The best way to deal with this principle is to keep it from happening.

Every human on earth has the same amount of time. There are 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week. No matter how productive you are this is all the time you will ever get and you are powerless to change that fact. Where your power does lie is in how you organize and use that time.

When you add it all up there are precious few hours of time that you can spend working on your dreams and goals. That is why maximum effectiveness is so essential to accomplishment.

Let me show you what I mean.

There are just 168 hours each week. Most of these hours are eaten up by repetitive, sometimes necessary but often mundane, nonproductive activities. First, let’s eliminate the time you sleep. If you sleep 8 hours every night, you have already used 56 of your 168 hours.

Now let’s say it takes you and hour to get out of bed and get ready in the morning including all the things such as eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, showering, etc. If you have kids you’ll likely have to extend this amount of time.  So you spend 7 hours a week getting ready in the morning. At night it takes some time for you to wind down and fall to sleep. We’ll say half an hour for each night.

Time left 101.5.

Of course we can’t forget about commuting. If it takes 45 minutes to get to work one way than that’s another 1 ½ hours spent 5 days a week. Each week you spend 7 ½ hours commuting.

94 hours left.

Now we have you at work and we’ll assume that including your lunch hour you spend 9 hours a day or 45 hour a week at your job.

49 hours left.

Finally, let’s allow an hour for dinner each night.

You are now down to 42 hours a week or an average of 6 hours per day. Out of each week you have already used 75 percent of your available hours, leaving you with 25 to live out the rest of your life and we haven’t even begun to include allotting time for:

• Your family
• Television
• Hobbies or interests
• Sports and/or exercise
• Housecleaning, yard work, home and car maintenance
• Friends
• Errands

I’m sure you could add more. All of that time gone and you still haven’t given one hour to working on your long list of dreams and goals.

As you can see you’re never going to “find time”. There are just too many things you do every day and week that eat away the available time you have. If you truly want to accomplish something you must take control and “Make Time.” Your life is yours to live, and it is up to you what you do with the amount of time left after all those things have taken away most of your time. You simply have to take control.

You’re told all the time that being productive means setting aside distractions and just going to work, and while this is true there is another aspect to it that is extremely important.

Mindset.

Without the right mindset it doesn’t matter how much you work. There are times when I sit down to write without distraction – alone, no noise, no kids – and I stare at the blank page without a single word coming to mind. No matter how long I stare at the page the article is not going to write itself, and the longer I stare the more I realize I just am not in the mood to get this done. No amount of sitting there is going to change that.

So how do you go about changing your mindset so you can accomplish more?

The answer is simple.

If you’ve read my other articles you know that every day I make a list that has at least 5 things that I have to get done that day. In actuality my list is closer to 10 items that need to get done, sometimes more, a few of them flexible so I don’t worry if I don’t finish them.

When I end up in this mindset where I just can’t make myself move forward and get done one item, I don’t.

I know that sounds like a cope out.

Let me clarify. I don’t do it then.

 The items on my list are so vastly different there is no doubt that one of them I’ll be able to do. So I stop what I’m doing and go through my list, pick one, and do that. By the time I finish my mind has cleared and being able to cross off an item and see some progress allows me to get into the right frame of mind so I can get done not just a few but all of the items on my list.

This, of course, is only one way that I put myself in the right mindset, but I find that it works amazingly well and allows my day to progress.

This method does take some discipline. I’m just like everyone else. There are days when I want nothing to do with my list at all, not a single item is even remotely interesting. Those are the days when the ‘just do it’ strategy gets employed. I make myself do what has to be done before rewarding myself with something I want to do. It’s effective, but that can be saved for another article…

Have you ever wondered how someone runs a company making millions of dollars and yet they never seem to be at the company?

There are many many people who do this in life, some just on a smaller scale. They have a team of people who are loyal and trust them which allows them to achieve their dreams and goals.

They’ve gained this trust through many avenues, one of which is keeping their word.

When you keep your word, even if that word was given mistakenly, people come to trust you and their loyalty to you grows.

I say even mistakenly because you will make mistakes.

Take this for example:

There was an agreement made between two partners. One of them was providing the work, while the other provided the money and the support of his company. Normally the partner with the money only agreed to give out 10% of the profits, but when he was going through the paperwork he mistakenly put down 50%. Some time later he discovered his mistake and was a little upset by it. He’d written out those same documents a hundred times. He knew how to do them. But the mistake had been made and the other partner had been working hard under the belief he’d receive 50% of the profits.

It would have been easy to go to him and explain his mistake, which could have led to legal difficulties as well as hurt feelings. Instead he followed through with his agreement. Before long that section of his business was making more than any other.

Do you really think it would have if he’d gone back on his word?

I can think up a million excuses for breaking your word in no time at all. I can think of them, but I very rarely use any of them. Excuses by nature are detrimental to your success, wealth, and well-being. They will never help you achieve what you want.

Promise only what you can deliver and deliver what you promise.

Stop for a moment and think about the percentage of times you keep your word. When you keep your word you are in control of your life, you are steering the boat. Not keeping your word is akin to letting the wheel go well traveling down rapids. You’re going to smash into rocks and possibly shatter the hull.

Keep your word whether its giving a child a toy or promising to be in Tokyo by Tuesday and doors will open as a team of people forms around you who not only trusts you but will do everything in their power to help you succeed.

Everyone has their comfort zone, that place where they feel safe and comfortable doing things. Whether that’s reading a book at home or standing in a big crowd talking to everyone depends on the person.

I was recently talking to someone who was very possibly the most insecure person I’ve ever met. She had a problem that she desperately wanted fixed. I must have given her a dozen suggestions on how to fix it quickly and easily. Each one she shot down because “that’s not the type of person she is”. In essence the fix was outside of her comfort zone. So instead of fixing the problem she chose to agonize over it and try to make everyone feel sorry that she had this problem.

The solution was so easy and would have kept all of her worry and anguish away. It would only have taken a few minutes of squirming, gaining up the courage, and doing it.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone is the only way for you to grow, for your life to move forward.

No one really likes to do this.  It’s not comfortable, you become anxious and self conscious, but it still must be done if you want to move forward in life.

Most people don’t believe me when I tell them I was the most awkward social person ever to exist. I was either completely invisible, or when I did finally speak the moment a sentence came out of my mouth everyone fell quiet, gave me a strange look and broke apart or ignored me completely. They don’t believe me because now I can walk confidently up to someone and start a conversation that can last for hours.

It didn’t happen all at once. I worked in baby steps.

I knew what I wanted, but it was so far out of my comfort range that it was as if I stood at the base of a mountain and my goal was on the highest peak. I couldn’t even take that first step without my chest constricting and my throat closing off.

So instead I inched my foot closer. I broke that goal into small manageable pieces that took me just a step outside of my comfort zone. The first one: Meet people’s eyes. It took me nearly three weeks to first meet someone’s eye and hold it for at least 5 seconds, then 10, then long enough that they were the ones that broke the contact off. I practiced everywhere I went; stores, the street, random meetings. It didn’t take me long to learn that most people will not hold your gaze for more than a few seconds, and it boosted my confidence tremendously.

Since then I have applied this method many times, always with great success. Baby steps, first one toe out, then a foot. Before long you’re striding forward, moving past the point of no return and stretching those comfort zone boundaries beyond what you had ever imagined. It is possible and so many problems are solved if you’re just willing to move outside of your comfort zone.

It always amazes me how often people break agreements; Commitments to be somewhere, promises to get something done, even interviews for a job.  Keeping agreements just doesn’t seem to be important to most people.

As a teenager it was one of the things that annoyed me most about people. When I said something everyone knew I would do it.

Some time ago I started a business. I was working with a team, all of us heading toward the same goal. While working with them I really enjoyed myself and learned more than I would have thought possible, but one day I was talking to one of them and we agreed to put a meeting together. This wasn’t that big of a deal, just a small thing for a small group of people that was meant to get our businesses moving. It was an hour of her time once a week for 2 weeks. That’s right just 2. The first week she showed up, though she wasn’t prepared and about ten minutes late. She told me how everything had gone wrong and she’d barely made it at all, if there’d been any way to contact me she would have called it off, but lucky for me she’d lost her phone.

The next week she gave me a call an hour before and called the whole thing off. It was an utter nightmare that could have been resolved if she’d just kept her agreement.

It’s easy to find excuses, easy to just be too tired or too busy to keep up with those things that you say you’re going to do.

But what does that say about you?

One of the easiest ways to become successful and get more done is to keep your commitments. That includes your commitments to yourself, commitments to your children, friends, family, even the stranger you’ve just met. If you tell them you’re going to do something make sure you get it done!

When you always keep your word that shows through to other people, your reputation builds for being an honest person who carries through.

A few months ago my father contacted me. He works in videography and wanted me to help him make his website more appealing. Without realizing that he had no idea what I actually did I agreed thinking this would be an easy job, going in change a few pictures, rewrite his opening and it’s done. Unfortunately that’s not what he thought. He sent me a blank link. There was no website, no chance of it being quick, and I knew nothing, NOTHING about building a webpage.

I could have turned around sent it back and said this is not what I agreed to, but I’d told him I would help him out. So I spent hours figuring it out, days putting it together, and weeks fixing it up. The time it took me to do what he’d originally asked was about 1 hour.

I went out of my way to keep my word. I didn’t have to, and most people I know wouldn’t have, but I’m not sad I did it, for I now know more than I did before and doors have opened that weren’t there before.

Keep your word and ways will appear that you never even imagined, more will get done, and help will come when you need it.

Let him that would move the world, first move himself. – Socrates

There are many strategies to making yourself a better and more productive person. The first of these can be stated in one word: Discipline.

No matter how carefully you’ve planned out your life you can’t hope to achieve your goals and dreams without discipline. It is a key ingredient to achieving success and doubling your effectiveness.

Some time ago I bought a home that needed a lot of work. I enjoyed working with my hands and had made it a habit to buy a house, live in it while I fixed it up, then sell it when I was finished at a profit. This home needed more work than I knew upon buying it and the timeframe for fixing it had to be expanded. Often I’d look around almost in despair and think “I’m never going to finish.” This thought made it impossible to even try and my deadline passed without the home being finished. I wasn’t disciplined enough.

Luckily for me discipline is a choice you make every minute and every hour of every day. Discipline is focusing on a chosen activity until it is completed. Discipline is something you DO not something you HAVE. You have the freedom to act with discipline and decisiveness at any time of any day. To become a “disciplined person” only requires for you to DO discipline over and over until it becomes a habit.

This isn’t always easy. Your mind when not given instruction and direction wanders in many directions, eating away your time and accomplishing little. Your mind is an obedient servant. It will do EXACTLY what you tell it to, provided you tell it and show it you mean to by your actions. Allowing interruptions or delaying the start of a project because you don’t “feel” like doing it is the result of failing to choose to be disciplined.

Discipline is power. It keeps you moving forward even when it feels as if the whole world is pulling you back. It keeps you on time, every time, and allows you to keep all your agreements with yourself and others.

Discipline is the process of total time control.

I did finish that house. It took me longer than originally planned because I did not DO discipline to begin with, but after I stopped allowing my mind to wander where it would and told it what it was going to do, despite being tired or overwhelmed, it didn’t take long at all before I finished.

Discipline is essential to success. Learn to do discipline, make it a habit, and your ability to accomplish will run on autopilot without your needing to result to excuses for inaction. You succeed by consciously choosing to act like a disciplined person.