My newly implemented 20 point plan

I’ve not been around lately because I’ve been extremely busy with my business – in fact, I rarely have time to take any time out for myself these days, which I am somewhat struggling with.

I had a great conversation with my mentor yesterday (even coaches need mentors/coaches!) and I was discussing with him my struggle to find the time to get everything done each day, as well as take time out for myself.

He offered me a great tool for managing my productivity around my business and I thought I’d pass it on to you, my dedicated readers! This tool can be used for business and can be modified to help you achieve personal goals too.

I find that sometimes my productivity wanes – I’m not doing things that are helping my business to grow to a point where I can find ways to leverage of other people, and this is partly my problem.

The tool is a 20 point plan or checklist, and here are the steps to implement this:

1. Write down everything you do that contributes to generating income for your business, or something that contributes to a specific goal.
2. Allocate points to each task. For example, if I go to see a client or do some networking, that is worth 2 points. If I email a potential client or update my blog then that is worth .1 per email/post. If I pick up a new client then I get 5 points.
3. Work towards achieving 20 points per day.
4. Once you have reached 20 points you can take some time out!

You will need to be honest with yourself here. Only give decent points to items that contribute the most to your goals, and of course only allocate points to productive tasks.

What’s great about this tool is that you are likely to focus on productive tasks to get points, rather than tasks that will not take you closer to your goal.

As you near 20 points, you will begin to feel a sense of accomplishment – you’re almost there! Reach 20 and you get to celebrate! Woohoo!

Once you

When was the last time you reviewed your goals?

If you have read through this website you will know that I truly believe that through setting goals you can dramatically boost your self confidence and self esteem.

The reason I think this is because achieving any goal, no matter how small it is, will give you some sense of achievement. As you gradually create bigger and better goals, you will begin to see some dramatic changes in your mindset too.

You will consider some challenges as “nothing” when once upon a time, the same challenges used to scare the life out of you! The standards you set for yourself improve too.

Setting goals and striving to achieve them is also a lot of fun! What is your biggest goal? What can you do each day to get you closer to your goal? How excited do you feel as you get closer?!

So if you have goals, when was the last time you reviewed them? (You have written them down, right?).

Sometimes as we go through life we kind of grow out of some of our goals, and that’s perfectly ok – as long as you replace them with new goals!

Set up a time over the next week to really focus on your goals and give them the attention they deserve – you will be glad you did!

If you’ve got some huge goals that you have absolutely NO idea how you’re going to achieve them, visit The Thrillionaires. This site is officially launching on August 24 (the date has changed, for anybody who has already taken a look) and it’s free to join.

The idea is to fill out your own goal list and then start living all of your wildest dreams.

Depending on what you want to do, the Thrillionaires community even helps you find the funding to pursue those dreams. People are joining all over the world–with incredible stories and achievements, so be sure to at least check it out and sign up for free.

Do you want to be a Thrillionaire?

I am an avid believer in setting huge goals and taking steps to achieve them, and that is partly thanks to my good friend Nik Halik.

Of all of the people I have ever known, he has taken goal achievement to an entirely new level.

As a child, he mapped out what he wanted to achieve in his life. He had health and other issues that normally would have prevented anyone else from doing what they wanted to achieve, but he didn’t let this stop him.

On August 15, the Thrillionaires community will be launched and is free to join.

If you want to achieve more in life, then this site might provide you with the inspiration you need.

If you want to join the Thrillionaires community, click HERE.

Beautiful!

I know this has nothing to do with the content on this website, but somebody posted a comment on my writing blog with a link to this YouTube song, and I just had to share.

I had goosebumps while listening to it!

Who Creates Your Reality

Who creates your reality?  Why is your life the way it is so?  What is your purpose in life?

I was reading as I regularly do and came across this passage that is a Sioux Creation Myth that explains this quite well:

The Creator gathered all of Creation and said, “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it.  It is the realisation that they create their own reality.”  The eagle said, “Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.”  The Creator said, “No.  One day they will go there and find it.”  The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.”  “No.  They will go there too.”  The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”  The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the Earth and find it even there.”

Grandmother Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees wtih spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside of them.”  And the Creator said, “It is done.”

All too often I hear of people blaming their reality on forces outside of themselves and I was once one of those people.  Once I realised that my reality comes from within, I was able to control my own destiny and my life dramatically changed for the better.

Should I tell someone that they make me feel inferior?

Should you tell someone that they make you feel inferior?

There are obviously two possible answers to this question:  Yes or No.

Consider this:  What is it about this person that makes you feel inferior? Do you think they are doing it on purpose?  Does it happen often?  Are you being over-sensitive?  If you were to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, do you think they would feel the same way you do?  Do others feel the same way about this person?  How are you perceiving this situation?  If you looked at it from a different angle, would it still look the same?

Also read my post on the subject: http://selfconfidence101.com/self-confidence/nobody-can-make-you-feel-inferior-without-your-consent/.  It’s brief but it does explain how many people don’t even realise they are “making” people feel inferior.

Nobody can actually “make” you feel inferior – that comes from you and the little voice in your head that tells you to feel that way!

If this person’s words or actions are really upsetting to you and you really feel that you need to say something to them, then it is important to think about how you are going to say it.

For example, you might want to approach this person in the following way:

“When you do X in Y situation, I feel like Z”…

Fill in the X with their action/words, Y is the situation (eg. during a meeting, when discussing arrangements for that event last week, etc) and Z is how you felt when they did/said what they did.

Tackling situations in a positive way and avoiding the aggressive approach is usually the best way to solve a conflict, and as I said above, this person may have no idea they are doing what you perceive them to be doing!  On the other hand, they may be fully aware of this and there is probably little you can do to change the way they are.

Your other option is to say nothing and if this is the path you choose, consider the following points:

• If you choose to say nothing, but plan on stewing on the issue for years to come, then maybe this is not the best option for you!
• Is the situation really that important, and if not, then maybe it is best to let it go (consider the point above first!)?
• Is the other person continuing to act in this way, and if so, do you think that saying nothing is the answer to solving the issue?

As you can see, there are different ways to look at the situation and the decision about whether to say something can be a lot more complex than you originally thought!  Look at your options from various angles and make the choice that you believe will work best for you.

What is your motivation to lose weight?

If you want to lose weight because your doctor said you should or you’re scared of getting heart disease or diabetes, then it is unlikely you will be able to keep the motivation going to follow through and achieve your weight loss goals.

On the other hand, if you want to lose weight because you really want to improve quality of your life, then you have a much higher chance of success!

Many people are initially motivated by fear or they feel they are being pressured to lose weight and unfortunately this isn’t a very inspiring way to stay focused and on track!

Being motivated this way really focuses on the negatives – what you hope to lose if you don’t lose weight, rather than the positives – what you will gain through weight loss.

So if you’re one of those people who has decided they want to lose weight, start to look at the real reasons why you want to.

If you’re initially driven by fear of what you could lose, try to look at what you will get out of losing weight. List down all of the benefits, and keep your focus on these as you get closer to your goal.

Even better, find a weight loss buddy to go through your weight loss journey with you and make it someone who will encourage you and support you and challenge you to succeed.

 

Related articles

Lose weight and improve your self esteem

Is your self talk doing you damage?

What you say to yourself can sometimes be more damaging than what others say to you.

How often do you berate yourself for doing something wrong or making a mistake? How harsh are you?

For the most part, we are more harsh on ourselves than others are of us, and it is until we become conscious of the fact that we are doing this, that we can finally take control of it.

We all make mistakes and we all do things we may regret later, but these things are all part of learning. As long as you learn from your past mistakes, you can move on and make different choices next time.

The following steps will give you some idea of what you can try the next time you notice you’re talking negatively to yourself:

• First, be aware of what you say to yourself and why you are saying it.
• Instead of telling yourself that you were stupid for doing something wrong, reword it in your mind to be more like “Ok, that wasn’t the right thing to do. Next time I will do it like…whatever”.
• Compliment yourself when you do something well! Give yourself a mental pat on the back when you succeed!
• Reward yourself for your accomplishments! You don’t have to go all out – just do something nice for yourself!
• You MUST believe you deserve to be treated well, because if you begin to believe it, then your self talk will change. Change that and you will start to see people treating you differently (nice differently! ) and that makes you feel even better about yourself.

When you change how you speak to yourself and how you perceive yourself, the outside world changes dramatically. All of a sudden you see things differently and in a more positive light. More opportunities come your way, a different breed of people start to cross your path and things just seem to go right all of a sudden.

Try this over the next month and see what a difference it really can make to your entire life!

Self Responsibility

Taking responsibility for your current situation can be difficult to do if you feel that everything that is wrong with your life is somebody else’s fault.

Someone with a weight problem might say that they’re overweight because there are too many fast food outlets around that tempt them, or someone in a bad relationship might say that they pick bad relationships because they were abused as a child and they just end up in the same situation over and over again.

It is kind of confronting when someone says that your current situation is 100% your fault, and it took me a long time to really believe this to be true.

No, you don’t choose to have fast food outlets everywhere and you don’t choose to be treated badly, but what you do choose to do is react in the way you do.

For example, there are plenty of thin people who live near the same fast food outlets. The difference between you and them is that they choose not go eat there as often as you do. You can choose to limit your fast food consumption to one day a week.

There are millions of other people who have been abused as children, but they don’t all find themselves in bad relationships.

On the other hand, I was never abused as a child but I found myself in a bad relationship – so what caused my situation? It certainly wasn’t abuse as a child!

If you find yourself in a bad relationship, you can choose to leave that relationship, you can choose to stay or you can choose to work on fixing it (if possible). You can also choose to avoid people who are likely to treat you badly, or you can choose to love yourself so that you can find someone who can love you even more!

Here is another example: I work with people who are constantly whining about where we work, how bad their job is, how terrible management are – but they still continue to work there and they’re not looking for employment elsewhere!

They have three choices. They can continue to put up with a job they hate, they can learn to see the positives of working there and be grateful they even have a job, or they can find a job elsewhere!

Until one starts taking responsibility for their situation they will have a lot of trouble making the changes required to improve their life.

How to overcome low confidence

I am yet to meet anyone who didn’t lack confidence at one time in their life.

We sometimes face challenges that are outside our comfort zones and it is completely normal to feel somewhat nervous, worried about how you will go, or even just a feeling of being out of your depth.

I found myself in exactly that situation last Tuesday when I was asked to MC an event in front of around 250 people.

What’s funny about this is that I secretly wanted to do this, but I found myself trying to get someone else to do it but I failed, and before long I was standing up on stage talking to a large group of people.

So how did I go?

I think we’re all more critical of ourselves than others are of us and I thought I talked too fast and didn’t say enough (very unlike me!).  But my colleagues all commented on how well I did, and I actually enjoyed it!

This is in stark contrast to a seminar I presented in front of around 40 people a few years back.  I was shaking so much that it was coming through in my voice.  It was a good ten minutes before I felt I could let go of the podium for fear I would fall over!

When you first start learning how to ride a bike, you’re a little unsure and a bit wobbly, but over time with practice it becomes second nature.  The same goes for anything.  Do it enough times and the fear and nervousness you felt at first will disappear.

Is there something you really, really want to do?  Why haven’t you done it yet?  Could it be because you’re still feeling that sense of fear?

Look at my example above and see how you can relate it to your situation…

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