A Good Life Contains These 6 Essentials

The values that make up the foundation of a life well lived—and, no surprise, money isn’t one of them

Jim Rohn

 

September 9, 2014

The ultimate expression of life is not a paycheck. The ultimate expression of life is not a Mercedes. The ultimate expression of life is not a million dollars or a bank account or a home. The ultimate expression of life is living a good life

Here's what we must ask constantly, "What, for me, would be a good life?" And you have to keep going over and over the list—a list including areas such as spirituality, economics, health, relationships and recreation.

So, what would constitute a good life? Jim Rohn has a short list:

1. Productivity. You won't be happy if you don't produce. The game of life is not rest. Yes, we must rest, but only long enough to gather strength to get back to productivity.

What's the reason for the seasons and the seeds, the soil and the sunshine, the rain and the miracle of life? It's to see what you can do with it—to try your hand to see what you can do.

2. Good friends. Friendship is probably the greatest support system in the world, so don't deny yourself the time to develop it. Nothing can match it. It's extraordinary in its benefit.

Friends are those wonderful people who know all about you and still like you. I lost one of my dearest friends when he was 53—heart attack. As one of my very special friends, I used to say that if I was stuck in a foreign jail somewhere accused unduly, and, if they would allow me one phone call, I would call David. Why? He would come and get me. That's a real friend—somebody who would come and get you.

And we've all got casual friends, friends who, if you called them, they would say, "Hey, if you get back, call me and we'll have a party."

You’ve got to have both real friends and casual friends.

3. Your culture. Language, music, ceremonies, traditions, dress. All of that is so vitally important that you must keep it alive. The uniqueness of all of us, when blended together, brings vitality, energy, power, influence, and rightness to the world.

4. Spirituality. It helps to form the foundation of the family that builds the nation. And make sure you study, practice and teach—don't be careless about the spiritual part of your nature because it's what makes us who we are, different from dogs, cats, birds and mice.

5. Don't miss anything. My parents taught me not to miss anything, not the game, the performance, the movie, the dance. Just before my father died at 93, if you were to call him at 10:30 or 11 at night, he wouldn't be home. He was at the rodeo, he was watching the kids play softball, he was listening to the concert, he was at church—he was somewhere every night.

Go to everything you possibly can. Buy a ticket to everything you possibly can. Go see everything and experience all you possibly can.

Live a vital life. If you live well, you will earn well. If you live well, it will show in your face; it will show in the texture of your voice. There will be something unique and magical about you if you live well. It will infuse not only your personal life but also your business life. And it will give you a vitality nothing else can give.

6. Your family and the inner circle. Invest in them, and they'll invest in you. Inspire them, and they'll inspire you. Take care of the details with your inner circle.

When my father was still alive, I used to call him when I traveled. He'd have breakfast most every morning with the farmers at a little place called The Decoy Inn out in the country where we lived in Southwest Idaho.

When I was in Israel, I'd have to get up in the middle of the night, but I'd call Papa. I'd say, "Papa, I'm in Israel." He'd say, "Israel! Son, how are things in Israel?" He'd talk real loud so everybody could hear. I'd say, "Papa, last night they gave me a reception on the rooftop underneath the stars overlooking the Mediterranean." He'd say, "Son, a reception on the rooftop underneath the stars overlooking the Mediterranean?" Now everybody knew the story. And giving my father that special day only took five or 10 minutes.

If a father walks out of the house and he can still feel his daughter's kiss on his face all day, he's a powerful man. If a husband walks out of the house and he can still feel the imprint of his wife's arms around his body, he's invincible all day. It's the special stuff with your inner circle that makes you strong and powerful and influential. So don't miss that opportunity.

The prophet said, "There are many virtues and values, but here's the greatest: one person caring for another." There is no greater value than love.

So make sure in your busy day to remember the true purpose and the reasons you do what you do. May you truly live the kind of life that will bring the fruit and rewards that you desire.

Find the very best of Jim Rohn's life philosophies—foundational principles that anyone can learn to achieve success in both business and in life—in his influential book Leading an Inspired Life.

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The responsibility is on you for a bad hire.

3 Rules I Learned From Hiring the Wrong Person (Twice)

Amy Anderson

 

January 12, 2016

As an entrepreneur, I didn’t think hiring a team would be that big of a deal.

Step one: Figure out what I needed someone to do.

Step two: Find someone to do it.

Voila! Good hire. Right?

Um, yeah, not so much.

The process of hiring the right person has been one of the most challenging parts of growing my once-solo operation into a team of happy, productive people working toward the same goals.

There are two massive mistakes I made early on that I want to warn you about so you know what to pay attention to—and then I want to give you three little-known rules of making a good hire. Here we go.

Warning No. 1

When I relaunched my solo business into an LLC, one of the first people I brought onto my team was a certified professional accountant. I got a recommendation from a trusted colleague. I contacted Mr. CPA, asked for a few more references, then hired him.

Within a month, I fired him.

Look, I don’t know about you, but before owning a business I had never hired a CPA in my life. I had no idea what that relationship was supposed to look like. Nor did I understand that each relationship looks different depending on CPA style and client needs.

Turns out, I am a very needy client for a CPA.

I’m decent with numbers and for years did my own taxes. But I am terrible at dates, organization and regulations. For me, this means that the date when my quarterly taxes are due will fly right by me, even if it’s on my calendar. And if I happen to catch it, I have no idea where I put that form I’m supposed to fill out. And if I get that filled out, I’ll probably have to look up the rules of filling it out again, even though I just filled it out three months ago. Dates, organization and regulations are my weaknesses.

The problem is I didn’t tell Mr. CPA any of this. So when the date for my first tax payment came and went without any word from him, I called him. Long, uncomfortable conversation made short: He was subtly annoyed that I couldn’t remember something so simple but promised to remind me next time.

Then the franchise tax date came and went. Same phone call. Only this time, I fired him.

I felt bad, too, because it wasn’t his fault. It was mine.

There’s a myth that if you do your due diligence, it will give you enough information to find and hire the right person. But I had asked peers for recommendations. I had asked Mr. CPA for references. I had even called those references and asked if they were happy with his work. It was not enough.

I didn’t ask what their relationship was like with their accountant. How information was passed along.

Whether they had to remember all the requirements while Mr. CPA just processed the paperwork. If I had spent more time learning about this kind of relationship and what was common practice, I would have realized that what I needed was a coach, not just a CPA.

Warning No. 2

The next hire I made was a virtual assistant.

After doing research through a professional VA organization, I narrowed my list down to three candidates. Then I hired the least experienced person on my list. We’ll call her Vera.

Now, I told myself that I chose her because I was strapped for cash and since she was just starting out, Vera had the cheapest packages. But the truth is it was a pity hire.

Vera had a blog. She didn’t advertise this blog as part of her professional online presence, but I’m a researcher and found it. In this blog, she talked about her family issues, her cat, her general lack of friends, and her dream of making some money while working in her pajamas so she could finally feel some self-esteem.

There is a tiny Rescuer in me that immediately fell for Vera. (I should know not to listen to this Rescuer after a couple of interesting boyfriend experiences, but what can I say? I’m human.)

I wanted to help Vera get started. I envisioned a sort of mentorship relationship where I could pull Vera along and—oh my gosh, seriously, I can’t believe I didn’t see it.

I wanted to pull her along? What was I thinking? I was hiring a VA not a puppy. I should never have to pull her along. Encourage, train, even coach? Maybe. But pull her along, no.

And pull her along is what I did. She couldn’t master the app I was using for project management. She couldn’t create the payroll spreadsheet I needed. And she didn’t respond to my other team members promptly.

It was a disaster—and I had paid for 10 hours up front. I ended up using the last three hours on data entry and that was the end of a fruitless relationship and a valuable lesson.

The 3 Hiring Rules You Don’t Hear

Since making these huge hiring mistakes, I’ve stuck with three rules that have saved me a lot of headaches:

1. Do your research on the relationship not just the person. Ask for referrals, yes, but then ask more questions. Find out about the relationship style, the expectations on both sides, the duties of each, and the level of professionalism vs. friendliness if that’s a concern for you. If the answers don’t jive with the style of relationship you’re looking for, why even bother to interview?

2. Never hire out of emotion. Never. Ever. Look, we all want to help out the new gal. We all want to bring on the funny guy. We love to be around people who make us feel good—whether it’s for our magnanimity or our sense of humor. And if you were hiring an intern or someone to MC your celebrity roast, I’d say go with your feel-goods. But you’re not. So hire for what you need, not just what you like.

3. Be brutally honest from the start. First, with yourself. If you are someone who can’t remember the due date for your taxes, you need to be realistic about this weakness. If you get a little snippy after a long day and expect people to overlook your rude emails—well, first of all you might want to work on that—but you need to admit that this is part of your current work style. Then, be honest with whomever you’re looking to hire. If you don’t give them an accurate picture of who they’re going to be working with and what you truly need from them—as a fallible human being not just a boss with a to-do list—then they will end up disillusioned and you will end up without an employee.

Here’s what all of this means: The responsibility is on you for a bad hire. But it also means that the opportunity is yours to make a great hire. Take time today to get honest with yourself and make a list of questions that will guide you to the right person. I know you can build a team that you’re proud of and that makes you feel truly supported.

Being an entrepreneur definitely has its ups and downs. Make sure you do these 4 things to avoid losing your mind.

- See more at: http://www.success.com/blog/3-rules-i-learned-from-hiring-the-wrong-person-twice#sthash.evjRLcj6.dpuf

Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again

10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

We all make mistakes but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

Dr. Henry Cloud

 

June 24, 2014

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have them, they never go back to the old way of doing things. And when that happens, they are never the same. In short, they got it.

“Years ago, a bad business decision of mine led to an interesting discussion with my mentor,” Dr. Cloud says. “I had learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and he reassured me: ‘The good thing is once you learn that lesson, you never go back. You never do it again.’

“I wondered, what are the key awakenings that successful people go through that forever change how they do things, which propel them to succeed in business, relationships, and life? I began to study these awakenings, researching them over the years.”

Although life and business have many lessons to teach us, Dr. Cloud observed 10 “doorways” of learning that high performers go through, never to return again.

Successful people never again…

1. Return to what hasn’t worked.

Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not.

In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person.

When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone.

Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit.

Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless.

It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture.

We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that – each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence.

No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves.

One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success.

The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.

And, the converse is true: people who are still trying to find success in various areas of life can almost always point to one or more of these patterns as a reason they are repeating the same mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes…even the most successful people out there. But, what achievers do better than others is recognize the patterns that are causing those mistakes and never repeat them again. In short, they learn from pain—their own and the pain of others.

A good thing to remember is this: pain is unavoidable, but repeating the same pain twice, when we could choose to learn and do something different, is certainly avoidable. I like to say, “we don’t need new ways to fail….the old ones are working just fine!” Our task, in business and in life, is to observe what they are, and never go back to doing them again.

- See more at: http://www.success.com/article/10-things-successful-people-never-do-again#sthash.w1TUfpXB.dpuf

Positive mind. Positive Vibes. Positive life.

It Takes a Positive Attitude to Achieve Positive Results

Realize that YOU are in control of how you think and feel.

Mark Victor Hansen

 

January 12, 2016

Your attitude determines the state of the world you live in. It is the foundation for every success and every failure you have had and will have. It will make you or break you.

Your attitude controls your life. But the good news? You control your attitude.

Attitude creates the way you feel about people and situations. Your actions are a result of your attitude—which in turn creates a reaction from others.

It is your attitude toward others and the universe that determines the resulting attitude toward you. Have a positive, joyful attitude and you’ll have positive, joyful results. Put out a bad, negative attitude and you’ve failed before you begin.

Basically, what you think is you get.

I know it sounds simple, but, the truth is, it is:

Where do negative attitudes come from?

Negative attitudes come from thinking negative thoughts over and over until they become part of your subconscious, part of your personality—they become habitual. You may not even realize you have a negative attitude because it’s been with you for so long. Once you have a bad attitude, you expect failure and disaster. And that expectation turns you into a magnet for failure and disaster.

Then it becomes a vicious cycle: You expect the worst, so you get the worst. Your negative beliefs are reinforced. So you expect the worst, and you get the worst.

So, how do you shift your thoughts and create a positive attitude?

It takes work, but creating anything of value takes work. In order to have a new attitude, you have to change your subconscious thinking. How? By analyzing every thought you have until positive thinking becomes habit. You’re merely replacing an old habit with a healthy habit, much like replacing smoking with exercise.

You can’t just stop being negative—you have to replace those negative thoughts with positive ones.

Some people would say, “But negative situations are a reality. They just show up in everyday life.”

This is absolutely not true. Situations are a reality, yes. They do show up, yes. It is your attitude that makes a situation positive or negative. It’s time for you to realize that you are in control of how you think and feel—no one else on earth has this power unless you give it away.

Take control of your attitude, your state of mind, and you take control of your results.

Positive habits lead to success. Pick up these 6 “me” habits to be a better you.

- See more at: http://www.success.com/article/it-takes-a-positive-attitude-to-achieve-positive-results-0#sthash.FQsEtgf6.dpuf

Why you Should Think Like an Ant

4 Reasons You Should Think Like an Ant

Imagine what you could accomplish if you never quit and always did all that you could do.

Jim Rohn

 

January 10, 2016

When was the last time you saw ants reach an obstacle and give up with their heads down and head back to the ant hole to relax? Never.

Here’s another question. How much will an ant gather during the summer to prepare for winter? All that it possibly can.

Imagine what you could accomplish if you never quit and always did all that you could do.

I think everybody should study ants and their philosophy—it’s simple, but it’s powerful:

1. Ants never quit.

That's a good philosophy. If ants are headed somewhere and you try to stop them; they'll look for another way. They'll climb over, they'll climb under and they'll climb around. They keep looking for another way. What a neat philosophy, to never quit looking for a way to get where you're supposed to go.

2. Ants think winter all summer.

That's an important perspective. You can't be so naive as to think summer will last forever. So ants are gathering their winter food in the middle of summer.

An ancient story says, "Don't build your house on the sand in the summer." Why do we need that advice? Because it’s important to be realistic. In the summer, you've got to think storm. Think ahead.

3. Ants think summer all winter.

That is so important. During the winter, ants remind themselves, "This won't last long; we'll soon be out of here." And the first warm day, the ants are out. If it turns cold again, they'll dive back down, but then they come out the first warm day. They can't wait to get out.

4. Ants think “all-you-possibly-can.”

How much will an ant gather during the summer to prepare for the winter? All he possibly can. Ants don't have quotas or "good enough" philosophies. They don't gather a certain amount and then head back to the hole to hang out. If an ant can do more, it does. What an incredible philosophy, the "all-you-possibly-can" philosophy.

Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can.

Failure happens. The best thing is to learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward. Learn the 7 reasons you might be failing.

Leadership Lessons from Eagles

What is it about eagles that make us associate this majestic bird with leadership qualities?

Eagles can teach us a few things about leadership. 

We take a look at the leadership lessons that our eagle friends would love to tell us about if they could.

What is it about eagles that make us associate this majestic bird with leadership qualities?

The bald eagle is, for example, America's national bird. We use the bird to convey our leadership positioning in the world. 

In the Boy Scouts, the top scout ranking is that of the Eagle Scout.

If you think about it, it makes sense that the eagle is a symbol of strong leadership.

Eagles live on top of lofty mountains. Just as a leader is at the peak of an organization, an eagle sits atop the highest points in the natural world.

The eagle soars high above when it is hunting. This is a good leadership lesson. To be effective, leaders must have vision. They must be able to see things that others cannot. They cannot get mired in the details and must soar above the minutiae of running the business. At the same time, like an eagle, they must occasionally swoop down and get hands on with the business.

Eagles, like good leaders, are bent on self-improvement. An older eagle will tear out its older feathers to maintain its flying abilities. This is quite painful, but the eagle knows that it cannot rest on its laurels. So too, a good leader knows that he must set an example for his organization and engage in a continuous exercise of self-improvement.

During winter months when prey is scarce, eagles sometimes scavenge on carrion to supplement their diet. Is there a leadership lesson in this otherwise fairly disgusting trait? You bet. A good leader will do whatever it takes to succeed. On occasion, a leader must do unpleasant things. It's part of the job.

Finally, it is interesting that bald eagles lay two, occasionally three, eggs that are incubated by both parents, in turns for 34 to 36 days. It's noteworthy that the eagles take turns building up the next generation. It is a good lesson for leaders. You can't do it alone. You need to get the team involved. And, importantly, you need to constantly be thinking about raising the next generation of good leaders from within your company.

Source: http://www.gaebler.com/Leadership-Lessons-from-Eagles.htm

Why Not Control Your Destiny?

Why Not Control Your Destiny? To the extent that you can control your habits you will be designing your destiny. When we form those habits to do the things on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, without thinking about them, we are freeing
our minds of the need to ponder the various courses of action we need to perform and then able to focus on getting results.
Are you ready, (if you haven't so far) to start building (through positive actions/thoughts) the great destiny that lies at the
winner's circle. You certainly have what it takes to do anything you set your mind to do. 

Remember, by the yard, it can be yard, by the inch it is always a cinch.