Posts Tagged ‘Motivation’

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Opportunity Will Come When You Are Ready

August 25th, 2008

How often have you heard people keep on telling you that it is not that they don’t want to succeed, it is just that they don’t have the opportunity. God has forgotten them and did not create any opportunities for them. Is this true? If you are someone who has a millionaire mindset, you will never think of it this way.

When you are ready, opportunity will come to you! Don’t believe? Try this out. Try to save a portion of your money. Maybe you are just a student and you got no income yet, or maybe you are an adult and you work for living. No matter who you are today, just save a portion of your money. When this portion of money reach a certain amount, miracle will occur!

When you are ready, something will eventually happen. I cannot tell you what kind of opportunity you will get, but I can tell you that somehow opportunity will come when you are ready. If you are a student and wanting to score A’s is always your dream, when you are ready, maybe you will stumble upon a great book that teaches you how to study. You grab that opportunity and you buy that book. As a result, you pass your exams with flying colors.

The same if you are a working adult. When you are ready, opportunity will drop in front of you. Just like if you take up the test to save a portion of your money. When the money reach a certain amount, you will somehow use that money. No matter how you use it, maybe you spend it or maybe you invest it, you will eventually use it. It depends on your mindset and your habits. If you are someone constantly pursuing for higher wealth, maybe you will invest the money. However, if you are someone who spend heavily, maybe you will end up buying something you dream of with that money.

Just like what happened to me last month. I always had a dream of wanting to go for this guy’s seminar in Singapore. He is the world’s number one super affiliate, Ewen Chia. Maybe you have heard of him, maybe not. But that’s not the key here. The thing I want to share with you is this, the moment you got yourself prepared, God will send you the opportunity that you always looking for.

And one day I read the newspaper and I saw Ewen’s face was on the ad section! He is holding a seminar in Malaysia and he is going to have a 3-day workshop too! What a great opportunity for me. Without thinking much, I straight away decided that I’m in for that seminar. So you see, when you are ready, opportunity will come!

Below is the picture that I took with Ewen Chia in his preview seminar.

Me and Ewen Chia

So do you believe it now? Another great example is from the movie The Matrix. One of my favorite movies. Morphues tells Neo that when he is ‘ready’, he won’t even have to dodge bullets. So you see, when you are ready, you are telling the universe that it is time to give you a giant leap in your life. Just like the law of attraction. If you keep on thinking what you want to achieve in your life, you are actually sending message to the universe. You are telling the universe that you want it so much and the universe will give you what you seek.

The same thing happen here. Once you are ready, you are telling the universe it is time to fulfill your dreams and goals. It is not that you don’t have the opportunity, it is just that you are not ready for it!

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How to Use Your Physiology to Drive You into Action

August 19th, 2008

Have you ever wanted to be absolutely confident in certain situations when you were feeling unsure? Would it be empowering for you to get into a state of being totally motivated instead of feeling the usual lethargy?

Or how about changing your fear of going on stage to feeling enthusiastic and relaxed when you have to face an audience? How much would it change the results you are able to produce in life? Well you can! All you have to do is to put yourself in that physiology of excellence!

If you want to feel confident, all you have to do is to adopt the total physiology of confidence. If you want to feel motivated, adopt the physiology of motivation. This is called the ‘Act as if…’ principle. If you want to fall a certain state, act as if you were already in that state.

Remember that confidence, motivation and excitement are nothing but emotional states that you have experienced in the past. If you could access these states in a past situation, those same resources are available to you now. All you have to do is to model the exactly same physiology you were in when you experienced it previously.

6 Steps to Modeling Your Physiology of Excellence

Whenever you need to feel particularly motivated, confident and even happy, you don’t have to depend on something external to put you in that state. As long as you have experienced this resourceful state in the past, you can tap into it now by modeling the physiology you were in then.

There are 6 steps you must take to access any resourceful state. Let’s say you have to take on a challenge and you want to put yourself into an absolutely confident state in order to perform at your peak. Below are the 6 steps you must follow:

1. Think of a time in the past when you felt totally confident.

2. Stand the way you would stand if you felt totally confident.

3. Breathe the way you would breathe if you felt totally confident.

4. Have the facial expression, focus in your eyes when you felt totally confident.

5. Gesture the way you would if you felt totally confident.

6. Say what you would say to yourself if you felt totally confident. Make sure you use the same tone, pitch and volume on this.

By modeling the exactly same physiology your body was in previously, you will be able to feel the confidence surging through your body, readying to take you on the challenge!

Let me share with you one real-life example of how physiology can motivate and regain the confidence of a sport star.

At one time, Andre Agassi was invincible on the tennis courts. The world’s number one tennis player would be in a state of total focus and confidence each time he faced his opponent. As a result, he performed at a standard that gave him the winning edge. Then he started to go into a slump. For some reason, he lost his focus and could not get into the right state. He kept missing the ball and making the wrong moves. He consulted peak performance coach Anthony Robbins who explained to Agassi that the reason he was not winning his games was because he was not in the same resourceful states he was in, in the past.

Robbins got Agassi to watch video tapes of the matches in which he won and Agassi started noticing that in those instances, his physiology was different compared to the way he presently carried himself on the courts. In the past, his posture was different, the focus in his eyes was different, his breathing pattern was different and he moved differently.

So Robbins instructed him to watch and model the physiology he had in the past. In the next few matches, Agassi would go in and consciously adopt the exactly same physiology he had in the past. He started getting into his peak state and played the winning way he used to. As a result, he won the US Open within six months and regained his ranking as the world number one.

You have to know that your mind and your body are connected. Just like in the movie, The Matrix, once said, “Your mind cannot live without your body“. What this means is that when you change either your thinking in your mind or your body physiology, the other will change as well. And in this case, you are changing your body physiology, and hence your mind changed as well.

Facial PhysiologyThink about it, when you are feeling bored and tired, how does your physiology look like? Is your shoulder slouched forward? Is your head hanging down? Are your eyes looking down and unfocused? Is your breathing shallow and deep? Is your voice has low volume and low pitch? What about your muscle? Is it relaxed and having tension in the neck?

Now, what about if you are in a totally motivated state? How is your physiology look like? Is your shoulder at your back and your head is up? Are your eyes looking up, widely opened and very focused? How about your breathing? Did you breathe faster and deeper? What about your voice? Did you talk louder and faster?

There are 2 totally different states and that is why you are having 2 different states. Try to use the physiology when you are feeling totally motivated, and then think about feeling bored and getting depressed. It is not possible to be done because your mind and your body are inter-connected.

Just like when you smile and laugh, you will feel happy. Will you smile and laugh the moment you are feeling sad? That is not possible, and even if you try to do so, you will become happy in the end because you are telling your mind that you are in the happy physiology, and your mind will simulate that state.

I hope you can see the big picture now. Use your physiology to stay motivated all the time. When you are feeling sleepy reading articles or blog (I hope my blog won’t make you feel sleepy, ^_^), notice your physiology. Change your physiology immediately and you will see the effect.

Here is a post that teaches you how to make use of your physiology to get you into a motivated state instantly. It is called anchoring! Anchoring: How it is Used to Control Your Emotion

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You Need Courage to be Successful

August 17th, 2008

Recently I have just read a book titled, “The Millionaire Next Door”. I believe that you knew about this book and you have heard about it. Maybe you even read about it. I’m very inspired after reading a real-life story told by the author. You need courage to be successful.

It happens to me a lot of times, the moment some opportunities appear to me, I don’t have the courage to take that opportunity. Let me give you an example. Have you ever planned on to go for jogging in the morning? And when in the morning you alarm ring you wake up, brush your teeth and ready to go for jogging, something stops you. You heard your inner voice is telling you that it is boring to jog alone, you heard your inner voice is saying that why do you have to jog alone the moment you can watch television or do some exercise in your house?

I don’t know about you, but this is what sometimes I will face. I believe that everyone has their own fear to conquer in their life. There must be a time where you need courage to make the decision. Think about it, after you finished your secondary school, what kind of decision did you make? Is it a courageous one? If you like to further your studies, will you fly overseas to continue your studies? I believe that this is a decision that requires a lot of courage.

The same thing is happening in your journey to success. If you want to be a millionaire today, and it happens to you that there is a seminar held by a very prestigious speaker. You are very interested in that seminar, but it is going to cost you a big amount of money. Will you take the necessary courage to overcome your fear and attend the seminar anyway? I believe that a lot of people cannot overcome their fear, most of them fail to conquer their fear. It is the fear that is ruling their life, and that is why they hardly create any amazing results.

If you are given an opportunity to make a million dollar, but you will have to go to a country that you don’t even know about in order to expand that business, will you take the opportunity? Courage is everything is making decision. Do not let your fear controls you. Instead, always think positively and make your decision with courage.

A Real-Life Inspirational Success Story:

Jim MacLarenJim, a former Yale University All-American football and lacrosse player, was hit by a bus at age 22; an accident that forced doctors to amputate his leg. However, Jim persevered, beat the odds and became a marathon runner, Ironman triathlete world record holder and earned the title: “The Babe Ruth of Amputee Athletes”.

Eight years later, Jim was once again the victim of a tragic accident; hit by a van while competing in a triathlon and left as a quadriplegic after sustaining serious spinal injuries.

Never the one to give up, Jim once again proved that his spirit was strong enough to surmount even the most unthinkable of adversities. Jim has gone on to become a motivational speaker, founder of the “Choose Living Foundation”, and as Oprah said at the 2005 ESPY Awards in presenting him with ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award, Jim has “given new life to those around the world who need it most”.

For more information, visit: Jim MacLaren at The Final Sprint.

So you see, success require courage. If you don’t have the courage, it will hard for you because the road to success is a bumpy one. You have to face with a lot of obstacles, limiting beliefs, fears and more negative events before you can achieve the success that you always wanted.

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Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart Philosophy

August 14th, 2008

Wal-Mart Sam WaltonSam Walton built America’s vast chain of Wal-Mart stores on the philosophies of excellence in the workplace, customer services, and always having the lowest prices. Walton, affectionately known to his staff as ‘Mr. Sam’, was a true entrepreneur. He established Wal-Mart in 1962 at the age of 44. He died in 1992, having seen his company become America’s biggest retailer.

Walton believed that each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they held for their community. Today, Wal-Mart’s Community Outreach Programmes underwrite college scholarships, raise funds for local children’s hospitals, provide money and manpower for fund raisers, and help educate the public about recycling and saving the environment. Wal-Mart even helps American towns and cities build up their local industries by providing industrial development grants.

What was Sam Walton’s secret to success?

Rule 1: Commit to your business

“Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion i brought to my work. I don’t know if you’re born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you will be out there every day trying to it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around you will catch the passion from you – like a fever.”

Rule 2: Share your profits with all your associates

“Treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It’s the single best thing we ever did.”

Rule 3: Motivate your partners

“Money and ownership alone are not enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don’t become too predictable.”

Rule 4: Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners

“The more they know, the more they will understand. The more they understand, the more they will care. Once they care, there is no stopping them. If you don’t trust your associates to know what is going on, they will know you don’t really consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of information your competitors.”

Rule 5: Appreciate everything your associates do for the business

“A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we are really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They are absolutely free – and worth a fortune.”

Rule 6: Celebrate your successes

“Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm – always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody sing with you. Don’t do a hula on Wall Street. It’s been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. “Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?”

Rule 7: Listen to everyone in your company

“Figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines – the ones who actually talk to the customer – are the only ones who really know what is going on out there. You did better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.”

Rule 8: Exceed your customers’ expectations

“If you do, they will come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don’t make excuses – apologies. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed‘. They are still up there, and they have made all the difference.”

Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition

“This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For 25 years running – long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation’s largest retailer – we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you are too difficult.”

Rule 10: Swim upstream

“Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there is a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you are headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything else was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.”

Read my popular post, The 10 Steps How to Become a Millionaire.

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Do You Dare to Fail?

August 2nd, 2008

Dare to Fail - Billi LimFailure is the mother of all successes. Have you ever heard of this statement? I bet you do. There are some truth to this statement. As for me, I totally agree that failure is the thing that will bring you the success that you are looking for.

Let me share one real-life story with you. This guy, a very successful guy, he turned failure into success. In other words, it is the failure that brings him the success. Without going through all the failures in his life, it is impossible for him to be in today’s status.

Take the irrepressible real estate tycoon, Donald Trump (host of ‘The Apprentice’) as an example. Trump lost his entire fortune when property prices crashed in the early 1990s during a recession and he ended up $935 million in debt. Down, but not out, Trump hauled himself up from the pits to triumphantly make a $3.7 billion fortune, all within ten years!

Why didn’t such a crushing failure crush him completely? Because wily Trump of ‘The Art of The Deal’ fame, knew that he may have lost everything physically, but his true wealth did not lie in what he has stashed in his bank, it lay in his mind. It was his way of thinking and his financial intelligence that was worth billions, and that is what continues to make him a genius in negotiating the best deals. Of course he does not always win, but with his multi-million dollar mindset, the comeback is inevitable.

Can you see it now, if it is not for all the failures that Donald Trump faced in his life, he will not achieve the results he had today. It is because of the failures that had happened on him that transform him into a billionaire. (How Failure Can Make You A Billionaire)

What about Michael Jordan? Do you think Michael was born talented in playing basketball? Not at all. In fact, he is the one that failed the most in basketball, and that is why he is the best!

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots. I’ve lost almost 300 games. I’ve failed & over again in my life. And that is why i succeeded.” Michael Jordan

It Is The Failure That Will Bring You To Success

Often, if you are trying to achieve something in your life, you will not be able to achieve it the first time. Just like if you want to be a millionaire, you are trying hard to make more money from internet marketing, most people will not achieve it on the first time. Most people fail in their first attempt.

However, if you keep on and never give up, you will come across the right strategies of achieving what you want, and that is why people say that failure is the mother of all successes. Think about it, there must be a time in your life that you have faced failure before. Have you ever came across a moment where you failed to achieve something, but in the end it leads to other better results?

Here is another great inspiring real-life story for you:

Another great example that never fails to inspire me about turning crushing failure into resounding success is the story of Steve Jobs, the founder and current CEO of Apple Computers. Steve co-founded Apple at the age of 21 in 1976. Within four years, the company was listed on the stock exchange and Steve was worth $217 million at the age of 25.

As Apple continued its phenomenal growth, it was decided that professional management had to be hired to run the huge organization. So in 1983, Steve hired John Scully to be the CEO. However, within two years, the CEO and directors at Apple could not get along with Steve Jobs (he was known to be an erratic and emotional manager) and stripped him of all his duties, forcing him to resign from the very company he founded in failure and disgrace. To make things worse, Apple sued Steve for neglecting his duties.

While those in the business world wrote him off, Steve when possessed the millionaire mindset, took it as a huge learning experience and took the proactive action of starting a new and better company called NeXT computers. He believed that he could develop a range of hardware and software that would be even better than that at Apple. Did he succeed? Undaunted, he again took the feedback and went on to found Pixar Animation Studios, which became a huge success in creating the first breakthrough fully digitally animated movie ‘Toy Story’.

In the meantime, Apple Computer was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1995 after suffering from internal mismanagement and lack of new product innovation. The company was making losses of $800 million to $1 billion a year and its share price dropped from a high of $18 to $3.80. Believing that he could save Apple, Steve Jobs agreed to return as CEO for a nominal pay of $1 (he was doing it purely for the passion… millionaire habit 5). When Steve took over, he fired all the unproductive executives and spearheaded the launch of revolutionary products like the iMac, iPod and iTunes.

The revolutionary operating system (OS) he developed at NeXT was then evolved into the highly popular Mac OS X. As a result of these successful products, Apple turned its $1 billion loss into $1.3 billion in profits by 2005. Its share price rose from $3.80 to a high of $75! Looking back, Steve realized that if he never got fired from Apple, he would never have founded NeXT and Pixar Animation. If not for Pixar, he would not have become a pioneer in digital animation and if not for NeXT software he developed, Apple would never have the Mac OS X operating system that has made Apple a huge success today.

It is for this reason that many millionaires believe that ‘everything happens for a reason’ and that ‘adversity is often opportunity in disguise’ provided you learn from your experience and continue to take consistent action!

So you see, it is the bad events that brought Steve Jobs to what he was today! Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, everything happen, happen for a reason. If you are not looking for success-related topic, you will never be reading this post of mine right now. If you are not committed to success, you will never read until this point.

Even if there is something bad that happened on you, there must be a reason. If you fail to make more money in your business, take it as a challenge, a challenge given from god, to test how strong your business is. And if you pass the test, the rewards are great. Therefore, take life as a challenge. There are a lot of ups and downs in life, learn how to cope with them and you can achieve much more in your life.

Remember, everything happens for a reason. The point here is, you cannot control some of the thing that is going to happen on you. For example, the down-turn of economy, however, you can choose to give the meaning of what the event means to you.

Event + Response = Outcome

This is one of the most powerful life formula taught by Jack Canfield (The author for Chicken Soup for The Soul). What happened to you is not important, the most important thing is how you choose to react. Just like if you fail in your examination, you can choose to think that it is your teacher’s fault or you can choose to think that it is because you are lazy and did not do your revision.

The response you choose will determine your life, not the event that is happening to you. The best example I can give is Oprah Winfrey, you can read more about her in my blog, The Oprah Winfrey Success Story.

As you know, we cannot control some of the events that is happening onto us, but we can choose the meaning that we are going to give. You must understand that it is what you choose to react that is going to affect your life, not what is happening on you. I have a post for this, read more about it here, Event + Response = Outcome.

I hope that this post is going to inspire you to take more action. Remember, failure is not the end, it is just the beginning of your journey!

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